Ismaeil Fazel

The existing scholarship on Second Language Acquisition is replete with different tensions and debates, which reflect diverging epistemologies, theoretical bases and schools of thought. This paper deals with the current issues surrounding the two major and salient approaches to Second Language Acquisition, the cognitive/psycholinguistic camp and the sociocultural camp. After providing an overview of the fundamental tenets and underpinnings of each camp as well as their subdivisions, I conclude by speculating on the future directions of Second Language Acquisition.

Although expert and student citation behaviors have been explored in different genres,
doctoral students' citation behaviors in grant proposal writing have so far not been subject
to investigation. This paper reports on an exploratory study involving six doctoral students
in education at a research-intensive Canadian university. The participants commented on
the citations they used in their grant proposals submitted to a federal funding agency. The
qualitative data analysis yielded five citation functions (to claim knowledge, to seek support,
to claim importance, to establish a territory, and to claim competence), which are akin to the
rhetorical moves identified in previous research on scholars' grant writing. These five
citation functions are predominantly accompanied with three strategies (to emulate other
writers, to follow professors' suggestions, and to mask unfamiliarity with the topic), which are
indices of a student identity underlying the above five rhetorical acts. We discuss how the
doctoral students in the study deployed these rhetorical functions and strategies as
gambits to project a scholarly identity in their grant proposal writing, and conclude with
implications for teaching and further research.

As a result of increasing focus on learner independence, peer assessment has received considerable attention in the past decade. Nevertheless, this idea is still new to most English
teachers and students in the EFL setting of Iran, where traditional assessment still dominates.
The investigation reported here focuses on students’ views of a peer-assessment framework used within the particular context of a course that primarily focuses on oral presentations, which is relatively under-researched. Using students’ responses to an end-of-course survey as well as their written remarks, the study looked into the perceived benefits and weaknesses of peer
assessment within the context of oral presentation. Findings, in general, indicate a positive response from the students.

Abstract
Background: Students’ perceptions of their educational environment have a significant impact on their behavior
and academic progress. The aim of this study was to assess the perceptions of medical students concerning their
educational environment at Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences in Iran.
Methods: In this cross-sectional study, questionnaires were distributed to 210 medical students and 182 were
analyzed (response rate = 86.6%); twenty-eight questionnaires were excluded because they were incomplete or
unreturned for analysis. Data were collected using a DREEM questionnaire which comprised 50 items based on the
Likert scale (scores could range from 0 to 200). There were five domains to the questionnaire including students’
perceptions of learning, students’ perceptions of teachers, students’ academic self-perceptions, students’
perceptions of atmosphere and students’ social self-perceptions. Data were analyzed using SPSS16 software.
Results: The mean age of the subjects was 21.7 years (SD = 2.7); 38.5% were male and 61.5% were female.
Students’ perceptions of learning, students’ perceptions of teachers, students’ academic self-perceptions, students’
perceptions of atmosphere, students’ social self-perceptions and total DREEM score were 21.2/48, 24.2/44, 15.8/32,
23.8/48, 14.5/28 and 99.6/200, respectively. There was no significant difference between male and female students
in educational environment subscales, but there were significant differences between students enrolled on a basic
sciences and pathophysiology course and those enrolled on a clinical course in terms of perceptions of learning,
academic self-perceptions, perceptions of atmosphere and overall perceptions of educational environment (p <
0.05). The latter group rated each of the aforementioned aspects more highly than the students studying basic
science and pathophysiology.
Conclusion: Overall, respondents assessed the educational environment as average. Therefore, improvements are
required across all five domains of the educational environment.

Background: Students ’ perceptions of their educational environment have a significant impact on their behavior and academic progress. The aim of this study was to assess the perceptions of medical students concerning their educational environment at Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences in Iran. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, questionnaires were distributed to 210 medical students and 182 were analyzed (response rate = 86.6%); twenty-eight questionnaires were excluded because they were incomplete or unreturned for analysis. Data were collected using a DREEM questionnaire which comprised 50 items based on the Likert scale (scores could range from 0 to 200). There were five domains to the questionnaire including students’ perceptions of learning, students ’ perceptions of teachers, students ’ academic self-perceptions, students’ perceptions of atmosphere and students ’ social self-perceptions. Data were analyzed using SPSS16 software. Results: The mean age of the subjects...

Communication skills play a paramount role in clinical practice. In every clinical setting, medical doctors need to interview their patients efficiently and be persuasive toward their health issues. This study aimed at assessing the attitudes of medical students toward learning communication skills at Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences in Iran. In this cross-sectional study, the questionnaires were distributed to 210 medical students. Twenty eight students were excluded since they either did not return the questionnaires or filled them out incompletely. So, totally 182 questionnaires were analyzed (response rate=%86.6). Data was collected using communication skills attitude scale (CSAS) which consists of 26 items, 13 indicative of positive attitude and 13 indicative of negative attitude toward learning communication skills. Data were analyzed using SPSS16 software. The mean age of the participants was 21.7 (SD=2.7). Male and female students accounted for 38.5% and 61.5% of the...

In this article we first provide a brief discussion of what is generally referred to as “student plagiarism, ” which we prefer to call “source misuse ” or “inappropriate textual borrowing, ” and then provide some of the factors that may contribute to this problem in language classes. Moreover, we provide our views and sugges-tions on how to deal with these causes, drawing mainly on our experiences as students and teachers in both EFL and ESL contexts, but also making references to some conceptual frames and the related literature. Dans cet article, nous présentons d’abord une discussion brève de ce que l’on appelle communément « le plagiat étudiant » et ce que nous préférons nommer « un mauvais emploi des sources » ou « un emprunt textuel inapproprié ». Nous poursuivons en évoquant quelques-uns des facteurs qui pourraient entrainer ce problème dans les cours de langue. De plus, nous offrons nos avis et nos sugges-tions quant à la façon d’aborder ces causes en puisant surtout dans no...

Abstract Although expert and student citation behaviors have been explored in different genres, doctoral students&#39; citation behaviors in grant proposal writing have so far not been subject to investigation. This paper reports on an exploratory study involving six doctoral students in education at a research-intensive Canadian university. The participants commented on the citations they used in their grant proposals submitted to a federal funding agency. The qualitative data analysis yielded five citation functions (to claim knowledge, to seek support, to claim importance, to establish a territory, and to claim competence), which are akin to the rhetorical moves identified in previous research on scholars&#39; grant writing. These five citation functions are predominantly accompanied with three strategies (to emulate other writers, to follow professors&#39; suggestions, and to mask unfamiliarity with the topic), which are indices of a student identity underlying the above five rhetorical acts. We discuss how the doctoral students in the study deployed these rhetorical functions and strategies as gambits to project a scholarly identity in their grant proposal writing, and conclude with implications for teaching and further research.

In this article we first provide a brief discussion of what is generally referred to as “student plagiarism,” which we prefer to call “source misuse” or “inappropriate textual borrowing,” and then provide some of the factors that may contribute to this problem in language classes. Moreover, we provide our views and sugges- tions on how to deal with these causes, drawing mainly on our experiences as students and teachers in both EFL and ESL contexts, but also making references to some conceptual frames and the related literature.Dans cet article, nous présentons d’abord une discussion brève de ce que l’on appelle communément « le plagiat étudiant » et ce que nous préférons nommer « un mauvais emploi des sources » ou « un emprunt textuel inapproprié ». Nous poursuivons en évoquant quelques-uns des facteurs qui pourraient entrainer ce problème dans les cours de langue. De plus, nous offrons nos avis et nos sugges- tions quant à la façon d’aborder ces causes en puisant surtou...

Based on one’s comprehension and interpretation of the original text, paraphrasing goes beyond a faithful account of the source text. Differing from previous research which has mostly focused on students’ re-use of the source text, this study explores whether and how students paraphrase to express their own views. We examined 192 paraphrases identified by 18 advanced graduate students in their academic papers across disciplines at a North American university. Analyses of students’ writing, their sources, and their own accounts present an exposition of writers’ thinking and processes of paraphrasing featuring various
types of linguistic adaptations and content recontextualization. The study suggests that paraphrasing by these advanced graduate students is a process of smoothly integrating the source information into the new text by syntactically restructuring, interpreting and recounting only the source text with relevance to the new text. During the process, the
writer sometimes paraphrases to incorporate information in the immediate source text with that gained from prior readings.

In this brief piece, I aim to foreground the importance and complexities of teaching the sociopragmatic and intercultural dimension of digital communication. Needless to say, in the past few decades, the digital revolution propelled by advancements in modern technology has dramatically and irrevocably transformed the communication needs and practices of the academic as well as professional and corporate world. In today's transnational and global economy, professionals increasingly need to engage with digital and multimodal modes and genres of communication, such as emails and teleconferencing. Navigating these digital genres demands certain communicative skills, strategies, and sensibilities, which calls for a proper pedagogical response from English for specific purposes practitioners (ESPers). One of the challenges and complexities of responding to the needs of ESP learners for digital communication is teaching the sociopragmatic and intercultural aspects of digital communication. On a relevant note, in 2006, I was part of a small ESP team tasked with devising and delivering an intensive course on writing effective business emails. The clientele composed of a fairly small group of Iranian engineers (N = 16) working in a cement engineering company who needed to communicate—via business emails and letters— with their English-speaking counterparts in Asia and Europe. After conducting a needs analysis in the form of interviews and assessment of written work (i.e., emails), an intensive course was designed to help the engineers write business letters and emails more effectively. It is worth noting, however, that the company had demanded an intensive 5-week course, given the exigencies of the project. Admittedly, though, teaching the course proved harder than I had anticipated, as it was my first experience of having to teach such a course. Teaching email communication, as a digital genre, can be particularly challenging as it combines the features of spoken and written communication (e.g., Evans, 2010; Jensen, 2009). Drawing from the needs analysis and in consultation with my colleagues, I decided to focus the instruction chiefly on the following focal points: email formatting (i.e., subject lines, salutations, closing, body paragraph(s), other genre-specific features), the content (e.g., clarity of request, request content), and language forms and functions (e.g., degree of formality, request strategies) in the email genre. Given that I did not have any relevant commercially available teaching resources at my disposal, the teaching material mainly consisted of samples and exemplars (both good and poor ones) as well as the participants' own emails. At the end of the 5-week course, I noticed that the participants appeared to have developed a good grasp of the format and generic conventions of business email (e.g., salutations, closing). However, there were still discernible, lingering challenges and—both instructor observed and self-perceived—problematic areas, especially in terms of appropriateness of emails (e.g., tone, overuse or underuse of directness and formality). Such problems were more visible particularly when it came to e-negotiations and disagreements. In retrospect, an important area that I think was not adequately addressed in the course was the sociopragmatic and intercultural aspect of email communication. Quite clearly, though, fostering pragmatic competence and cultivating appropriate politeness strategies in email would need a much longer course than 5 weeks.

In this brief piece, I aim to argue for and emphasise the need and opportunities for ESP professionals to play a more proactive and leading part in responding to the growing worldwide demand for courses and workshops on writing for academic and professional publication. Academics, professionals, and practitioners are increasingly encouraged and expected to share and disseminate ideas worth sharing within their professional or scholarly communities of practice and beyond. From another perspective, in today's communication era, the communicative needs and demands of academics and professionals are continually changing and expanding. Changing times have ushered in new communicative needs and demands, an important one being writing for publication in English—which is the de facto language of academic and professional publication. The mounting importance of, and burgeoning interest in, publication preparation pedagogy has been increasingly recognized and has even resulted in the introduction of a new term in English for Academic Purposes (EAP): English for research publication purposes (ERPP), leading to a special issue on ERPP in the Journal of English for Academic Purposes in 2008. Since then, references to ERPP (as a subfield of EAP) seem to have gained increasing currency. ERPP was originally defined by Cargill and Burgess (2008) as follows: English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) can be thought of as a branch of EAP addressing the concerns of professional researchers and postgraduate students who need to publish in peer-reviewed international journals…While EAP programs in universities can address some of these needs in a general way, the real-life, specific issues for academics whose L1 is not English wishing to publish in English are often broader and more complex. (p. 75) As indicated in the quote above, the chief, though not the sole, clientele of ERPP courses comprises EAP academic writers. Some pedagogically sound initiatives in this area include ERPP programs by Cargill and O'Connor (2013) as well as Corcoran and Englander (2016), among others. The point that I would like to drive home in this paper, though, is that more attention needs to be paid—particularly by ESP professionals—to pedagogical support geared toward both academic and professional spheres. Needless to say, academic and