Professional Development and IELTS Training Course: a case of EFL Teachers in Iran

Vol. 6  Issue 1
Year:2016
Issue:Jan-Mar
Title:Professional Development and IELTS Training Course: a case of EFL Teachers in Iran
Author Name:Hamid Ashraf and Zeinab Kafi 
Synopsis:
The current study aimed at investigating the status of Professional Development (PD) through examining teachers' perspectives over how effective they consider exam specific teacher training courses (IELTS in this case) which aim at increasing their PD. To this end, a group of EFL teachers, from different language schools in Mashhad, Iran took part in this study. There existed 30 teachers, most of whom were professional in teaching and had a good English proficiency. This training course consisted of all the skills and sub-skills of IELTS as well as the best possible ways to teach different skills of English. Teachers attended this program three times a week which started in February 2015 and ended in May 2015. As the main data collection mean in this study was a qualitative one, two open-ended questions were employed in the data collection process which aimed at finding what the participants' ideas about the T.T.C course they took were and also what the main motivating reasons for the teachers were for taking part in the T.T.C program. The accumulated answers were then analyzed and categorized into different groups and the percentages for each extracted category were calculated through SPSS. Besides, as for the quantitative data collection phase and also in order to check the probable relation of the program and teachers' Professional Development (PD), a researcher made questionnaire was designed and expert validity was employed to carry out the instrument's validation process. Therefore, two experts' opinions in the field were accumulated and further comments and modifications were done accordingly. The questionnaire, using Cronbach Alpha, revealed to possess a high degree of .902 reliability. Afterwards, the PD questionnaire, which mainly focused on teachers' self-declaration with regard to this case specific teacher training program and how effective they believed the program to be on their PD, was administered. Finally, the results were correlated through Cross tabulation and Chi square test. The results exhibited that, there exists a significant relation between the two variables i. e. majority of teachers believed the T.T.C program has been “influential” in their professional development.

Theoretical Triads in Chinese Thinking over Translation

Vol. 6  Issue 1
Year:2016
Issue:Jan-Mar
Title:Theoretical Triads in Chinese Thinking over Translation
Author Name:Jiasheng Shi
Synopsis:
Theoretical triads are commonly employed thought patterns and have played an important part in the history of translation. This paper presents a brief introduction to some of the most prominent triads in Chinese thinking over translation and clarifies the misinterpretations of them, with some of their Western counterparts given for comparative purpose. The triads covered include “faithfulness, expressiveness, elegance” proposed by Yan Fu, “sublimation, deviation, and mediation” by Qian Zhongshu, and “semantic beauty, phonological beauty, structural beauty” by Xu Yuanchong.

Learning Strategy Training in English Teaching

Vol. 6  Issue 1
Year:2016
Issue:Jan-Mar
Title:Learning Strategy Training in English Teaching
Author Name:Evangelin Arulselvi M.
Synopsis:
The fundamental task of schools is to endow students with strategies, which enable them to elaborate, transform, contrast and critically rebuild knowledge, that develops strategic knowledge. Learning strategy is the specific action to make the students better in learning a second language. Learning Strategy Training is based on problems the students encounter in the process of learning target language. These problems are needed to be solved for an effective learning. Learning Strategy Training focuses on learner training as much as language teaching. Students should be responsible for their own learning. The teacher helps them to facilitate their learning and to be more effective in learning the target language. Students should be aware of the use of strategies useful for language learning.

Acquisition of English as a Second language at College Level – An empirical study

Vol. 5  Issue 4
Year: 2015
Issue:Oct-Dec
Title:Acquisition of English as a Second language at College Level – An empirical study
Author Name:Beena Anil
Synopsis:
English has a universal appeal and in India, English is associated with modernity and progress sometimes with the ideology of its cultural values. The economic value of English is very high in India as even a layman uses English words in his/her 'native' communication. The second language acquisition happens for learners at various domains like home, education, religion, society domains. It is noticed that even English illiterates give importance to English and want their children to learn English for their 'bright' future. Presently, many families use English as first language in home domain. Second language acquisition and learning is gaining momentum in all the educational institutions. More than a language English is considered as a tool and a passport to settle in a good job. In academic settings, teachers should motivate students to learn, engage their attention, present an intellectual and linguistic challenge and allow them to develop language as effectively as possible.

The Effects of Explicit and Implicit Pragmatic Instruction on the Development of Compliments and Compliment Responses

Vol. 5  Issue 4
Year: 2015
Issue:Oct-Dec
Title:The Effects of Explicit and Implicit Pragmatic Instruction on the Development of Compliments and Compliment Responses
Author Name:Saman Ebadi and Mahsa Pourzandi
Synopsis:
This study explored the effects of explicit and implicit instructions in the development of EFL learners' speech acts of complimenting (Cs) and complimenting response (CRs). The participants in this research were 56 intermediate EFL learners from a language center, participating as members of intact classes that were divided into three groups of control, explicit instruction, and implicit instruction. They were asked to answer an open-ended Discourse Completion Test (DCT) to collect the primary data in the pre-test and post-test sessions. The items in the DCT included 12 situations based on which the participants were required to give or respond to compliments to evaluate their knowledge of Cs and CRs. Then their responses were collected, tabulated, and analyzed. The treatment including explicit and implicit instructions on pragmatic competence lasted for three weeks after which all groups were given the DCT in post-test to measure their pragmatic competence. The results of the study highlighted the effectiveness of both implicit and explicit instructions in developing EFL learners' speech acts of Cs and CRs. It seems that pragmatic instruction regardless of type speeds up the process of learning through consciousness rising and should be considered by language teachers as one of the ways in which EFL learners can most efficiently develop pragmatic competence.

Research Methodology: A Practitioner Approach

Vol. 5  Issue 4
Year: 2015
Issue:Oct-Dec
Title:Language Learning by dint of Social Cognitive Advancement
Author Name:Sukhpal Singh, Inderveer Chana and Maninder Singh
Synopsis:
The ultimate goal of scientific research is publication so as to showcase the research outcomes. Scientists, starting as graduate students, are measured primarily not by their dexterity in laboratory manipulations, not by their innate knowledge of either broad or narrow scientific subjects, and certainly not by their wit or charm; they are measured, and become known by their publications. A scientific experiment, no matter how spectacular the results, is not completed until the results are published. In fact, the cornerstone of the philosophy of science is based on the fundamental assumption that original research must be published; only thus can new scientific knowledge be authenticated and then added to the existing databases. In this paper, a practitioners approach to write an effective paper is presented in a chronological order. Further, writing style of effective research paper, a review technique to conduct a methodical survey in a systematic manner and finally an effective research plan for forthcoming research scholars is discussed. This research work provides an effective direction to write, submit and publish the effort put into doing research into a published form.

Language Learning by dint of Social Cognitive Advancement

Vol. 5  Issue 4
Year: 2015
Issue:Oct-Dec
Title:Language Learning by dint of Social Cognitive Advancement
Author Name:Bincy Mathew and B. William Dharma Raja
Synopsis:
Language is of vital importance to human beings. It is a means of communication and it has specific cognitive links. Advanced social cognition is necessary for children to acquire language, and sophisticated mind-reading abilities to assume word meanings and communicate pragmatically. Language can be defined as a bi-directional system that permits the expression of arbitrary thoughts as signals and the reverse interpretation of those signals as thoughts. Although language appears as a seamless whole, with phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatic processes working together, many dissociable mechanisms underlie linguistic competence. Language allows forms of social understanding that would otherwise be impossible. Both language and social cognition are complex constructs, involving many independent cognitive mechanisms, and the comparative approach provides a powerful route to understanding the evolution of such mechanisms. Social Cognition (SC) encompasses a number of distinctive capacities, including social learning, imitation, gaze following, and Theory of Mind (ToM). Social cognition involves a set of interacting but separable mechanisms, and the language has led to an extensive dissection of social cognition and a correspondingly daunting profusion of terms. The most important way in which social cognitive linguistics differs from other approaches, is that language is assumed to reflect certain primary sources and design features of the human mind.