---

The present study was set out to investigate the generalizability of the findings of quantitative research studies in Iranian English Language Teaching (ELT) context. To this end, the researchers, first, examined the general characteristics of the people who had participated as study subjects in quantitative ELT research studies during the last ten years. Considering the subjects’ age and the research sites, it appeared that the participants in previous quantitative ELT studies belonged to 11 groups of people. Subsequent analyses revealed that more than 60% of previous research studies had been carried out in academic settings and on university students. About 20% of the studies had focused on language learners in private language institutes and students in junior high schools and high schools. Pre-university centers had participated in only 7% of previous studies. Highlighting the possible causes of the imbalanced focus of previous studies, the researchers then discussed the limitations that this skewed distribution impose on the generalizability of previous ELT studies.    

---

As an integral componet of discourse competence and professional expertise, generic competence is intervowen with the concept of multi-litracies, which in turn highlights the role of technology and multimodality. Conefernce PowerPoint presentations are among the research-process genres, which rely substantially on the textual and visual generic competences of discourse community members. In spite of their significant role for the membership in a community of practice, they are underexplored even in the "English for Specific/ Academic Purposes" tradition of genre analysis, where static versus dynamic nature of genres has been a controversial issue. The present genereic study utilized a typology of visuals along with a framework for description and explanation of their characteristics and features to analyze more than 400 conference slides by two groups of non-native applied linguists (a representative of soft scientists) in light of the definition of genre, its functions, and the influence of Microsoft software on its features. Apart from highlighting the importance of visuals and the dominance of scriptuals in soft sciences, the reported similarities and differences between the two groups and the obtained patterns revealed that PowerPoint presentation can be considered a genre, which would manifest a variety of identity expressions. Moreover, in the absence of disoursal and metadiscoursal elements, many slide characteristics and features can fulfill their fuctions. Sheding some light on the undeniable role of the software and its implications for methods of reasoning and argumentation, genre integrity, and definition of metadiscourse and genre along with some applied suggestions are among the main aims of the study.  

---

During the last two decades, in psycholinguistic studies, particular attention has been focused on bilingual speakers in order to understand the cognitive relation between the two languages, especially in terms of their activation and retrieval. One of the most important reasons is that language processing and the speed of word retrieval are different between bilinguals and monolinguals. In this study, the speed of language processing and noun-verb retrieval in either of L1 and L2 and between L1 and L2 (Persian and English) were investigated through picture naming task in 42 BA students of English Language and Literature of Allameh Tabatabaee University. According to the results of this study, in inter-languages mode, the speed of verb processing and retrieval in English is significantly more than that in Persian. Moreover, in intra-languages mode, in Persian, the speed of noun processing and retrieval is significantly more than the speed of verb processing and retrieval. In the next stage, the results were analyzed by considering the gender variable. With respect to the purposes of this research in investigating the cognitive differences in the speed of word processing and retrieval in L1 and L2, a superior cognitive performance can be concluded in females.  

---

This study is intended to report the effect of age of acquisition on lexical decision latencies in a group of Persian-English bilinguals. Forty freshman university students were requested to perform the lexical decision task in a counter-balanced design using DMDX software on laptop. Forty five English words and several pseudowords as fillers were selected for the stimuli. The stimuli were selected based on three different levels of AOA, and were checked against the Persian version of Snodgrass and Vanderwart Naming Battery. Thirty words were matched in their AoA in both Farsi and English, and then divided into early acquired (Group 1) and late acquired words (Group 2). The third group consisted of 15 words, which were later acquired in Persian but early acquired in English. In so doing, we wanted to explore whether processing of L2 words was dependent on the first language AoA of the same words or not. The findings revealed that the second language (L2) age of acquisition had an effect on lexical decision latencies regardless of the age of acquisition of words in Persian. The means of both groups (1 and 3) pertaining to the early acquired words in English were significantly lower than those of the late acquired group (2), implying that perhaps L2 mental lexicon has its own system of representation and processing in beginner bilinguals contrary to the majority of models on L2 mental lexicon and theories, supporting a critical period in learning a second language. The findings of this study have implications for form-meaning interface and dissociation of declarative vs. procedural memory in bilingual mental lexicon research. Accordingly, future research should take into account the important role of AoA in foreign language mental lexicon representation and processing.

---

The present article takes a critical and analytic look at various dimensions of studying vocabulary in academic texts, hence providing a quite clear prospect of the requirements, methods and challenges of this line of inquiry. The basic focus of the article is however to draw attention to the paucity of corpus-informed research on Persian academic texts as well as the linguistic productions of Persian speakers in other languages. In the first section, a holistic picture as to the significance of learning academic vocabulary is drawn. Then, some academic word and phrase lists and some academic corpora are briefly introduced. In the next section, different aspects which should be taken into consideration (e.g. collocation, lexical bundles, intra and inter-text lexical variation) in such type of research are elaborated and some of precautions to be taken by researchers are discussed. In the final section, some of the challenges and limitations of this type of research are mentioned and a scheme of the ecology of “studying academic vocabulary” is given. The scheme is supposed to act as a synoptic road map for interested researchers who are at the beginning of their academic endeavor.


 

---

Assessment of the English proficiency of applicants of entry into postgraduate studies, undeniably, is of utmost importance. Nationally speaking, the current status of the English test administered by the National Organization of Educational Testing (NOET) in Iran has been a topic of heated contention in recent years. This study purports to investigate the validity of the Iranian English proficiency test for Ph.D. admission purposes adopting the assessment use argument as the main framework for its validation research. To this end, the required data were collected from the relevant stakeholders of the test, namely applicants of the test, experts in educational assessment and language testing, and test readiness instructors. Structured interviews and focus groups were conducted and the acquired data were analyzed using the qualitative content analysis approach. Most prominent themes that emerged from the data in addition to a number of relevant representative quotes constituted the major findings of this study. The results revealed that the test is in need of major revisions in some parts, and further modifications are deemed as necessary. In the final section, summary of the results along with suggestions for optimization of the test are put forth. Keywords: Iranian Ph.D. admission English proficiency test, test validation, assessment use argument

---

The significance of research article (RA) abstract as a key academic genre has recently motivated analysts to focus on this neglected area. Considering a summary function for abstracts, most genre researchers have adopted the conventionally proposed Introduction- Method- Results- Discussion (or Conclusion) (IMRD) model for analysis. However, the problems reported, especially for Results and Discussion sections, question the vitality of such accounts and prompt further scrutiny. Moreover, in spite of claims about disciplinary and cultural variations which can affect communication within and across discourse communities, sufficient contrastive studies which address the Iranian academics' need to communicate with and participate efficiently in the international discourse communities are scarce. Inspired by English for Specific/Academic Purposes tradition of genre analysis, this paper tries to fill these gaps presenting a comparative generic analysis of soft sciences abstracts to see what the characterizing features of the texts of Iranian scholars and their international peers are. The macro-structure, micro-structure, and some features of 100 experimental RA abstracts taken from a number of reputable Iranian (Persian) and international (English) journals were analyzed and explained drawing upon some existing rigorous models. The results revealed similarities in the presence of Introduction, Method, and concluding units, while there were also differences in the realization of units, Moves, and Steps. It is argued that the differences can point to the varying cultural norms and values of the two groups. Plus, considering the inadequacy of the four-way macro-model, an alternative three-way model was suggested, instead. Some implications of the study are discussed, too