Papers by Davood Mashhadi Heidar
English Language Teaching, 2015
The present paper concentrates on a web-based inquiry in the synchronous computer-mediated commun... more The present paper concentrates on a web-based inquiry in the synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) via Web 2.0 technologies of Talk and Write and Skype. It investigates EFL learners' socio-cognitive progress through dynamic assessment (DA), which follows Vygotsky's inclination for supportive interchange in the zone of proximal development. Sixty adult EFL learners at upper-intermediate level were randomly assigned to the control and experimental groups. The participants in the experimental group were involved in dynamic assessment in synchronous computer-mediated communication for seven weeks. The results reveal that, through interactions in the ZPD, DA in synchronous computer-mediated communication lets us explore not only the actual level of learners' listening ability but also to diagnose and assess the potential level of their listening development.
Journal of Studies in Education, 2016
Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2011
This paper is an attempt to clarify the status of discourse markers in International Law Texts. D... more This paper is an attempt to clarify the status of discourse markers in International Law Texts. Discourse markers, also having been studied under various labels including discourse operators, pragmatic connectives, cue phrases, discourse connectives, and sentence connectives, are used extensively in both spoken and written language to signal the structure of the discourse. Research on this area has shown the importance of discourse markers in communication for marking discourse structure, but almost little attention has been paid to their importance in written language, especially in International Law Texts. This paper looks at the use of discourse markers in a corpus of International Law investigating what discourse markers signal, and when they tend to be used in International Law Texts. Therefore, a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, which ranges from macro-investigation by Wordsmith (Scott 1996) to a micro-discourse analytic examination, is used in the study. The results indicate that discourse markers serve as useful maneuvers to structure and organize International Law Texts. In the end, the study also discusses some possible pedagogical implications involved in preparing ESP learners to become communicatively more competent in their field of study.
Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2012
This article aims to provide an overview of major theoretical approaches and psychological consid... more This article aims to provide an overview of major theoretical approaches and psychological considerations related to child language (first language acquisition). The field is multidimensional, as illustrated by the many courses on child language or language acquisition that are taught in departments of Linguistics, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Speech Pathology, Education, and Anthropology. This crossdisciplinary nature of the field is also reflected in many handbooks and articles yearly published across the world. In this article I mainly present a general overview of theoretical/epistemological and classical/modern accounts and approaches to the study of first language acquisition. In other words, the present paper is to investigate the psychological/epistemological considerations of first language acquisition with the aim of shedding a bit of light on this human-species phenomenon.
English Language Teaching, 2015
This paper aims to have a deconstructionist reading of William Blake's "A Poison Tree." Highly as... more This paper aims to have a deconstructionist reading of William Blake's "A Poison Tree." Highly associated with the well-known poststructuralist Jacques Derrida in the late 1960s, deconstruction's primary concern is "the otherness" and "indeterminacy" or "instability" of the ultimate meaning of the text. A deconstructionist reader tries to bring out elements of marginality, supplementarity, and "undecidability" in the reading of texts. Involved in reading the text very closely and critically, a typical deconstructionist tries to recognize how the text differs from what it (its writer) tends to express. Accordingly, the present study sets out to read and analyse William Blake's "A Poison Tree" to discover if the poem, as deconstructionists assert, might include inconsistencies and contradictory points making the meaning of the text "undecidable" and beyond reach. Methodologically, the present study makes an attempt to show how the text is undermining its own philosophy and logic – that is – to demonstrate how the text subverts and differs from what it appears to communicate. At the end it might be concluded that language can be used as an effective means by its user(s) (speakers/writers) to get power, and suppress or marginalize others. It is also demonstrated how texts seem to include contradictory elements- that is – they differ from what they intend to express. All these argumentations can bring us to "indeterminacy" and "instability" of meaning within the text.
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Papers by Davood Mashhadi Heidar