Applications of Language Studies

Abstract There exists a scarcity of studies examining the intersection of neoliberalism discourse, parental involvement, beliefs, and Socioeconomic Status (SES) regarding speaking proficiency of young English learners in the post-pandemic era. To this end, 28 children were selected along with their parents and were taught with the same syllabus, and tuition was waived for children with low SES. Two questionnaires were designed and validated to examine the effect of socioeconomic factors on parents’ beliefs and involvement. The findings showed that  SES has a significant effect on parental beliefs and involvement. The results also indicated that young learners’ parental factors could affect the success of these learners in the post-pandemic era. This research study can encourage more studies on intersectionality in educational research.

Abstract This study set out to determine whether teachers' emotional intelligence predicted their teaching styles or not. Moreover, it aimed at investigating the relationship between emotional intelligence and the aspects of EFL teachers’ teaching styles. The participants selected were 50 Iraqi EFL teachers from high schools in Kerkuk, Iraq. The study utilized the Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS) and the Grasha's Teaching Styles Inventory (TSI) questionnaire as the tools for data collection. The results of the study disclosed that a significant and positive relationship exists between the emotional intelligence of Iraqi EFL teachers and the aspects of their teaching styles. Furthermore, emotional intelligence predicted 47.5% of expert style. The regression analysis yielded another outcome, wherein emotional intelligence emerged as a predictor for teaching styles such as "formal authority", "personal model", "facilitator", and "delegator". The findings imply that emotional intelligence plays a substantial role in influencing the teaching styles employed by the teachers. Consequently, the emotional intelligence can probably contribute to the enhancement of educational standards.

Abstract The present study was designed to explore the impact of reading genre-specific texts on intermediate Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ vocabulary learning in intensive reading courses. The vocabulary instruction was provided through three methods: the science fiction genre instruction, the narrative genre instruction and the conventional techniques used by language institutes. The findings showed that the EFL learners' vocabulary learning was improved in science fiction genre group. In addition, this strategy was effective in improving the learners' vocabulary recall and retention. The teacher-led science fiction genre may have raised the learners' motivation that helped them to change. On the other hand, narrative-genre-instruction group showed an improvement in both immediate and delayed post-test. Both narrative and science fiction genres played a role in initial vocabulary recall, as evidenced by the immediate posttest performance. However, the substantial drop in scores between immediate and delayed tests suggests that the learners in both groups did not retain the vocabulary well. This indicates that forgetting occurred regardless of the genre used for instruction.

Abstract The present study made an attempt to examine cultural identity as a factor potentially prompting English language speaking production, an area that has only recently begun to receive much attention in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research. This study focused on three tasks to analyze the speaking performance of the participants (sixty EFL learners). As the first instrument, a modified Michigan test was used to select sixty male and female learners at the same level of proficiency from among 100 pre-intermediate learners of English language. The findings of the study showed that cultural identity affects speaking; that is, holding a secondary identity and readiness to learn a foreign language affects foreign language speaking of Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students.  The findings of the present study can be implied as a warning to both EFL learners and instructors in Iran that language learners do not show any interest in following a native-like accent. Moreover, the learners are not provided with the required facilities to improve their speaking skills.

Abstract This study aimed to investigate the impacts of nonverbal working memory on the writing skills of Iranian (EFL) deaf learners. To attain the purpose of the study, 15 secondary school deaf learners were selected to participate in this study. They were 8th-grade female students of Golestan Exceptional School aged 13-15. The researcher used a non-verbal memory test and a writing test to collect the required data. The participants were asked to participate in the selected tests. The results revealed that there was a statistically significant relationship between learners' non-verbal working memory and writing tests. The findings, also, demonstrated that there was not any significant difference between the writing skill performance of learners with higher capacities of non-verbal working memory and learners with lower capacities of non-verbal working memory. Therefore, the level of non-verbal working memory did not influence the writing skill. The findings have implications for pedagogy as well as further research.

Abstract Literary works are full of figurative devices which in fact have the crucial role in making them distinct from other types of texts. Maybe this is why translating literary texts is often more challenging than other types of texts. Hence, one of the most important tasks of a literary translator is doing his/her best to maintain the figurative devices of the original text by applying the most appropriate strategies. This study investigates the English translation of the proverbs in Masnavi Manavi by Whinfield (1898). We tried to answer the following questions: 1) What strategies have been used by the translator for the translation of the proverbs? 2) Has the translator been successful in translating the proverbs given the nature of the proverbs used in Masnavi?  As for the first question, it was found that all the proverbs in the source text were translated literally. A survey of the identified Persian proverbs revealed that a relatively large number of the proverbs have exact or near equivalents in English. However, literal translation is the last option chosen by the translator for all of them. Given the high importance of proverbs in Masanvi, we can argue that the didactic nature of Masnavi might have been reflected better by using the exact or near proverb equivalents.

Abstract The present study aims to investigate the translation of culturally sensitive concepts from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Descriptive-Explanatory Translation Studies (DETS) in literary texts. It examines the existing data based on the internal relationship of dominant ideologies, power relations, and censorship laws with the translator's choices to find out whether these they can help researchers establish a relationship between literary translation and constraining factors of social origin. The research data consist of translations of culturally sensitive concepts relating to unconventional relationships in three translated literary texts. To this end, a socio-cognitive theoretical framework with an emphasis on the dialectical relationship between society and discourse is used. The theoretical approaches that are found applicable are Wodak’s (2001) discourse-historical CDA model and van Dijk’s (1998) socio-cognitive CDA model. The study also employs a diachronic retrospective methodology based on Toury’s (1980, 1995) comparative model. The findings show that translators’ choices in literary texts are governed by the constraints of social origin and that literary texts, both original and translated, like non-literary texts, contain a lot of information about the relationship between ideology, power relations, and discourse.

Abstract Translation as an effective means of communication is used to exchange knowledge and convey the meaning expressed in the source language. The challenge of translating culture-specific items necessitates the use of specific strategies to convey the meaning of culture-specific expressions in the target language. In this sense, using wrong translation strategies during translation can affect how the translation turns out. The purpose of this study was to use Newmark's model to examine translation strategies of the culture-specific items in a Persian translation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel, the Secret Garden. The findings showed that the most effective translation strategies chosen were literal translation, functional equivalent, transference, descriptive equivalent, and modulation. The most and least frequently employed translation strategies were literal translation and expansion, respectively.

Abstract The present study aimed at examining the repertoire of strategies employed by Iranian translators in translating English idioms into Persian. To achieve this aim, the study focused on Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations. The strategies proposed by Mona Baker (1992) were the selected framework for the analysis. The results of descriptive statistics helped the researchers answer two research questions with regards to the types and frequencies of the strategies used. The findings showed that the least frequently employed strategy was paraphrasing (4.28%) and the most frequently used one was “using an idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form” (67.14 %). The findings of the study can be of help to educators in providing a comprehensive map of strategies used by Iranian translators in their translation tasks.

Abstract Suppletion is a morphological process which can be found in inflectional system and word formation processes of languages. It refers to the inflected forms of words which do not share a common etymology with the base in other forms of the same word. Suppletion describes the instances where a lexical meaning and a grammatical meaning are represented by a single indivisible form. For example, in English many of the past tense forms of the verbs have suppletive stems, e.g., grow and grew. In fact, their root is different from the base or there is a little similarity to the root. This article aimed at studying the suppletion process in inflected form of nouns and verbs in Persian. Moreover, it dealt with the structure of plural nouns and inflected form of verbs and identified partial and complete suppletion within those structures. The findings showed that suppletion process works in the structure of Persian nouns and verbs. Partial suppletion occurs in some Persian nouns which are made plural by adding "-ān" and "-āt" as well as in broken (mokassar) plurals. It also occurs in inflected forms of the verbs, while total suppletion can be found only in two verb forms. Suppletive forms are considered to be inflected allomorphs of a word. This may have historical and phonological explanations.