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The present study analyzes the use of stories in listening comprehension exercises in second language classroom. It examines the effect of narrative or dialogic format on linguistic comprehension and recall as measured by a listening comprehension test and a delayed listening comprehension test. The participants in this study were given two stories with two formats: one more narrative-oriented, in which the story was told mainly by the narrator; and the other one more dialogue-oriented in which the story moved forward through the dialogues of the characters. Results showed that learners performed better when given dialogic story. Two possible factors operating were frequency of input, and the emotion implied in the delivery of the story.

Following the establishment of a professional consensus with respect to the beliefs associated with effective foreign language (L2) teaching, a next step in the related research should involve examination of the extent to which these beliefs are put into practice. Efforts need to be made to ensure that L2 teachers not only possess these beliefs, but also apply them in their classrooms. This is particularly important in the case of teacher candidates who are just entering the profession and are still developing their instructional beliefs and practices. To investigate possible incongruence between teacher candidate beliefs and practice, the researchers conducted a study that compared the beliefs and practices of 59 L2 teacher candidates in the United States and Germany. Using a mixed methodology, data were collected via surveys, teaching observations, and interviews. The results emphasized both the influential nature of instructional beliefs and that factors may prevent new teachers from consistently applying their beliefs. While both the German and American teacher candidates shared many beliefs about effective L2 teaching, the Germans struggled to implement their beliefs, more so than did their American peers. Implications for teacher training programs are discussed.

The Dutch overestimate their English speaking skills. Their pronunciation is not always convincing, and certain pronunciation mistakes are easily recognised as being typical for Dutch speakers of English. Although intelligibility cannot exist without adequate pronunciation, teaching English pronunciation at Dutch secondary schools is often absent from the EFL teaching curriculum. Focussing on the most prominent pronunciation difficulties, often caused by the mother tongue (L1), will benefit the non-native speaker's pronunciation and intelligibility. In order to provide teachers with a time-efficient approach to teach English pronunciation, preliminary research is needed to identify the most prominent error types in the English pronunciation of secondary school pupils and bachelor students in the Netherlands. Research shows that fifty percent of the subject group makes seven types of pronunciation mistakes in more than fifty percent of the cases that such mistakes could be made. The conclusion discusses a general approach for addressing the kind of pronunciation problems we identified.

This paper is a phenomeno-semiotic analysis of superstitions in two of the greatest works of literature in Persian by Nizami Ganjavi, namely Khosrow o Shirin and Layla and Majnun. The paper begins with a general explanation of what superstition is and then goes on to present examples from Nizami's works to show how superstition had shaped human understanding of apparently supernatural events in the 12th-century. Linguistic elements that have been used by Nizami to embody superstitions are discussed. It is concluded that superstitions had five major causes: (1) man's attempt at relieving his fears, (2) man's awe at the sight of the unknown, (3) his ignorance of causality, (4) his purposeful attempts at consolidating/vilifying matters of faith, and (5) his thirst for material benefits.

This paper provides a diachronic optimality-based account of the principal lenition patterns witnessed in obstruents from Indo-European to New Persian through Old Persian and middle Persian. At first, a brief introduction of Optimality Theory and its basic concepts is presented. After that, the paper gives an introductory account of lenition, its definition and categorization, and then it investigates different lenition patterns that have happened in the history of Persian. Among different patterns of lenition, loss of aspiration, lenition of voiceless stops to voiced ones, spirantization, degemination, and final neutralization were witnessed in transition from IE to OP as well as from OP to NP and dealt with in this paper. For this purpose, Optimality Theory (OT) is applied to account for the changes based on major works done on lenition. Using different constraints, all of these processes are accounted for. This work indicates the success of OT in accounting for diachronic phenomena, that is, by constraint re-ranking it can adequately account for sound change.

The cognitive approach to task has caught the attention of language learning scholars for the past two decades despite some orthodoxy in its dependency on a cross-sectional format confined to instant task effect and pedagogical agenda that suppress any role for individual differences. The study reported here was designed to add a longitudinal element to the extensively researched task effect on speaking performance. It also sought to examine whether learner differences, in the case of goal orientations, might affect language learners’ attentional distribution and, eventually, their developmental pathways. Thirty lower-intermediate undergraduates performed narrative tasks during a five-month period, and some were subsequently interviewed. Analysis of the data suggested that goal orientation and task conditions have a combined, yet varied effect on speaking performance and development. In view of that, this paper questions the validity of findings accrued by processing-based research in light of eclipsing language learner variability.

In this interview, JD Brown reflects on language testing/assessment. He suggests that language testing can be seen as a continuum with hard core positivist approaches at one end and post modernist interpretive perspectives at the other, and also argues that norm referencing (be it proficiency, placement, or aptitude testing) and criterion referencing (be it diagnostics, progress, or achievement testing) fall on this continuum. He further suggests that evaluation is done at the level of program or course but that assessment is focused on the classroom, and then argues that both assessment and evaluation exploit measurement and testing albeit to different effects. He then comments on his views about high-stakes and low-stakes testing as well as washback, and finally expresses serious concerns about the impacts of language policy on language testing by calling the current NS models into question. Relating his concerns to validity issues, he suggests that language testers need to consider other options to the NS model to serve the needs of speakers of other Englishes.