1. Applied Linguistics (Language Teaching and Learning)
Mohammad Reza Khaksar; Mohammad Saber Khaghaninejad
Abstract
This study investigated how English semantic and syntactic awareness contribute to the sentence comprehension of beginner, intermediate, and advanced EFL learners. Consequently, 188 Iranian EFL learners were recruited for the study and, pertinent to their English proficiency levels, were divided into ...
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This study investigated how English semantic and syntactic awareness contribute to the sentence comprehension of beginner, intermediate, and advanced EFL learners. Consequently, 188 Iranian EFL learners were recruited for the study and, pertinent to their English proficiency levels, were divided into three groups. To elucidate the possible contribution of semantic and syntactic awareness for comprehending English sentences, five sets of sentences were constructed controlling the frequency, length and difficulty of their comprising words: 20 syntactically correct / semantically incorrect, 20 syntactically incorrect / semantically correct, 20 syntactically / semantically incorrect, 20 syntactically / semantically correct, and finally 20 Garden-Path sentences (which are both semantically and syntactically correct but difficult to comprehend by the first attempt). With the aid of a software application (Com-Chron) designed specifically for this study on the UX platform, the participants’ comprehension was checked both in terms of their success-rate and their reaction-time. Through a multiple-choice online task, the participants were asked to select the option which showed the correct understanding of the constructed sentence in 30 seconds. Statistical analyses revealed that semantically-incorrect sentences were the most challenging and syntactically-incorrect sentences were the least demanding for the participants of three proficiency levels. The findings affirmed the dominance of semantics over syntax when it came to the comprehension abilities of EFL learners across different English proficiency levels.
2. Applied Linguistics (Inspirations from neighbor disciplines)
Mohammad Saber Khaghaninejad; Maryam Azarian; Fatemeh Javanmardi
Abstract
This study aimed at investigating the manifestations of objectivity in American academic texts across different disciplines and various time spans. To achieve this, the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) was surveyed in terms of the frequency of occurrence of the four identified linguistic ...
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This study aimed at investigating the manifestations of objectivity in American academic texts across different disciplines and various time spans. To achieve this, the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) was surveyed in terms of the frequency of occurrence of the four identified linguistic features (i.e., passive voice, impersonality, hedging, and attitude markers) as the indicators of objectivity (e.g., Alvin, 2014; Bal-Gezegin & Baş, 2020) to find the cross-disciplinary differences during the last twenty years. The results indicated that passive voice was employed differently across the academic disciplines of COCA and the notion of impersonality was more realized in hard sciences in comparison to soft ones. Moreover, the findings revealed a decline in the occurrence of passive voice through time in all the academic disciplines. In addition, hedging and attitude markers were more manifested in hard sciences probably due to the writers’ inclination to be judged objectively. Finally, objectivity was shown to have a steady increase in American academic texts implying that, though the authors of academic texts revealed less inclination to employ passive voice to avoid difficulty and ambiguity, they have employed less personal authorial references to stick to the notion of objectivity and impartiality during the recent years.
