Applied Linguistics
Hussein Meihami
Abstract
This study explored the research methodology and research orientation of the papers published in seven world-leading applied linguistics journals from 1980 to 2019. To that end, a corpus including 3491 papers from seven applied linguistics journals was investigated. The papers were examined for their ...
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This study explored the research methodology and research orientation of the papers published in seven world-leading applied linguistics journals from 1980 to 2019. To that end, a corpus including 3491 papers from seven applied linguistics journals was investigated. The papers were examined for their research methodology based on qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods methodologies and their research orientations based on ten research orientations that were the main focus of applied linguistics studies. The research orientations were obtained from the topics of special issues of the applied linguistics journals. The papers were extracted and analyzed for their research methodologies and orientations according to the three research methodology types and ten research orientations. The results of the study indicated that from 1980 to 2000, the dominant research methodology was quantitative one, while from 2001 to 2019, the qualitative research methodology had an increasing trend of being used by applied linguistics researchers. Moreover, the results of the current study showed that from 2010 to 2019, the applied linguistics researchers showed positive attentions to use mixed methods methodology in their research studies. Furthermore, the corpus analysis from 2000 to 2019 indicated that teaching, teachers, and assessment issues started to show an increasing trajectory of being addressed in the applied linguistics papers. Thus, this study's findings can help the researchers, especially the less experienced ones, refine their knowledge about what has already been done in the field to focus their research studies on the less-examined issues.
ESP & EAP
Amir Zand-Moghadam; Hossein Meihami; Farhad Ghiasvand
Abstract
Given the fact that few studies have investigated the English language needs of EAP students in Iran, the present study was an attempt to analyze the needs of Iranian EAP learners of Humanities and Social Sciences. To this end, 114 EAP learners at different educational levels (BA, MA, and PhD) and with ...
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Given the fact that few studies have investigated the English language needs of EAP students in Iran, the present study was an attempt to analyze the needs of Iranian EAP learners of Humanities and Social Sciences. To this end, 114 EAP learners at different educational levels (BA, MA, and PhD) and with different English proficiency levels (elementary, intermediate, and advanced) were asked to provide their responses to a questionnaire. Moreover, ten EAP learners and eight EAP instructors were asked to write narratives about their experiences in EAP courses. Their narratives were then analyzed based on Strauss and Corbin's (1998) systematic approach. The results revealed that the EAP courses did not pay the deserved attention to writing, speaking, and listening skills, while the coverage of the sub-skills (grammar and vocabulary) was successful. Moreover, it was revealed that the EAP textbooks were insufficient in terms of the inclusion of language skills, community-specific cultural issues and conventions, and the topical knowledge. The analysis of the EAP learners’ needs also showed that not all interaction types happened in the EAP courses. Furthermore, the analysis of the narratives of EAP learners and EAP instructors indicated that the EAP curriculum, EAP textbooks and also EAP assessment should include the four language skills, provide a communicative venue for EAP learners to practice their disciplinary issues, and design communicative materials. It can be concluded that the current EAP curriculum needs revision to fulfill the EAP learners’ present and target situation needs.