Contrasting audio-taped feedback with minimal marking feedback in EFL writing

In this study, the researchers contrasted audio-taped feedback (ATF) with minimal marking (MM) among 82 EFL female pre-intermediate learners at Kish Air English Language Institute in Tehran-Iran. These 82 students were selected from among 126 pre-intermediate students according to their scores in a pre-intermediate version of Nelson English Language Test. The subjects were randomly divided into two groups of ATF and MM, each with 41 eligible subjects. In each group, they were assigned to write expository paragraphs of about 120 words during 8 sessions, one session for the pre-test, and another one for the post-test; the remaining sessions were allocated for the treatment. One of the groups received ATF and the other MM. A pre-test and a post-test were used before and after the treatment so as to contrast writing performances of the post- and pre-treatments. The results showed that the ATF subjects performed better than the MM in the post-test, while the MM subjects in post-test did not show any progress

Professional Development Interest Of Malaysian Math And Science Teachers In The English For Teaching Math And Science (ETeMS) Buddy System

Professional development activities are needed to enhance teachers’ performance. Likewise, in the Malaysian educational system, teachers are encouraged to go through such activities each year. There is need to study teachers’ views on these activities in order to design more appropriate professional development programs. The present study sought to investigate a group of Malaysian Math and Science teachers’ interest in professional development. For this purpose, a survey study was conducted by administrating a questionnaire to a group of school teachers (n = 300) in the State of Melaka. Analysis of the data revealed that female teachers were more interested in participating in professional development activities. Furthermore, Math teachers reportedly indicated higher interest in these activities than Science teachers. Additionally, as the results showed, less experienced teachers were more eager to take part in professional development programs than those with higher teaching experience. Finally, it was found that providing administrative support encouraged teachers’ participation in professional development activities. The results can shed light on the steps that the administrators need to take in order to improve the quality of the professional development programs of this sort

Developing An English Language Textbook Evaluation Checklist

The paper describes the considerations that were taken into account in the development of a tentative English language textbook evaluation checklist. A brief review of the related literature precedes the crucial issues that should be considered in developing checklists. In the light of the previous evaluation checklists the developers created a list of the evaluative criteria on which the construct of the checklist could be established. The developers considered matters of validity, reliability and practicality in the process of its design; however, further research is in process to refine the checklist. Such an instrument could be used by curriculum designers, material developers and evaluators, as well as English language teachers

How Malaysian School Teachers View Professional Development?

The present study was conducted on a group of Malaysian Math and Science teachers to investigate their needs in the professional development activities. The findings indicated a majority of these teachers’ needs for such activities. Analysis of the data also revealed that most of the teachers regarded these activities as moderately or highly effective. Furthermore, as the results indicated, ‘release time’ was most teachers’ favorite incentive for their participation in professional development. However, a majority of the teachers regarded ‘advancement on the pay-scale’ as a not helpful way to encourage them to take part in the professional development program. It was found that the teachers with lower teaching experience expressed a higher need for professional development activities than those who were more experienced. Finally, the statistical test results indicated that teachers in the less experienced group had a significantly higher need for such activities, X2 (1, N = 300) = 144.213, p < .05. The results can be beneficial for the administrators of the professional development programs of this sort

Developing an English language textbook evaluation checklist: a focus group study

English Language Teaching (ELT) textbook evaluation checklists are instruments that help teachers the most appropriate books for their learners. This paper presents a phase of an on-going project proposed out of the need for a valid, reliable and a practical checklist. The phase includes a focus group study designed to further refine a checklist previously developed by the present researchers (Mukundan, Hajimohammadi, & Nimehchisalem, 2011). More specifically, the participants in the focus group (n=6) helped the developers improve the items of the checklist in reference to their clarity and inclusiveness. The study commenced in the form of an unstructured interview in which the participants brainstormed on the evaluative criteria that should be considered in evaluating ELT textbooks. This was followed by a structured interview in which the participants were provided with a copy of the checklist. They were free to reword, delete or add items that they considered necessary. As a result of this study, 14 items were added to the checklist while two were reworded. The findings are expected to be useful for English language teachers, ELT material developers and evaluators as well as curriculum developers. Further study is required to improve the instrument

The Relationship between Iranian ESP Learners’ Translation Ability and Resilience in Reading Comprehension

The present study was an attempt to investigate the relationship between Iranian ESP Learners’ translation ability and resilience in reading comprehension. More specifically, the study aimed to study the resilience cognitive and meta-cognitive effect on raising L2 reading comprehension through translation. Secondly, the study aimed at pursuing the views and attitudes to find out the extent to which resilience in reading comprehension can predict ESP learners’ translation ability. In order to test the null hypotheses, three phases were taken into consideration. First, 120 female adult sophomores majoring at Iran University of Medical Sciences were chosen through a homogeneity test. Second, the participants’ translation ability was measured through a translation task and also the validity of this instrument was confirmed by the three professors of the university, and the translation Toolkit Evaluation of UTAH University was used to evaluate the translated works. Next, the participants' reading comprehension ability was determined and finally, Connor and Davidson’s (2003) resilience scale was used to find out the level of resilience in reading comprehension of ESP students. The results of data analyses firstly revealed that there was a statistically significant relationship between Iranian ESP learners’ translation ability and their resilience in reading comprehension. Secondly, it was revealed that there was a significant positive relationship between Iranian ESP learners’ translation ability and their reading comprehension. The findings of the present study could have implications for EFL teachers and learners in the Iranian context

An epidemiological survey of drug poisoning and a comparison with other poisonings cases admitted to a university hospital in Gorgan, Iran, 2008-2015

Background and aims: Acute drug poisoning is a major public health problem in the world.The aim of this study was to investigate the trends and characteristics of acute drug poisoning and to compare that with other poisonings in Gorgan, Iran. Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was done from March 2008 to march 2015. Data were obtained from medical records. Stata software and Pearson's chi-squared test were used for data analysis. Results: A total of 800 poisoning cases, 573 cases were due to drug poisoning. The majority of the 573 patients (50.8 male) were in the age range of 20-29 years (47.8) and 78 of them were living in urban areas. The maximum number of poisoning occurred during summer season (27). The most common agents involved in acute drug poisoning were sedatives-hypnotics drugs, especially BZDs (37.2), followed by Tramadol (17.3) and Cardiac drugs (13.1). Poisoning most commonly occurred as ingestion of single drug (55). More than half (77.1) of the cases were intentional poisoning (suicide), followed by overdose (63.1), drug abuse (51.9) and accidental poisoning (17.3). Moreover, the most common drug involved in intentional poisoning was BZDs (44).9 patients (1.6) died, of which 3(33.3) were due to Narcotic drugs. Conclusion: Drugs were the most common cause of poisonings and the majority of acute drug poisoning in Gorgan was associated with suicide attempts. So, easy access to the most prominent methods of suicide i.e. consumption of drugs particularly BZDs should be restricted

Impact of self-correction on extrovert and introvert students in the EFL writing progress

Personalities of individuals have undeniable effects on second language acquisition and learning. Some studies indicate that personality traits have different types of effects on the learners’ second language development (Wang, 2004; Zhang, 2008). In addition, many studies show that corrective feedback in the classroom situation is needed for improving students’ writings (Ferris, 2001). There are not many studies that show effective error correction techniques in writing with regard to different personality traits of the language learners. The treatment of errors in writing has undergone many changes over the last decade. The previous approaches of English as a Second Language (ESL) writing involves teachers mainly underlining students’ errors. The more recent approaches are comparatively task-based where students are responsible for correcting their own errors. The emphasis has also changed from attending to errors that may hinder communication (Byrne, 1988; Power, 2002; Terrell, 1985; Van Houten, 1980). Teachers are expected to provide feedback to learners on the quality of the learners writing so that the necessary corrections can be made. To investigate the impact of self-correction method and to evaluate the impact of personality trai ts of Extroversion/Introversion on the writing progress of the pre-intermediate learners in the morphological, lexical, syntactic, and mechanical categories of errors, the quantitative and qualitative methods with regard to the following null hypotheses that have been proposed: 1. The self-correction method and the teacher-correction method are not significantly different in affecting students’ writing progress. 2. Self-correction does not affect the writing progress of EFL students who are extroverts and introverts. 3. There is no significant difference in the morphological category of errors committed during the writing progress between EFL students who are extroverts and introverts. 4. There is no significant difference in the lexical category of errors committed during the writing progress between EFL students who are extroverts and introverts. 5. There is no significant difference in the syntactic category of errors committed during the writing progress between EFL students who are extroverts and introverts. 6. There is no significant difference in the mechanical category of errors committed during the writing progress between EFL students who are extroverts and introverts. In addition, the research question in the qualitative method is focused on: 1) How do extroverted and introverted EFL students perceive their roles as editors in self-correction groups? One hundred and twenty (120) pre-intermediate Iranian female of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students were selected for the quantitative method by employing the Nelson English Language Test (NELT) and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ). They were assigned to four different groups:two groups were extroverts and two groups were introverts. Subsequently, they were given five expository topics to write about in a five-week period. When one extroverted and one introverted group used self-correction method, the teacher corrected the writings of the other two extroverted and introverted groups. Besides that, three extrovert and three introvert students were selected for the qualitative method. They were students of different universities in different disciplines of study. The information documented from participant structured indepth interviews. There were 6 sessions of interviews done in 6 weeks. These interview sessions included asking questions, listening to students, and documenting students’ responses. The results obtained showed that personality types had no significant effect on learners' progress in writing. Self-correction method showed to be significant at .05. Consequently, the first null-Hypothesis was rejected in the present study while the second and third null-Hypotheses were supported. According to the results of the Repeated Measure ANOVA, the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth null-Hypotheses were rejected. Finally, the result of students’ perceptions indicated that they believed teacher correction feedback is necessary and the teacher is the most reliable person in giving feedback; without the teacher correction feedback they could not correct and improve their writing

Classification of Data Series at Vehicle Detection

This paper purposes a new, simple and lightweight approach of previously studied algorithms that can be used for extracting of feature vectors that in turn enables one to classify a vehicle based on its magnetic signature shape.This algorithm is called ASWA that stands for Adaptive Spectral and Wavelet Analysis and it is a combination of features of a signal extracted by both of the spectral and wavelet analysis algorithms. The performance of classifiers using this feature vectors is compared to another feature vectors consisting of features extracted by Fourier transform and pattern information of the signal extracted by Hill-Pattern algorithm (CFTHP). By using ASWA-based feature vectors, there have been improvements in all of classification algorithms results such as K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Probabilistic Neural Networks (PNN). However, the best improvement rate achieved using an ASWA-Based feature vectors in K-NN algorithm. The correct rate of the classifier using CFTHP-based feature vectors was 39.82 %, which have improved to 69.93 % by using ASWA. This is corresponding an overall improvement by 76 % in correct classification rates

The Relationship between Iranian ESP Learners’ Translation Ability and Resilience in Reading Comprehension

The present study was an attempt to investigate the relationship between Iranian ESP Learners’ translation ability and resilience in reading comprehension. More specifically, the study aimed to study the resilience cognitive and meta-cognitive effect on raising L2 reading comprehension through translation. Secondly, the study aimed at pursuing the views and attitudes to find out the extent to which resilience in reading comprehension can predict ESP learners’ translation ability. In order to test the null hypotheses, three phases were taken into consideration. First, 120 female adult sophomores majoring at Iran University of Medical Sciences were chosen through a homogeneity test. Second, the participants’ translation ability was measured through a translation task and also the validity of this instrument was confirmed by the three professors of the university, and the translation Toolkit Evaluation of UTAH University was used to evaluate the translated works. Next, the participants' reading comprehension ability was determined and finally, Connor and Davidson’s (2003) resilience scale was used to find out the level of resilience in reading comprehension of ESP students. The results of data analyses firstly revealed that there was a statistically significant relationship between Iranian ESP learners’ translation ability and their resilience in reading comprehension. Secondly, it was revealed that there was a significant positive relationship between Iranian ESP learners’ translation ability and their reading comprehension. The findings of the present study could have implications for EFL teachers and learners in the Iranian context