Emotionality and Formality in Postgraduate ELT Students’ Use of Diction in Farsi and English Writing

Emotionality and Formality in Postgraduate ELT Students’ Use of Diction in Farsi and English Writing

 

 Shabnam Vahidfar¹, Zohreh Seifoori^*2

1, 2. Department of English Language, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran

*Corresponding Author:Seifoori@iaut.ac.irzseifoori@yahoo.com

 

 

Received: 2015.12.3

Revisions received: 2016.3.4

Accepted: 2015.4.20

 

 

 

 

Abstract

Diction conveys a wide array of meanings of which formality and emotionality are only two facets. Researchers have investigated various features of written discourse to capture discourse variation in L1 and L2 writings. Likewise, the present ex-post-facto study compared the formality and emotionality of diction in general and emotional English and Farsi texts produced by 20 MA students at Islamic Azad University, Tabriz Branch. Having verified the initial homogeneity of the participants, we required them to write four paragraphs, two in English and two in Farsi, on a general and an emotional topic. The formality of the words in English texts was determined based on Webster’s Dictionary. Further, the positive and negative emotion words used in English and Farsi texts were measured based on the definitions offered by Pennebaker and King (1999).The results of the statistical analyses revealed no significant difference in the formality of the words used by the participants in general and emotional English texts. The comparison of the research data, however, indicated significant differences in the use of emotion words in general and emotional English and Farsi texts. The findings underscore the need for raising learners’ awareness of the role diction can play in writing.

Keywords: Diction, Emotional words, Formal words, Style, Writing

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

One of the most challenging tasks to many learners of English as either a second (ESL) or foreign language (EFL) is assumed to be mastering the writing skill. Most scholars unanimously highlight several factors that can impact the process of producing a well-organized, well-developed, unified, accurate and impressive written text in any language. Knowledge of the conventions of written discourse, the abilities to select the precise words that convey themeaning and adopting a style with the most positive rhetorical effect are among those factors (Hadley, 2003).One of the issues closely related to written and spoken discourse domain is rhetoric. According to Richards, Platt, and Platt (1992), rhetoric deals with investigating how an efficient piece of writing achieves its goals. This kind of definition, deals with one’s effectively and correctly expressing the intended meaning with regard to the topic of writing or speech, the audience, and the purpose of communication (Richards et al., 1992). Many writing problems second and foreign language learners encounter might be originally linked to rhetorical features of the language they are required to write in. According to Lyons (1986), rhetorical structure of written discourse varies from language to language and is culture-bound. This variation causes writing problems for non-native writers. The sensitivity of this fact is also emphasized by Connor (2008, cited in Btoosh & Taweel, 2011), who claimed that rhetorical patterns of each language is restricted to that language.

These rhetorical variation compounds the difficulty that learners of English as a foreign language experience while trying to develop the writing skill. In addition to the need to attend to several factors while writing, intermediate and advanced language learners suffer from extremely restricted vocabulary knowledge which exerts limitations on their choice of words. They can communicate without making major grammatical mistakes, but their lexical code is remarkably limited (Jullian, 2000).

As one of the rhetorical features pertinent to discourse domain, diction is regarded as the choice of words applied by the writer, particularly the extent to which the words are thought to be suitable and effective for different kinds of writings (Richards et al., 1992).Diction is a shared feature of both spoken and written discourse and a means to use language effectively which, according to Falk (1973), influences the success of a communicative effort. Likewise style, or varieties of language usage associated with different situations (Falk, 1973),and voice, which is a personal and singular characteristic of a particular writer representing his different perspectives (Dean, 2006),Diction is represented in every piece of writing (Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, n.d.) and the degree of its effectiveness can make the writing vibrant or lifeless.

Diction can berepresented through different elements in a written text. Emotion words and style are only two dimensions of diction which have been the focal points in the present study. According to Dewaele and Pavlenko (2002), emotion words belong to one level of diction called abstract diction. Based on a differentiation made between abstract diction and concrete diction by Rosenwasser and Stephen (2009),the former comprises a group of words that refer to concepts and categories such as democracy and benevolence whereas the latter represent words like crystalline and kneel that are perceivable through senses.They further propose that effective analytical prose hinges to a large extent upon the amalgamation of concrete language of showing and abstract language of explaining diction.

As a category of abstract diction, emotion words are regarded as “abstract and metaphorical words that refer to feelings, interests, desires, and judgments and belong to a numberof grammatical classes: adverbs (happily), and adjectives (sad)”(Dewaele & Pavlenko, 2002, p. 2).Pennebaker and King (1999, p.1298) made a distinction between positive and negative emotion words and defined positive emotion words as including the broadest level of positive feelings like happy, positively valence words like nice, and those like win from the optimism-energy category. They described the negative emotion category as a variety of negatively valence terms like hurt, as well as words belonging to categories of anxiety-fear, anger, sadness, and depression.

Determining a word as an emotion word is not straightforward and depends on several factors like culture, and connection of the word with memory; clear-cut definitions cannot be proposed for emotion words (Wolfson, 2005). Likewise, the style of emotion words can vary depending on different contexts. According to Falk (1973), style is a variation of language usage based on different occasion of usage, level of formality, the writer’s audience and purpose, for example whether  a writer wants people to think, to laugh, or to examine new ideas.

A study addressing emotion words in written discourse was conducted by Behnam, Azabdaftari, and Ahmadi Azad (2008) who examined the effect of extroversion, neuroticism, and gender on 213 EFL students' writing styles. The main concerns were: formality versus contextuality and positive versus negative emotion words usage. English students took part in the study .The results of the data analysis indicated no significant relationship between formality/contextuality and emotional words nor between personality and language. They found that extroverts surpassed introverts in their use of both positive and negative emotion words and that neurotics participants used more positive and negative emotion words compared to emotionally stable participants. The findings also revealed that females used partially more positive emotional than males and that males reflected a stronger tendency to use negative emotion words. No significant relationship, however, was reported between gender and formality of language.

The growth of online social media in recent years can be regarded as one of the great sources of personal discourse. A study was conducted by Schwartz et al. (2013) to determine the relationship among language usage in Facebook messages and three variables of personality, gender, and age of 75,000 volunteers, all under sixty-five years old. In terms of language, emotion words were one of the main concerns along side other concerns, such as possessive ‘my’, first-person singular pronoun, object references, style, and a number of other features. The focus of the study, however, was on neuroticism and extroversion as two key dimensions of personality. Using an approach called Differential Language Analysis (DLA), the researchers analyzed 700 million words, phrases, and topic instances produced by volunteers who also took standard personality tests. They found some variations. Females were found to use more emotion words than men neurotics disproportionately used negative emotion words whereas emotionally stable participants applied more positive emotion words., introverts showed more interest to use emoticons, like ˆ_ˆ, than extroverts. The researchers observed clear distinctions in the use of emoticons and informal style in the youngest group, as well.

Another feature that plays a critical role in determining the quality of writing is emotional content. Louis and Nenkova (2013) carried out a study to differentiate great and typical content articles. A corpus of great and typical pieces of science journal articles was chosen and analyzed to determine the impact of some facets on the text quality of scientific writing. The entire spectrum of features which contributed to the distinction was: surprising, visual and emotional content, as well as general features related to discourse organization and sentence structure. The researchers computed affect-related features using three lexicons: the MPQA (Wilson,et al., 2005) and General Inquirer (Stone, et al., 1966) for positive and negative sentiment words and the Frame Net (Baker, et al., 1998) for emotion-related words. The results of the study represented that affective content had a critical role in beautiful writing. In fact, very good articles had more sentiment words, mostly skewed towards negative sentiment.

Studies relating to styles of both written and spoken discourse domains can be regarded as invaluable sources of information both to teachers and to learners. In an empirical study, Shaw and Liu (1998) examined the changing features of style of some overseas students’ writings who were studying English for academic purposes. The participants were placed in different groups, each of which consisting of different nationalities with the same degree of knowledge. Before and after full-time courses, a written task with the same topic was administered. In neither processes of writing, the participants were informed about the processes and topics of writing. All of the peripheral facts, for example, cognitive maturation of the participants, were controlled. Based on the findings, the students’ writings showed significant improvements in some rhetorical features, like decline in the usage of contractions, with no significant overall change of colloquial vocabulary usage was observed.

One of the research areas relating to style of discourse which has attracted the interest of several researches in recent years is email-writing. Sabater, Turney, and Fleta (2008) investigated some corpus (N=100) of English email writings with the topic of student exchange programs exchanged by members of academic institutions. The corpus was analyzed to find out the degree of formality of greetings and farewells, use of contractions, politeness indicators and non-standard linguistic features. The comparison of different linguistic features was based on their mode of communication (one-to-one or one-to-many) and the senders’ mother tongue (native or nonnative). The results of the study showed that in one-to-many messages, the greetings were very formal. Moreover, a sharp asymmetry between the formality of salutations and farewells of native one-to-many emails was reported. However, sign-offs seemed to be a lot less formal than greetings. With regard to one-to-one communication, both native and non-native salutations were more informal. Yet, the researchers indicated that in one-to-one communication, non-native writers were more formal for all categories. The results of the analysis revealed a very small percentage of contractions in native emails. On the contrary, contractions were more frequently used by non-natives, with a higher percentage of contractions in one-to-one communication than in one-to-many. Politeness indicators were more frequently employed in native emails per message. It is also worth noting that while native writers used more politeness indicators in more formal, one-to-many emails, non-native writers used them in one-to-one communication. Regarding non-standard linguistic features, the results of the study showed that the scores for non-standard grammar and spelling were very low for all categories.

To the best of our knowledge, very few studies have addressed the style and emotion aspects of diction. The study of emotion words has usually been the focus of attention in studies attempting to uncover psychological facts underlying the use of such words. With respect to style, stylistic variations in use of words have stimulated a number of studies none of which were concerned with a specific group of words. Furthermore, the scope of the mentioned contrastive studies was restricted to either general or emotional writing.

Theoretically, all kinds of writings can be divided into two categories of emotional or subjective and general or objective. In terms of emotionality, no clear- cut distinction can be made between them. That is, except for expressing some facts, like pure scientific texts as in research writing, even objective writing is not completely devoid of the writer’s emotion “how to be a writer,” (2011). Hence, a major concern might be the extent to which foreign language (EFL) learners show stylistic and lexical variation in their use of emotion words in writing general and emotional texts L1 and L2. The measurement of diction in general and emotional Farsi and English texts written by Intermediate Iranian students would be the first step in identifying the rhetorical problems these learners face in writing classes. The participants in this study represent only a sample of many Iranian learners who are learning English as a foreign language and the findings might offer practical insights on how to relieve the burden for most of them. Hence, the present study was launched to investigate intermediate Iranian EFL learners’ use of diction in general and emotional texts written in Farsi and English. To this end, the researchers formulated the following research questions:

1. Is there any significant difference between general and emotional English texts written by Iranian intermediate learners with regard to diction?
2. Is there any significant difference between general and emotional Farsi texts written by Iranian intermediate learners with regard to diction?
3. Is there any significant difference between general English and Farsi texts written by Iranian intermediate learners with regard to diction?
4. Is there any significant difference between emotional English and Farsi texts written by Iranian intermediate learners with regard to diction?

 

Method

Participants   

The participants in the present study comprised 20 Iranian intermediate bilingual Azeri speakers who were studying for a Master’s degree (MA) in English Language Teaching (ELT). The sample comprised 14 female and 6 male participants, whose age-range was between 24 to 34.They were recruited from a population of 40 students taking “Advanced Writing Course” at Islamic Azad University, Tabriz Branch. The initial homogeneity of the participants was assessed via a Preliminary English Test (PET). Based on the results, only those whose scores ranged between 2 standard deviations above and below the Mean were selected as the research sample.

 

Instrumentation

The instruments used to collect the research data were a PET and four writing tasks depicting emotional and general topics. First, a modified version of PET (2011) was administered to verify the initial homogeneity of the participants. It included two sections of reading and writing. Twenty multiple-choice questions, ten true or false questions and five matching questions, constituted the reading section. The writing part consisted of five incomplete sentences and e-mail writing.

Although numerous culturally universal concepts might be identified of which learners from multiple ethnic and cultural backgrounds seem to have more or less shared schematic knowledge, nuances of variation might still be detected even at deeper levels of interpretation and beliefs. Among such concepts are preferred lifestyle and respecting the elderly. Two sets of pictures depicting these two topics were employed to collect the main research data of the present study.

The first set of pictures illustrated life in rural and urban areas and the participants were required to write about the following general topic: “Where do you prefer to live, in a quiet and peaceful rural area or in a busy modern city”. The second picture strip represented the emotional subject of “Old people’s living in nursing home or their own home”. The accompanied topic was “Some believe that old people should live with their own families while others think children are too busy to take care of their parents and should take them to nursing homes. Which do you accept? Why?” .The participants were expected to write two paragraphs, first in English and then in Farsi, on each topic to avoid probable translation attempts.

 

The Scoring Procedure

In the present study, diction was restricted to the choice of emotion words and their styles. The criterion for choosing both positive and negative emotion words used in English and Farsi texts was based on the definitions provided by Pennebaker and King (1999). Furthermore, the formality of both positive and negative emotion words was determined in emotional and general English texts based on Merriam Webster’s collegiate dictionary (2004).In fact, the frequency of using both positive and negative emotion words was estimated to measure the emotionality of diction.To identify the style of emotion words, we employed the stylistic labels of words provided by Merriam Webster’s collegiate dictionary (2004).

 

Procedure

The present study was carried out in the following two stages. The first stages involved assessing the initial homogeneity of the 20 research participants. The results indicated that two of the participants were not at the required proficiency level and their data were excluded from further analysis. Secondly, the two writing tasks were assigned. To engage the participants in writing two paragraphs, one on a general topic and the other on an emotional topic.  Each of the writing tasks were based on a picture script depicting the topic to assist the participants generate ideas. The allocated time for each writing task was 45 minutes. The research data were collected during the last sessions of the academic semester. Finally, in order to minimize scorer unreliability, two raters scored the research data based on a scoring scale, and the definitions and the mean of the two sets of scores were used as the basis of further analyses.

 

Results

The drop in the sample size from twenty to eighteen imposed by the exclusion of the extreme PET scores, exerted an additional limitation on the research data. To compensate for this restriction, we had to verify the normality level of the data via a non-parametric one sample K-S test, the results of which indicated that most of the participants’ scores, except for positive emotion words in general English texts, had normal distributions. Afterwards, it was necessary to calculate the descriptive statistics for the two aspects of diction, emotion words, and style in general and for emotional English and Farsi texts. As it was mentioned earlier in this study, the analysis of the style was restricted only to English texts, the result of which showed that no informal word was used by the participants; hence, it was taken for granted that all words were formal. Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics for emotion words and their style. The complete forms of the applied abbreviations related to Table 1 are as follows:

 

G. N. E.    negative emotion words in general English texts

E. N. E.     negative emotion words in emotional English texts  

G. P. E.     positive emotion words in general English texts

E. P. E       positive emotion words in emotional English texts

G. N. F.     negative emotion words in general Farsi texts

E. N. F.     negative emotion words in emotional Farsi texts

G. P. F.      positive emotion words in general Farsi texts

E. P. F.      positive emotion words in emotional Farsi texts

 

Table 1

Descriptive Statistics for the Use of Formal Positive/Negative Emotion Words in General and Emotional English and Farsi Texts

Pair	Mean	N	Std. Deviation	Std. Error Mean
G. N. E. E. N. E.	.32	18	.31	.07
	.66	18	.48	.11
G. P.E. E. P. E	2.24	18	3.56	.84
	1.03	18	.49	.11

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

G. N. F. E. N. F.	.39	18 18	.49	.11 .09
	.61		.39
G. P. F. E. P. F.	1.57	18	.58	.13
	1.01	18	.44	.10

 

 

 

 

As illustrated in Table 1, general English texts revealed a lower frequency of negative emotion words (.32) compared to the emotional texts (.66) accompanied by a higher frequency of positive words (2.24) compared to the emotional texts (1.03). On the other hand, the participants tended to use more negative emotion words in emotional Farsi texts, but revealed a stronger tendency towards positive emotion words in general texts.

 

Diction in General and Emotional English Texts

The first research question addressed the differences between general and emotional English texts with regard to diction. A paired sample t-test had to be conducted in order to find out the significance of the observed difference in the use of negative emotion words in the two kinds of writings. The results are shown in Tables 2.

 

Table 2

The Paired Sample T-test Analysis of Negative Emotion Words in General and Emotional English Texts

Pair	t	df	Sig.(2-tailed)
G. N. E. E. N. E.	-2.92	17	.00

 

 

 

 

According to Table 2, the difference between the mean scores of negative emotion words of the two writings reached significance level, t = -2.92, sig = .00 < 0.05. The calculated power effect was 0.85 which is convincible high enough to attribute the difference to content.

Furthermore, as it was specified earlier, owing to the non-normal distribution of the data from positive emotion words used in general English texts, the non-parametric Wilcoxon test was run to investigate the significance of the observed difference between the average uses of these words in the given texts. Table 3 presents the results.

 

Table 3

The Wilcoxon Analysis of Positive Emotion Words in General and Emotional English Texts

	E. P. E. - G. P. E.
Z	-1.85a
Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed)	.06

 

As for positive emotion words, the findings did not show any significant difference between the use of positive emotion words in the two kinds of writings , z = -1.85, sig = .06 > 0.05 Hence, the answer to the first RQ is positive, that is, significant difference between general and emotional English texts written by Iranian intermediate learners with regard to diction, the negative emotion words.

 

Diction in General and Emotional Farsi Texts

The second research question dealt with the possible differences between general and emotional Farsi texts written by Iranian intermediate learners with regard to diction. Two paired samples t-tests were run to test the significance of the differences relating to the observed differences, the results of which are presented in Table 4.

 

Table 4

The Paired Samples T-tests Analysis of Positive and Negative Emotion Words in General and Emotional Farsi Texts

Pair	t	df	Sig. (2-tailed)
G. N. F. – E. N. F.	-1.45	17	.16
G. P. F. – E. P. F.	2.89	17	.01

 

As the Table 4 shows, the difference between the positive emotion words mean scores of the two kinds of writings in Farsi was significant ,t = 2.89, sig = .01 < 0.05. The effect size(d=1.09) was large enough. Nevertheless, the difference between the average use of negative emotion words did not reach significance level ,t = -1.45, sig = .16 > 0.05.Hence, the answer to the second RQ is positive, that is, difference between general and emotional Farsi texts written by Iranian intermediate learners with regard to diction.

 

Diction in General English and Farsi Texts

The third research question examined the difference between general English and Farsi texts written by Iranian intermediate learners with regard to diction. A paired sample t-test and a Wilcoxon Test were run on the data, negative and positive emotion words respectively, to test the significance of the apparent differences, the results of which are provided in Tables 5 and 6.

 

Table 5

The Paired Sample T-test Analysis of Negative Emotion Words in General English and Farsi Texts

Pair	t	df	Sig. (2-tailed)
G. N. E. - G. N. F.	-.60	17	.55

 

 According to Table 5, no significant difference was observed in the mean scores of negative emotion words (t = -.60, sig = .55 > .05). Table 6 represent the result of wilcoxon test.

 

Table 6

The Wilcoxon Test Analysis of Positive Emotion Words in General English and Farsi Texts

	G. P. F. - G. P. E.
Z	-.75a
Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed)	.45

 

Again this analysis did not prove any significant difference in the mean scores of positive emotion words either, z = -.75, sig = .45 > 0.05. As a result, the pertinent RQ is negatively responded, indicating that there is no significant difference between English and Farsi general texts written by Iranian intermediate learners with regard to diction used.

 

Diction in Emotional English and Farsi Texts

The last RQ addressed the significant difference in the use of diction in emotional English and Farsi texts written by Iranian intermediate learners. To test the significance of the differences, it was essential to run two paired samples t-tests, the results of which are displayed in Table 7.

 

Table 7

The Paired Samples T-tests Analysis of Positive and Negative Emotion Words in Emotional English and Farsi Texts

Pair	t	df	Sig. (2-tailed)
E. N. E. E. N. F.	.40	17	.69
E. P. E. E. P. F.	.20	17	.84

 

As it can be seen in Table 7, no significant difference was reached in the average use of negative (t = .40, sig = .69 > .05) and positive words (t = .20, sig = .84 > .05) in emotional English and Farsi texts (sig > 0.05). Accordingly, the pertinent RQ is negatively answered, that is there is no significant difference between English and Farsi emotional texts written by Iranian intermediate learners with regard to diction used.

 

Discussion

Choosing of suitable words can be regarded as one of the cumbersome tasks many intermediate and advanced EFL writers confront in academic contexts. The intricacies experienced by Iranian EFL learners in performing these tasks becomes much more evident when the  interfering effects of their first language writing system, Farsi, on  the language writing system of English is taken into account. Diction as an umbrella term includes both breadth, the number of words at least in terms of the basic meaning of words, and depth, or the word features such as constraints on use of vocabulary knowledge,(Laufer, 2005). With regard to the breadth of vocabulary knowledge, emotion words, as one category of abstract diction, go hand in hand with concrete diction and is regarded as a prerequisite in the writing processes of advanced levels of education (Jullian, 2000). In relation to depth of vocabulary knowledge, choice of formal words in writing can be regarded as one of the barriers learners face in academic contexts (Shaw & Liu, 1998).As one small sample of many EFL learners, Iranian intermediate EFL learners studying for a Master’s degree in ELT are expected to have developed through years of instruction the capacity to discern and choose the suitable words in whatever they write, particularly in academic writing assignments such as classroom compositions, dissertations and papers.

In the present study, diction was addressed in non-academic texts written by the participants. The findings from the present study revealed that the participants applied various components of diction differently in emotional and general Farsi and English written texts. The observed variability might be attributed to both content and language as two overriding factors.With respect to the content of English and Farsi texts, the results showed no significant difference between the positive emotion words in the two kinds of writings. The findings are in agreement with what “how to be a writer” (2011) proposes about general, objective, writing that it cannot be completely devoid of emotion words.

On the other hand, the mean score of positive emotion words in general Farsi texts was higher than its counterpart in emotional English texts which partially conforms to what “How to be a writer” (2011) suggests about application of emotion words in general writing. As far as the style of emotion words in English texts is considered, the results of the applied formal diction agrees with Dean’s (2006) postulation that formal dictionis applicable to scholarly writing and serious prose or poetry.

As for language which was the secondfactor to be considered, the results of the study revealed no significant difference between the emotion words in both general and emotional English and Farsi texts. The results lend support to Dewaele’s and Pavlenko’s (2002) views who proposed that application ofemotion words in L2 might be affected by the use of emotion words in L1.

Every communication process is doomed to failure when it is devoid of vibrant and lively impact. Writing is no exception to this general principle. According to Holt et al. (n.d.), two factors which can be employed effectively to produce vibrant written texts are voice and diction. With regard to diction, both the depth of vocabulary knowledge and the breadth, or the number of words or vocabulary size, are equally important. An impressive use of vocabulary, however, requires that learners go beyond the form-meaning relationship knowledge of words (Schmitt, 2008).This need is felt more strongly at intermediate levels of proficiency and in academic contexts. The analysis of the texts written by Iranian EFL learners in the present study revealed no significant problem in appropriate application of different components of diction and the consequent performance in writing that pursue. 

However, as far as diction as a broad concept is considered, the results of the present study are not conclusive. In fact, it was beyond the scope of the present study to deal with such issues as concrete diction. Further studies are required to identify major hurdles that can influence Iranian EFL learners’ achievement of lively and genuine written texts. Based on Hatch (1992), the analysis of both oral and written discourse in educational fields can be beneficial in the promotion of literacy at all levels of education. Accordingly, the findings emerging from the present enquiry can offer insights to English teachers about culturally different writing patterns and assist them in designing writing programs in which students are aided to make the gradual transition from nonstandard English texts to Standard English rhetoric. Such transition entails raising learners' awareness of the preponderant role played by the related components in academic writing particularly for postgraduate students working for a master’s degree in ELT.

The learners’ awareness raising might be regarded as a procedure to move from recognition to production, that is, through some meticulously organized task-supported program, learners’ recognition of related features should be enhanced through exposure to genuine written texts followed by reconstructive writing tasks that would develop in them the skills required for producing acceptable English rhetoric. Such Programs can help to enhance learners’ writing skills along the recognition to production continuum in appropriate use of diction. Writing classrooms of intermediate and advanced levels can be regarded as the best contexts where learners’ awareness can be raised toward recognition and production of diction as a rhetorical feature.

To escalate the learners’ responsiveness to innovative methods like the one described earlier, educators and teachers might incorporate diction into their evaluation frameworks while assessing learners’ writing. This strategy is construed as beneficial for Iranian learners who share the common sociocultural characteristic of being culturally success-oriented; they tend to equate success with achieving Excellency in their exams. A close connection between the course content and the evaluation system assessing learners’ performance will act as a motivation that energize them to invest more time and energy in the area in focus, here diction.

 

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Biodata

Zohreh Seifoori is an assistant professor and a research board member at the department of English Language, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University as well as an internationally licensed teacher and teacher trainer. Her research interests include individualizing learning, learner autonomy, and teacher education.

 

ShabnamVahidfar has received her MA in English Language Teaching from Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University. Her research interest include discourse analysis and writing.

 

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