Masoud Khalili Sabet
University of Guilan, English Studies, Faculty Member
Research Interests:
Aspect-based sentiment analysis (ABSA) deals with processing and summarizing customer reviews and has been a topic of interest in recent years. Given a set of predefined categories, Aspect Category Detection (ACD), as a subtask of ABSA,... more
Aspect-based sentiment analysis (ABSA) deals with processing and summarizing customer reviews and has been a topic of interest in recent years. Given a set of predefined categories, Aspect Category Detection (ACD), as a subtask of ABSA, aims to assign a subset of these categories to a given review sentence. Thanks to the existence of websites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor, there exist a huge amount of reviews in several languages, and therefore the need for language-independent methods in this task seems necessary. In this paper, we propose Language-Independent Category Detector (LICD), a supervised method based on text matching without the need for any language-specific tools and hand-crafted features for identifying aspect categories. For a given sentence, our proposed method performs ACD based on two hypotheses: First, a category should be assigned to a sentence if there is a high semantic similarity between the sentence and a set of representative words of that category. Second, a category should be assigned to a sentence if sentences with high semantic and structural similarity to that sentence belong to that category. To apply the former hypothesis, we used soft cosine measure, and for the latter, word mover’s distance measure is utilized. Using these two measures, for a given sentence we calculate a set of similarity scores as features for a one-vs-all logistic regression classifier per category. Experimental results on the multilingual SemEval-2016 datasets in the restaurant domain demonstrate that our approach outperforms baseline methods in English, Russian, and Dutch languages, and obtains competitive results with the strong deep neural network-based baselines in French, Turkish, and Spanish languages.
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With the advent of end-to-end deep learning approaches in machine translation, interest in word alignments initially decreased; however, they have again become a focus of research more recently. Alignments are useful for typological... more
With the advent of end-to-end deep learning approaches in machine translation, interest in word alignments initially decreased; however, they have again become a focus of research more recently. Alignments are useful for typological research, transferring formatting like markup to translated texts, and can be used in the decoding of machine translation systems. At the same time, massively multilingual processing is becoming an important NLP scenario, and pretrained language and machine translation models that are truly multilingual are proposed. However, most alignment algorithms rely on bitexts only and do not leverage the fact that many parallel corpora are multiparallel. In this work, we exploit the multiparallelity of corpora by representing an initial set of bilingual alignments as a graph and then predicting additional edges in the graph. We present two graph algorithms for edge prediction: one inspired by recommender systems and one based on network link prediction. Our exper...
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The present study sought to investigate the impact of extensive reading as one of the supplementary materials on reading comprehension among upper-intermediate EFL learners. The participants were 60 Iranian male and female EFL learners... more
The present study sought to investigate the impact of extensive reading as one of the supplementary materials on reading comprehension among upper-intermediate EFL learners. The participants were 60 Iranian male and female EFL learners from Tabarestan-e Farda English Language institute. Three different instruments were used to collect the relevant data: 1) Oxford Placement Test (2011) to determine the anticipating EFL learners' proficiency level, 2) Pearson Longman Grade 4 Reading Comprehension Test to assess the participants’ reading comprehension, and 3) Davis, et el (1992) questionnaire for measuring students’ attitudes toward extensive reading. Paired-Sample T-Test was used to analyze the data. The results proved a significant impact of extensive reading in reading comprehension. Also, the participants’ attitude toward extensive reading was found to be positive. The major implication of the study is that extensive reading as an important supplementary material should receive...
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AbstractThe present study investigated reading strategy use of Iranian college students learning English as a foreign language when they read reading comprehension texts in English. This study explored the relationship between the use of... more
AbstractThe present study investigated reading strategy use of Iranian college students learning English as a foreign language when they read reading comprehension texts in English. This study explored the relationship between the use of reading strategies and reading comprehension performance. In order to provide a homogeneous population to test if instruction of reading strategies has a significant effect on EFL learners reading comprehension performance, a population of 40 EFL learners were selected through an OPT test from among students of EFL program at Islamic Azad University of Tonekabon. So the study is conducted under a quasi-experimental design. From this population 20 intermediate students were selected as control group and 20 students as experimental group. Then a pretest was taken by two groups. Then the experimental group was exposed to reading strategies instruction for 10 sessions. The skimming and scanning strategies were two reading strategies which were selected ...
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With developments in psychology and cognitive sciences in recent years, the significance of individual differences in L2 pedagogy has been highlighted. One of the outcomes of attending to individual differences is the increased attention... more
With developments in psychology and cognitive sciences in recent years, the significance of individual differences in L2 pedagogy has been highlighted. One of the outcomes of attending to individual differences is the increased attention to the concept of multiple intelligences and its relationship with language learning and different skills including reading comprehension skill. On the same line, the present study aimed at investigating the relationship between multiple intelligences of a group of L2 learners and their reading comprehension ability. To this purpose, 157 medical students studying at the Guilan University of Medical Sciences participated in the study. The instruments utilized were Multiple Intelligences Developmental Assessment Scales (MIDAS) and a reading comprehension test. The findings revealed that among the components of multiple intelligences of the medical students verbal-linguistic intelligence was prevalent. Furthermore, results of Pearson correlation demons...
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1.IntroductionMany factors affect EFL learners' to succeed and prosper in learning English. Motivation of English learners was regarded as one of the most important and axiomatic aspects to determine the successful learning. It was... more
1.IntroductionMany factors affect EFL learners' to succeed and prosper in learning English. Motivation of English learners was regarded as one of the most important and axiomatic aspects to determine the successful learning. It was believed that students with higher motivation of learning foreign languages tend to perform better than those who have low motivation (Chang 2005). The first summary of L2 motivation research was first proposed by Robert Gardner and Wallance Lambert in 1972. Motivation is commonly considered to be an inner drive, impulse, emotion or desire that moves one to a particular action; or "In a general sense, motivation can be defined as the dynamically changing cumulative arousal in a person that initiates, directs, coordinates, amplifies, terminates, and evaluates the cognitive and motor processes whereby initial wishes and desires are selected, prioritized, operationalised and (successfully or unsuccessfully) acted out" (Dornyei, 1998).Self -Iden...
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This study investigates teaching materials as one of the most controversial issues in language studies. The questions this study tried to answer were: whether using teacher-made materials resulted in Iranian medical students’ higher... more
This study investigates teaching materials as one of the most controversial issues in language studies. The questions this study tried to answer were: whether using teacher-made materials resulted in Iranian medical students’ higher performance in a reading comprehension test; whether using original (international) materials resulted in Iranian medical students’ lower performance in a reading comprehension test; whether using domestic (SAMT) materials resulted in any significant performance in a reading comprehension test taken by Iranian medical students and finally, whether the means of Iranian medical students’ reading comprehension score obtained as a result of the tests based on the three material sorts were significantly different. To answer these questions, 45 junior students of medical science from the Islamic Azad University at Tonekabon (IRAN) were randomly selected and participated in the experiment. They were randomly assigned to three groups and were taught Medical Engl...
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This experimental study investigated the learners’ integrative acquisition of obligatory overt subjects and subject-verb clause agreement in English as an L2. In L1 acquisition research, correlations between superficially unrelated... more
This experimental study investigated the learners’ integrative acquisition of obligatory overt subjects and subject-verb clause agreement in English as an L2. In L1 acquisition research, correlations between superficially unrelated linguistic phenomena are analyzed in terms of integrative effects. For instance, in English L1 acquisition, there is evidence for an integrative appearance of subject-verb clause agreement and the decrease of incorrect null subjects. The developmental connection between these two specifications in L1 acquisition has been interpreted as setting the syntactic properties of the same cluster. Vainikka and Young-Scholten (1994, 2013) have claimed that the acquisition of subject-verb agreement and non-pro-drop in adult L2 learners developmentally coincide in the same way as it does in child L1 learners. This is taken to indicate that UG parameters are fully accessible to adult L2 learners. Thus, the present research reported on Reaction-Time (RT) experiments in...
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INTRODUCTIONShort-term memory alone cannot possibly keep all the necessary details and fulfill the intermediate process of decoding in the act of interpreting (Mahmoodzadeh, 1992). Notes are therefore suggested as a means of an aid to... more
INTRODUCTIONShort-term memory alone cannot possibly keep all the necessary details and fulfill the intermediate process of decoding in the act of interpreting (Mahmoodzadeh, 1992). Notes are therefore suggested as a means of an aid to assist the interpreter in retaining and retrieving the information. Note-taking, especially in long interpretation, is a skill employed in the process of conducting consecutive interpreting to better the quality of the interpretation. Note-taking skill has the direct, consequential effect of the interpreter's rendition. Qualified Interpreters are expected to be proficient in taking notes in order to carry out consecutive interpreting efficiently and effectively. As note-taking is a must-have skill for interpreters to acquire in performing consecutive interpreting, it is necessary for an interpreter to be well versed in the skills.It is generally believed that note-taking has a facilitative effect on listening comprehension. Note taking is perceived...
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The present study investigated the efficiency of an ESP Course offered to Graduate Students of Psychology at Islamic Azad University of Tonekabon. To this end, a needs analysis was carried out to establish the major needs of the students... more
The present study investigated the efficiency of an ESP Course offered to Graduate Students of Psychology at Islamic Azad University of Tonekabon. To this end, a needs analysis was carried out to establish the major needs of the students and evaluate the course according to these needs. The need analysis was performed by administering a questionnaire at the beginning of the course the results of which were compared with those of a course evaluation at the end of the ESP program. The findings of these questionnaires indicated that the students felt that they needed the language to improve their test scores first, and then to read and write academic articles. The evaluation of the course also distinguished the efficient parts of the program and identified the parts which needed major or minor adaptations. In this regard, the course book seemed insufficient and incompatible with the students’ needs, although teacher’s presentation was believed to be comprehensive. The ESP course theref...
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The attempt in this study is to investigate the effect of teaching critical thinking through problem solving on reading comprehension performance of EFL intermediate learners. In so doing, forty including twenty male and twenty female... more
The attempt in this study is to investigate the effect of teaching critical thinking through problem solving on reading comprehension performance of EFL intermediate learners. In so doing, forty including twenty male and twenty female intermediate students studying English in an institute in Ardabil, Iran, were selected based on their scores on Preliminary English Test and assigned into control and experimental groups. Afterwards, the sample TOEFL reading comprehension pre-test was administered to both of these groups to ensure homogeneity. The learners in experimental group were taught through problem solving instruction and the learners in control group were taught through traditional method of instructing reading comprehension. After ten sessions of instruction, the same sample TOEFL reading comprehension as post-test was given to the learners to measure the possible differences between pre-test and post-test. The finding revealed teaching problem solving had statistically signi...
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Dynamic assessment (DA) has been an interesting area of study for many researchers since its introduction about eighty years ago. However, the detailed procedure of mediation or treatment as the key part of DA has hardly ever been shared... more
Dynamic assessment (DA) has been an interesting area of study for many researchers since its introduction about eighty years ago. However, the detailed procedure of mediation or treatment as the key part of DA has hardly ever been shared with the interested practitioners who are motivated to actualize and apply DA in their language classrooms. Therefore, the purpose of current study is twofold: 1) to provide a full description of the procedures of mediation via the interventionist model of DA, and 2) to investigate its effect on the Iranian EFL learners’ reading comprehension. To this end, twelve female intermediate students were chosen from the population of English language learners in a private language institute in Tehran, Iran to act as members of both the control and experimental groups in a quasi- experimental design study. The results of the One-way repeated measures ANOVA indicated that Mediation via the Interventionist Model of Dynamic Assessment helped the participants in...
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This book provides an initial view of the nature and quality of the students’ multiple intelligences and how they are related to the students’ gender and reading scores. As a teacher, what we know and what we do in the classroom should... more
This book provides an initial view of the nature and quality of the students’ multiple intelligences and how they are related to the students’ gender and reading scores. As a teacher, what we know and what we do in the classroom should have significant influence on the thoughts, achievement and behaviors of the students. Teachers can teach learners, for instance, certain strategies to use their intellectual strengths in support of their learning. In this respect, the results can be used to make recommendations that may serve to make educators, teachers, trainers, and instructional designers aware of ways to modify instruction and offer a variety of opportunities for both instructors and learners in the classroom. I hope that the results of this study may lead teachers to provide opportunities for each individual to develop a consciousness of how their mind works and therefore teach towards the learning needs of all students in the classroom. This will help them to see that everyone ...
The role of emotional intelligence as a significant factor contributing to academic achievement was central in the area of research for several years. In second language learning research, personal and social skills seems to be critical... more
The role of emotional intelligence as a significant factor contributing to academic achievement was central in the area of research for several years. In second language learning research, personal and social skills seems to be critical as individual differences in language production. In this regard, this study has attempted to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence and speaking skills of Iranian advanced EFL learners. In order to achieve this goal, 96 advanced EFL learners including 48 males and 48 females were randomly selected from eight institutes in Tehran. The design of the study is a quantitative, non- experimental research utilizing a correlational approach. The data were gathered through an EQ questionnaire (namely EQ- i: S, designed by Bar- On), and speaking test (from ILETS samples of speaking tests in the form of individual interview). The value of Pearson correlation coefficient indicated that there was a significant relationship between emotional ...
Research Interests: Clinical Psychology, Social Psychology, Education, Counseling Psychology, Emotional intelligence, and 10 moreLearning and Teaching, Duygusal Zeka, Türkçe Eğitimi, Career Technical Education, English language education, Occupational Stress, English literature and ELT and Applied linguistics, Music Performance Anxiety, IOSR Journal of Nursing and Health Science, and Ortaokul
A growing body of evidence suggests that teachers play a significant role in the process of foreign language teaching and learning. On the other hand, motivation is one of the most important pre-requisites of foreign language learning... more
A growing body of evidence suggests that teachers play a significant role in the process of foreign language teaching and learning. On the other hand, motivation is one of the most important pre-requisites of foreign language learning which can be influenced by many teacher-related factors such as teachers’ personality characteristics and their self-efficacy beliefs. Therefore, this study was conducted to examine the relationship between Iranian EFL teachers’ self-efficacy, their personality and students’ motivation. Participants included 25 EFL teachers teaching in different language institutes and 75 EFL students learning English in those institutes. In this study, three instruments were used for data collection: Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) developed by Tschannen-Moran and Hoy (2001), Neuroticism-Extraversion-Openness Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI), and Students’ Motivation Questionnaire designed by Mojavezi and Tamiz (2012). To analyze the data, Pearson correlation ...
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Vocabulary learning in both L1 and L2 is considered important to master a language. Individuals need to learn the words in order to express ideas and to communicate. As a result, research into word knowledge is important as it provides... more
Vocabulary learning in both L1 and L2 is considered important to master a language. Individuals need to learn the words in order to express ideas and to communicate. As a result, research into word knowledge is important as it provides useful information considering the way in which words are learned and organized in individuals’ mind; however different studies have been conducted in this regard, there is a long way to fully understand individuals’ mental lexicon. So, word association tests are used to examine the word knowledge, to study vocabulary learning process, and how it occurs in the language learners’ mind. Similarly, the aim of this paper is to investigate the way in which words are stored and organized in Iranian EFL learners’ mental lexicon through a word association test. To this end, a word association test was designed including eight prompt words from different word classes and was administered to 50 Iranian EFL learners. They were randomly selected and included 22 m...
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This study attempts to analysis the different parts of quantitative and qualitative research articles in the field of TEFL comparatively to present a convenient pattern for novice EFL students or researchers in a non-English context.... more
This study attempts to analysis the different parts of quantitative and qualitative research articles in the field of TEFL comparatively to present a convenient pattern for novice EFL students or researchers in a non-English context. Benefited from mix method, current study investigated the similarities and differences between the two genres-specific corpora. In order to induce accurate and creditable result, data-analyzing process was implemented through both computer-based programs and hand- tagged analysis. Fifty quantitative and qualitative TEFL research articles from high-ranking ELT journals were selected and then analyzed. Swales CARS model (2004) was considered as a framework of analysis. Moreover, interpreting of obtaining results from the vocabulary profile program, the readability statistics of two corpora, fulfilled through non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test. The conducted results according to significant level of x < 0.5 or x = 0.05 demonstrated that the differences ...