Papers by Mohammad Ghazanfari
Studies in English Language and Education, 2020
Sentence comprehension in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) contexts is influenced by many fact... more Sentence comprehension in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) contexts is influenced by many factors. One of the most important ones is the processing mechanism of relative clauses which can be analyzed in different frameworks by researchers. So far, a wide range of research has been conducted on the processing mechanism of relative clauses in a number of languages. The results have shown a tendency toward two major categories which have been proven to be of significance, namely subject preference and object preference. Studies conducted on native speakers of English, for instance, have demonstrated subject preference by the participants. Consequently, in this study, the researchers conducted a self-paced reading experiment employing Linger software, and the data were analyzed by using the SPSS Statistics version 25. It aims to investigate the processing mechanism of English relative clauses by Iranian EFL learners. The participants were nine males and 21 females of advanced English...
Journal of Social Sciences, 2020
There currently exists no reliable or validated tool for the assessment of humor comprehension te... more There currently exists no reliable or validated tool for the assessment of humor comprehension test in Persian language. Since information about test characteristics is crucial to determining the accuracy and fairness of scores from a test, the current study aimed to evaluate a comprehension test which claims to measure native and non-native Persian speakers' humor understanding. To this end, a 28 item test was developed from among a variety of Persian textbooks based on their flouting from Grice's four maxims namely, quality, quantity, manner, and relation. The Persian Humor Comprehension Test (PHCT) was administered to 180 Persian native speakers who were randomly selected in a language institute in Tabas, Iran. Data analysis included construct validity via confirmatory factor analysis, and factors were regressed onto observed covariates for the interpretation of the constructs. Reliability was estimated through Cronbach alpha. Analysis of test reliability revealed that PHCT enjoys an acceptable reliability index over .80 and the validity property with regards to the Grice's maxim provided a good fit for the data. Therefore, PHCT can be utilized for native speakers of Persian to check their comprehension of humor. PHCT also paves the way for the development of such tests for non-native speakers of Persian since humor-driven context of teaching is among the goals of humanistic approach and technology-enhanced learning.
Learning in every context is influenced by the social factors such as the people with whom the le... more Learning in every context is influenced by the social factors such as the people with whom the learners are communicating in that specific learning environment. As the role that social factors can potentially play in the process of education seems not to have been explored comprehensively in the field of English language teaching, in general, and in the Iranian educational context, in particular, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the impact of both social goals and achievement goals on emotional, behavioral, and cognitive engagement, in an academic context. The participants of the study consisted of 302 undergraduate students (88 females, 206 males, 8 unspecified), majoring in English literature at two state universities and two private universities in Iran. The data were collected through one questionnaire consisting of items relating to different types of social goals and various types of engagement. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Regression Analysis were...
Asian Social Science, 2020
This study has investigated three Surahs from the Holy Quran, translated into English by Arberry ... more This study has investigated three Surahs from the Holy Quran, translated into English by Arberry (1955), in terms of the Politeness Principle proposed by Leech (1983). The study aimed to investigate the kinds of politeness maxims employed by the characters in the three Surahs in question. The intentions of the speakers in observing or flouting each of Leech’s politeness maxims have been categorized, including six maxims of the Politeness Principle: tact maxim, generosity maxim, approbation maxim, modesty maxim, agreement maxim, and sympathy maxim. The research had applied a mixed-methods approach in analyzing the obtained data. The data consisted of the utterances uttered by the characters in the three Surahs. After collecting the data, the data classified into six maxims of the Politeness Principle. Then, several conclusions had been drawn based on the research findings. The results of the study showed that the characters used six maxims: tact maxim, generosity maxim, approbation m...
Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2016
Since Swales’ CARS model (1981, 1990) work on the move structure of research article, studies on ... more Since Swales’ CARS model (1981, 1990) work on the move structure of research article, studies on genre analysis have been carried out so far among which works on different parts of research article in various disciplines has gained a considerable literature. The present study aims to examine the move structure of research article conclusion sections in two fields of ELT and Nursing based on Yang and Allison’s (2003) model of move structure in conclusion sections. Each corpus of the current study contains 25 research articles related specifically to the field under study. The results of data analysis indicated that both corpora contained the moves proposed in Yang and Allison’s (2003) model and almost no significant differences were observed in the rhetorical structure of the afore-mentioned fields. Therefore, the authors of both ELT and Nursing had a great tendency to apply this model in the conclusion sections of their articles. The obtained findings of the current study can be use...
Nowadays, translation plays a significant role in people’s daily lives. It has even been argued t... more Nowadays, translation plays a significant role in people’s daily lives. It has even been argued that translation can have long-term effects on whole languages and cultures. Translation is not a mere linguistic act, but a cultural act, since language is by nature the most outstanding manifestation of cultural representations. Thus, the translators’ job is not merely translating and conveying words and sentences from the source text to the target text; they have to transfer cultural characteristics as well. Culture-specific items often cause translation problems. Sometimes reference to such elements is completely left out by translators. Investigation of culture-specific items in children’s literature and the strategies the translators have applied in rendering such elements has been the focus of the present paper. The study, employing an exact text analysis approach, has focused on culture-specific items in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in the Wonderland, as the source text, and...
As one of thecohesive devices in the development of discourse, "reiteration"has been considered a... more As one of thecohesive devices in the development of discourse, "reiteration"has been considered as an effective textual strategy involving any unit of atext, such as morphemes, words, phrases, clauses, or sentences, as various means ofachieving emphasis, clarity, continuity, multiplicity, or textual integrity. Reiteration can even be extended as a method of contributing to the progress anddevelopment of ideas. But, if used unskillfully, it could simultaneouslyproduce redundancy, monotony, or even banality. Several studies have indicated that reiteration of words and utterances is one of the distinctive textual features of The Holy Qur'an(cf. for instance, Abdul-Raof, 2006, Saffarzaddeh, 2004).The present study hasaimed to investigate different forms of reiterationand the types of function they serve in The Qur'anic discourse, in general, and in a single Qur'anic Surah (i.e., At-Takweer), in particular. Our intention has been to examine not only the cohesive functions that reiterations as instances of lexical cohesion serve, but also to investigate the rhetorical effects produced as a result of reiterating utterances in the entire discourse of the text in question.Then investigating how they are used inreflecting sparkling ideas and intentions.
Qualitative Research Journal, 2017
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore Iranian EFL teachers’ and learners’ emotions in t... more Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore Iranian EFL teachers’ and learners’ emotions in the realities of the classroom to investigate how their experience and navigation of emotions could provide the opportunity for socially just teaching. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative study was conducted to probe EFL teachers’ and learners’ emotional experiences. Data were gathered through interviews and observation. Using interpretive phenomenological analysis, the researchers analyzed the data through three stages of critical emotional praxis, including identification, reflection, and response. Findings Findings of the study revealed that emotions of caring, love, anger, and anxiety were the most dominant emotions among teachers and learners. Also, it was shown that the participants used emotion management, the cultivation of positive emotions, and bodily manipulation in order to change their course of actions and move toward two-way communication whereby they could see and he...
The Iranian EFL Journal, 2011
Bio data Zargham Ghabanchi got his Ph.D. from the University of Liverpool, UK in Applied Linguist... more Bio data Zargham Ghabanchi got his Ph.D. from the University of Liverpool, UK in Applied Linguistics. Now he has a chair at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. He was the chancellor of Sabzevar Payam Noor University for five years. He has published several books and articles.
Iranian Journal of Applied Language Studies, 2013
The current study was carried out to investigate the functions of the ritual speech act of ‘ya Al... more The current study was carried out to investigate the functions of the ritual speech act of ‘ya Allah’ (literally meaning ‘O God’) employed by Iranians in social interactions. To this end, sixty-two Persian native speakers of different age groups, ranging from 35 to 85, of both genders were observed in 250 natural situations such as daily interactions, gatherings, public or private places and local TV programs until the saturation point. Their verbal interactions were recorded, transcribed and later analyzed. Moreover, in order to corroborate the representativeness of samples, ten people were interviewed and were asked directly when they utter ‘ya Allah’. It was concluded that the speech act may be employed in either religious or non-religious contexts to serve two major functions: to ask for permission (to enter a place) or call for an action. Moreover, the two major functions of the speech act in question may be broken down into nine minor functions: (1) Declaring one’s entering a ...
Iranian Journal of Applied Language Studies, 2009
Generally speaking, lexical items that enter our minds through reading a text commonly leave us w... more Generally speaking, lexical items that enter our minds through reading a text commonly leave us with pictures, sounds, echoes, and feelings in the mind. While the ability to produce images in the mind in the process of reading appears to be vital for greater comprehension and recall of texts, research has indicated that many poor readers seemingly do not visualize as they read. On the contrary, those readers who do typically visualize achieve greater comprehension and recall (see Tomlinson, 1997). In this study, in line with Wittrock’s ‘generative learning theory’ (e.g., 1992), two fairly homogeneous groups of EFL undergraduates (N=50), after taking a reading comprehension test to ensure that their reading comprehension differences are not significant, were randomly assigned to attend a short-story course in two different sections—one serving as the experimental and the other as the control group, both studying the same short stories, and both being taught by the researcher as their...
This study has sought to investigate the Oriental vs. Western culture-bound referential items ref... more This study has sought to investigate the Oriental vs. Western culture-bound referential items reflected in Top Notch series in terms of Kachru's (e.g., 1985, 1988) concentric circles. The analysis was conducted sentence by sentence in order to extract the focused items in terms of ten cultural factors proposed by Newmark (1988): 'Ecology', 'Food', 'Clothes', 'Houses and towns', 'Transport', 'Work and leisure', 'Politics and administration', 'Religion', 'Gesture and habits', and 'Artistics'. To this end, van Dijk's (2000) 'Ideological Square' was adopted as the framework of analysis in order to examine the frequency of the culture-bound items referring to the Oriental vs. Western culture to uncover the ideological orientations lying in the textual content of the textbook series under investigation. The results revealed that the majority of the extracted items signal the power, superiority, and dominance of Western culture, practiced explicitly or implicitly via textbooks published in the Western countriesthat is, in the "Inner-Circle". In addition, the discursive analysis of the texts suggests some traces of Western cultural dominance and cultural imperialism in terms of what has been suggested by Phillipson (1992) in the series of the textbooks.
Journal of English Language Teaching and Learning, 2015
Many researchers have investigated different aspects of learning styles. Nevertheless, few studie... more Many researchers have investigated different aspects of learning styles. Nevertheless, few studies have considered interactions between the notions of learning styles and “good language learners’” achievement. The present study aimed at exploring dominant learning style preferences by senior high-school students and comparing their preferences with those by “good language learners”. To this goal, the Index of Learning Style (ILS) was administered. A sample consisting of 1307 senior high-school Iranian students (711 males and 596 females was randomly picked up from among a population of 3310 students, who could potentially participate in the study. In terms of the participants’ achievement scores, 343 top students were arbitrarily categorized as “good language learners” and the remaining 964 as “the average language learners”. The results of the (ILS) showed that most of the participants preferred ‘reflective’, ‘sensing’, ‘visual’, and ‘sequential’ learning styles. A two-way ANOVA te...
As an Islamo-Arabic utterance,throughout the history of Islam, “Allahu Akbar” has been widely use... more As an Islamo-Arabic utterance,throughout the history of Islam, “Allahu Akbar” has been widely used as one of the most influential religious slogans since the advent of Islam in the 7th century CE. However, during the last four decades, it has gained a fairly global reputation thanks to various functions it has pragmatically come to serve in different social settings. Recently, it has been particularly assigned a world-wide notoriety due to the terrorist acts by extremist Islamist factions. This study aimed at identifying the social, political, and religious contexts in which contemporary Muslims recite “Allahu Akbar” with various pragmatic meanings in mind, making a special distinction between ordinary, peaceful contexts of use and violent contexts, where, in the latter, it is mostly heard from the mouths of extremist factions like ISIS, who, as well, associate themselves with Islam. We have, finally, identified eleven pragmatic functions the utterance serves in today’s Islamic soci...
Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2015
This study aimed to explore the relationship between English language education policy (ELEP) and... more This study aimed to explore the relationship between English language education policy (ELEP) and teacher effectiveness (TE) at grade three senior high schools (G3SHS) in Mashhad, Iran. To this end, the English Language Policy Inventory (ELPI) designed and validated by Khodadady, Arian, and Hosseinabadi (2013) and English Language Teachers' Attribute Scale (ELTAS) developed and validated by Khodadady, Fakhrabadi and Azar (2012) were administered to 48 teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) and their 1072 EFL learners. The correlational analysis of results showed that the two ELEP and TE domains correlated significantly with each other. The same analysis revealed significant relationships between Harmonic Curriculum, International Interaction, Internationalizing Native Culture, Methodological Development, International Understanding, All-Compassing Improvement and Functional Organization genera of the ELPI and Qualified, Social, Stimulating, Organized, Proficient, Humanistic and Self-Confident genera of the ELTAS. The findings are discussed from both theoretical and empirical perspectives and suggestions are made for future research.
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2014
Drawing on the tenets of generative learning theory, proposed by Wittrock (1992), the present stu... more Drawing on the tenets of generative learning theory, proposed by Wittrock (1992), the present study examined to what extent providing EFL students with short stories accompanied with illustrations, drawn by an artist, portraying some scenes relevant to the content of the stories, might influence the recall of major features of the fictional texts. A sample of Michigan proficiency test was initially administered to 75 intermediate female students at Parax Language Institute (PLI), in Mashhad, Iran, and those who scored within the range of one standard deviation above and below the mean were selected as the participants of the study (N=54). Then, they were randomly assigned to two equal groups (a control and an experimental group), each consisting of 27 homogenous students. The participants were given three short stories. The experimental group received the illustrated version of the stories. However, the control group was merely given the text of the same stories. Four weeks after presenting the texts, both groups were given a recall test of multiple-choice format. The findings revealed that students who were given the texts accompanied with illustrations outscored the control group, suggesting that illustrated short stories are likely to enhance the recall of such texts by EFL learners.
ORIENTALIA SUECANA, 2009
This paper investigates ideological aspects of literary translations by specifically focusing on ... more This paper investigates ideological aspects of literary translations by specifically focusing on the analysis of the textual features of a literary source text (namely, Sadeq Hedayat's Buf-e Kur [The Blind Owl], a novel originally published in Persian in 1937) and its corresponding translated target text (namely, The Blind Owl, rendered into English by D. P. Costello in 1957). Inspired mainly by Hatim and Mason's (1990, 1991, 1997) theoretical framework for the analysis and assessment of translated works, the researchers have analysed the target text by accounting for the sets of constraints relating to genre, discourse, and text as semiotic systems within which the expression of ideology takes place. In order to indicate the translator's ideological orientations, the study has mainly concentrated on three textual features, namely, "transitivity shifts", "nominalizations", and "modality shifts", together with a handful of lexical choices suggesting "domestication". Venuti's proposal (1995)-that the present status of English as a "dominant" language serves as a motive for translators to adopt a "domesticating" strategy-has also been drawn on.
ICANAS 38, 2008
Firdawsi's Shahnameh, widely recognized as the Iranian National Epic, may be considered as the es... more Firdawsi's Shahnameh, widely recognized as the Iranian National Epic, may be considered as the essence of the thousandfold-year Persian culture and civilization. In the depth of several incidents, characters, places, and other elements forming this huge epic work, one can identify traces of some religious beliefs, traditions, or historical events related to the lives of the Iranian people. Some scholars have argued that the contents of the Shahnameh may be divided into three parts: the mythological part, the heroic part, and the historical part. Although such a categorization highlights the presence of the heroic element in this epic, the present study suggests that, chronologically speaking, one can divide the types of relationships existing among the major characters appearing in the Shahnameh (i.e., between kings and heroes) into two eras. While the first era is marked by a "king-hero" type of relationship, in which, due to the absence of distinct social classes, indeed, both of the roles are played by the same character; the second era is characterized by a "king-and-hero" relationship, in which, as distinct social classes gradually develop, the two characters assume two different identities and social roles.
Writing appropriately and precisely is of critical importance for students' success in a wide ran... more Writing appropriately and precisely is of critical importance for students' success in a wide range of situations such as education and profession. A better understanding of the linguistic and textual features that contribute to writing quality would be advantageous for language teachers and L2 learners. To date, linguistic and textual features of argumentative essays that influence writing quality such as phrasal and clausal complexity features, text cohesion features, lexical sophistication and syntactic complexity have been investigated in many studies. Despite the abundance of the studies that have examined the relationships between textual/linguistic features of argumentative essays and writing quality, few have investigated metadiscourse features as contributors to writing quality. Accordingly, this study, framed with Hyland's (2005) model of interactional metadiscourse, aims to address this research gap. To this end, three corpora of students' writings: 30 pre-intermediate, 30 intermediate and 30 upper-intermediate were analyzed. By comparing the interactional metadiscoursal features (i.e., hedges, boosters, self-mentions, attitude markers, and engagement markers), the differences between the three groups were observed. The findings of the study reveal how the writing of EFL students differs across different proficiency levels with respect to metadiscoursal features. Finally, pedagogical implications for L2 writing are also suggested.
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Papers by Mohammad Ghazanfari