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This paper reports the findings of a study designed to investigate the notion of indirectness in the speech act of requests among native speakers of Persian across different levels of Perceived Situational Seriousness. 372 respondents took a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) with six scenarios ranging from formal to informal degrees of Perceived Situational Seriousness (PSS), and returned 2232 Requestive Speech Acts (RSAs). The acts were then analyzed according to models proposed by Blum-Kulka, et al. (1989), and Scollon and Scollon (2001). Results, after analysis of the data, indicated that, in general, native speakers of Persian prefer conventionally indirect (CI) strategies when issuing requests. Social distance was found to trigger indirectness in requestive speech acts (RSAs); solidarity was found to enhance addressors' inclination towards directness in RSAs. It was further noticed that pragmatic knowledge (i.e., knowledge of the world and of each other that interlocutors share) resulted in Persian native speakers' inclination towards NCI strategies in RSAs.

Using a constructivist approach, the present study investigated the development of students’ conceptions of L2 reading as an important skill in the ESP context. The analysis of initial and final descriptions of ‘reading’ indicated that reading was conceptualized in five different ways: (1) reading as a set of binding rules; (2) reading as an integration of various language elements; (3) reading as a sampling technique; (4) reading as a confrontation between reader and writer; and finally (5) reading as an attempt to identify and comment on the content features. The subjects tended to move towards the last three categories in their final essays while in their beginning essays they were heavily dependent on the first two categories. Upon the constructivist treatment, the subjects showed the following categories of change in their descriptions: (1) adding new concepts; (2) redefining the formerly stated concepts; (3) forming a complete framework and picture before initiating to conceptualize (define) reading; (4) arriving at an abstractive level of conceptualization; and finally (5) evolving descriptive into explanatory concepts.

Attribution theory, as an important theme in psychology, has not been touched by professionals in ELT to date. That English language learners to what issues—intelligence, task difficulty, motivation, perseverance, or something else—attribute their successes and failures differs from culture to culture, having lots of consequences and implications for language teachers and syllabus designers. To our knowledge, up to now nobody has constructed a questionnaire to investigate to what issues English language learners attribute their successes and failures. The major aims of this study were to construct, validate, and apply the questionnaire of attribution theory for foreign language learners in the context of Iran. To construct the questionnaire, a standard procedure was followed including three steps. To validate the questionnaire, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was used. Included in this step was a pilot study at two stages. A sample of 627 EFL students at Ferdowsi University was gathered during the pilot study. To apply the validated questionnaire, it was administered to a sample of 442 EFT students majoring in Engineering, Medicine, Psychology, and English so that the researchers could identify the factors to which students in Ferdowsi University attribute their perceived successes and failures with respect to gender and major. For these to determine, Descriptive statistics, Multiple independent T-test and one-way ANOVA were run.

Naming a child is no trivial pursuit in Edo culture. Names are given to children depending on the circumstances before, during or even after the birth. The choice of names to be given to a child is determined by various events both within the immediate and extended families. They therefore tend to give names that portend posterity, success, long-life, good luck, etc and not the ones that have any negative connotations. Their belief is hinged on the fact that whatever names that are given will have a great effect on him or her for the rest of the life. The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that motivate the various types of names that are given to children in Edo culture. We also showed in the paper that Edo personal names are indeed single words and not phrases which are productively derived out of noun phrases and or sentences. The evidence is provided within the model of morphology and syntax interaction. Finally, the work showed clearly that Edo names are abridged version of syntactic structures, which lexicalize the people’s folk-psychology and their language morphological structures as previously observed by Yoruba speakers.

This paper deals with the fundamental issues to be considered in task design within a communicative framework. It starts with examining the definitions of task in order to come up with a more comprehensive one for tasks deign purposes. It is argued that making informed decisions in task analysis, selection, and design, in addition to merging of its psycholinguistic and communicative rationales, requires accounting for its pedagogical and educational values beyond the standardized language classroom. This issue has not been seriously considered in task design. Accordingly, aspects of the pedagogical and educational value of tasks as an important task design issue is discussed through two sample tasks and raising several key questions with regard to each. These questions relate to the extent to which a task has educational values beyond language learning, degree of learner involvement and personal contribution, the origin of the task-related ideas, teacher/learner roles, meaningful and purposeful language, task staging, and finally the extent to which task performance can create a unique rather than a standardized classroom.

Although first language theories were applied to ESL/EFL pedagogy with relative success rates, their application to EIL (English as an International Language) does not seem to lead to success for a number of reasons. Firstly, EIL users are of more various sociocultural backgrounds than ESL/EFL users. Secondly, theories of competence and proficiency in EIL are not so mature to be operationalized in language testing. However, rudimentary but valuable steps are taken in this regard especially through empirically-based studies (e.g., Seidlhofer (2001), Mauranen (2003) and Jenkins (2000)). In order to find a fair, scientifically reliable and valid basis for assessment, the aim of EIL, its diversity range and a proficiency model applicable to most, if not all, EIL users must be established before we develop an assessment model for a multilingual world.

Although first language theories were applied to ESL/EFL pedagogy with relative success rates, their application to EIL (English as an International Language) does not seem to lead to success for a number of reasons. Firstly, EIL users are of more various sociocultural backgrounds than ESL/EFL users. Secondly, theories of competence and proficiency in EIL are not so mature to be operationalized in language testing. However, rudimentary but valuable steps are taken in this regard especially through empirically-based studies (e.g., Seidlhofer (2001), Mauranen (2003) and Jenkins (2000)). In order to find a fair, scientifically reliable and valid basis for assessment, the aim of EIL, its diversity range and a proficiency model applicable to most, if not all, EIL users must be established before we develop an assessment model for a multilingual world.