Summary Since textbooks are one of the integral components of the learning process, their evaluation is important to improve their correspondence to the learners’ needs and goals. Particularly, in societies in which English is used as a foreign language, ESP textbooks play a crucial role in developing students’ skills of English in job-related situations. The present paper discusses the quality of ESP textbooks by performing a case study of an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) textbook “English for the students of Visual Arts (Painting, Graphics, & Sculpture)” developed and published by SAMT as the pioneer in developing ESP textbooks in Iranian academic setting. The study tries to investigate the overall suitability and pedagogical value of the ESP textbook and the features which make it distinguishable among its global counterparts. The study was carried out by drawing on a model proposed by McDonough and Shaw (2003), with an intention to evaluate the present quality of the Visual Arts ESP textbook critically. Both visual and content-based aspects of the book were thoroughly evaluated to identify their general pedagogical value by using the method of qualitative descriptive analysis. In that way, the Visual Arts textbook was analysed on the basis of the framework and guidelines suggested in the available checklist. In addition, semi structured interviews with graduate students, English instructors, subjectspecific instructors, and experts in Visual Arts Courses such as Painting were performed to clarify their opinions about the need for ESP and to analyze their perceptions of English language in general and English for special purposes in particular. The findings of the present study have revealed that there is a fundamental necessity for revision and development of future ESP textbooks in Iranian context. Moreover, the findings imply that traditional materials and frameworks are not responsive to students’ needs and genre knowledge in majors of the Visual Arts.
The current study was targeted at investigating the relationship between translation students’ personality types and the quality of their English-to-Persian translations with respect to different text types. To this aim, 35 undergraduate senior students of translation were randomly sampled. To obtain some demographic information about the participants, the researchers used a background questionnaire. The participants were given three different text types for the translation task. An advertisement, a scientific text and a narrative text were chosen to serve Reiss’ text typology (1971) including operative, informative and expressive texts, respectively. The students were also provided with retrospective questionnaires to shed light on their performance in the act of translating. Subsequently, once the participants’ personality types were determined via the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) anchored in Jung’s psychological theory, their dominant mental functions involving intuition, sensation, feeling and thinking were identified. To analyze the data, the One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) procedure and post-hoc analysis were employed. The results of the study indicated that the only dichotomy showing a significant difference was that of intuition versus sensation. Simply put, the intuitors outperformed their sensor counterparts in the translation of the expressive text. Taking into account the findings of the current study, the researchers suggest some pedagogical guidelines too.
This study followed two objectives: it primarily investigated the types of discourse markers (DMs) used in thespoken language of Iranian advanced EFL learners, and then explored the possible impact of gender on theparticipants’ use of DMs. To this end, 40 male and female EFL learners selected from an English language instituteparticipated in this study. The data were gathered through class observations. The researchers used Fraser’staxonomy of DMs and Fung’s category of interpersonal DMs as the theoretical framework of the study. To analyzethe data descriptive and inferential statistics were used. Results of the frequency test revealed that “and” was themost commonly used elaborative DM, whereas “but” was the most frequent contrastive DM. “Because” and “by theway” were respectively the only reason and topic-related DMs used by the participants, while “sure” was the mostfrequent interpersonal DM. In addition, results of the chi-square test revealed that learners significantly employedinterpersonal DMs more than the other sub-classes of DMs. Concerning the role of gender in the use of DMs, resultsdemonstrated that females significantly used more DMs compared with the males.
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