This study reports on a qualitative study which explored 32 pre-service teachers’ evaluations of two online seven-week introductory courses in corpus linguistics (CL). Data were gathered through questionnaires, participants’ written journals, post-course semi-structured email interviews, and discussion forum entries. The qualitative analysis of data revealed that for successful integration of CL into online language teacher education programs, several procedures should be employed. These include: providing the necessary technological infrastructure in educational settings; incorporating CL instruction in initial stages of language teacher education degree programs and extending it throughout the whole curriculum; focusing more on the practical aspects of CL with much emphasis placed on the necessary pedagogical knowledge and skills for successful exploitation of CL; introducing user-friendly tools and encouraging indirect use of corpora in the absence of necessary technological facilities; providing adequate and effective instructional materials (text-based reading materials, screen capture videos, hands-on activities, etc.) along with sufficient instructor support; and encouraging the participants to reflect on the approach critically. The findings may promise implications for language teacher educators to effectively introduce CL to student teachers in virtual learning environments.

No abstract

This study reports on a qualitative small-scale exploratory study which examined the factors influencing 32 Iranian pre-service language teachers' participation in online asynchronous textbased discussion forums. By adopting a multiple case study design and analysing data gathered through semi-structured interviews and participants' online postings, it was found that access to computers and the Internet or high speed Internet, group size, quality of messages, level of instructor's involvement, grades, interface qualities, participants' personal characteristics and attitudes toward online interactions, as well as familiarity and experience with online discussions influenced participants' level of participation in online discussions. Based on the findings, recommendations are made to help language teacher educators to encourage effective online communication practices in similar educational settings.

Discourse includes both structural and conceptual patterns.  Most of these patterns are different in various languages.  A conceptual pattern in source language can be realized in different ways in target language.  Therefore, the translator should be aware of differences between SL and TL conceptual patterns because rendering these patterns from the source text into the target one can be problematic.  The present descriptive study aimed to investigate the conceptual discourse patterns and related ideologies in George Orwell’s Animal Farm and its Persian translations.  Accordingly, the researchers selected and analyzed the samples based on Fairclough’s (2001) approach to CDA.  Based on the findings, Gheybi (2010) has been more successful in rendering the conceptual discourse patterns and ideologies, because her translation was much more similar to the source text in terms of conceptual discourse patterns as compared to the translation by Hoseyni and Nabizadeh (2003).  The findings indicated that the translators’ ideological and socio-cultural norms affect their translation strategies and lexical and grammatical choices and this in turn influences their success to recognize and transmit the ST implicit ideologies into TT.

Abstract-The