《Ｏｘｆｏｒｄ Ａｄｖａｎｃｅｄ Ｌｅａｒｎｅｒ’ｓ Ｄｉｃｔｉｏｎａｒｙ ｏｆ Ｃｕｒｒｅｎｔ Ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ》（ 以下简称ＯＡＬＤ） 是英语学习词典的先驱。它是第一部既重视词语释义，又重视词法、句法，配有大量例证的词典。我国英语学习者对其第二、三、四版（ 英汉双解版） 都十分熟悉。１９９５ 年，ＯＡＬＤ 第五次修订再版，又有了新的特色，但仍有不足

评《Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English》第五版

A concise and factual abstract is required (of between 100-200 words). The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. For this reason, References should be avoided, but if essential, then cite the author(s) and year(s). Also, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself. Graphical abstract Although a graphical abstract is optional, its use is encouraged as it draws more attention to the online article. The graphical abstract should summarize the contents of the article in a concise, pictorial form designed to capture the attention of a wide readership. Graphical abstracts should be submitted as a separate file in the online submission system. Image size: Please provide an image with a minimum

English for Specific Purposes

Clarity and accuracy of reporting are fundamental to the scientific process. Readability formulas can estimate how difficult a text is to read. Here, in a corpus consisting of 709,577 abstracts published between 1881 and 2015 from 123 scientific journals, we show that the readability of science is steadily decreasing. Our analyses show that this trend is indicative of a growing use of general scientific jargon. These results are concerning for scientists and for the wider public, as they impact both the reproducibility and accessibility of research findings.

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The readability of scientific texts is decreasing over time.

Brian Tomlinson is responsible for an extensive list of publications related to the development of English Language Teaching (ELT) materials. He is regular speaker at international conferences (including the recent 5th International Forum on ELT at the Faculty of Letters, the University of Porto (FLUP) in October 2011) and he is the president of MATSDA – The Materials Development Association.1 1Two books he edited are the cornerstone reference works for the FLUP subject ‘The Production of ELT materials’ which is taught in the second year of FLUP’s ‘Masters in Foreign Language Teaching’ course. The two books are: Brian TOMLINSON (Ed.) 1998, Materials Development in Language Teaching, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (revised edition, April 2011). Brian TOMLINSON (Ed.) 2003, Developing Materials for Language Teaching, London, Continuum Books. The recent publication of the paperback edition of English Language Learning Materials makes available to a wider readership a wealth of information, both theoretical and practical, through a series of studies of ELT materials and contexts from around the world. The depth and breadth of the descriptions and reflections provided is a valuable resource for any ELT professional working in Portugal. A common complaint among these practitioners is a sense of isolation, that having left university and entered the state or private school system, or other areas of more precarious ELT employment, they have few opportunities to stay in touch with developments in their field and in this way are less able to validate their teaching procedures and materials; this does not mean that the various ‘teacher development’ courses and conferences offered and organized by various institutions around Portugal are not without merit, it is more a question of the infrequency and lack of permanence of these events. This book brings the world of ELT into our local professional orbit in one easy to consult volume. This paperback edition is divided into four sections: Part 1: Introduction: pp.1 -14. A general discussion relating ELT materials to aspects of learning theory.

English Language Learning Materials: A Critical Review

Today, World Wide Web has brought us enormous quantity of on-line information. As a result, extracting relevant information from massive data has become a challenging issue. In recent past text summarization is recognized as one of the solution to extract useful information from vast amount documents. Based on number of documents considered for summarization, it is categorized as single document or multi document summarization. Rather than single document, multi document summarization is more challenging for the researchers to find accurate summary from multiple documents. Hence in this study, a novel Cat Swarm Optimization (CSO) based multi document summarizer is proposed to address the problem of multi document summarization. The proposed CSO based model is also compared with two other nature inspired based summarizer such as Harmony Search (HS) based summarizer and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) based summarizer. With respect to the benchmark Document Understanding Conference (DUC) datasets, the performance of all algorithms are compared in terms of different evaluation metrics such as ROUGE score, F score, sensitivity, positive predicate value, summary accuracy, inter sentence similarity and readability metric to validate non-redundancy, cohesiveness and readability of the summary respectively. The experimental analysis clearly reveals that the proposed approach outperforms the other summarizers included in the study.

Cat swarm optimization based evolutionary framework for multi document summarization

In TEFL, it is often stated that communication presupposes comprehension. The main purpose of readability studies is thus to measure the comprehensibility of a piece of writing. In this regard, different readability measures were initially devised to help educators select passages suitable for both children and adults. However, readability formulas can certainly be extremely helpful in the realm of EFL reading. They were originally designed to assess the suitability of books for students at particular grade levels or ages. Nevertheless, they can be used as basic tools in determining certain crucial EFL text-characteristics instrumental in the skill of reading and its related issues. The aim of the present paper is to familiarize the readers with the most frequently used readability formulas as well as the pros and cons views toward the use of such formulas. Of course, this part mostly illustrates studies done on readability formulas with the results obtained. The main objective of this part is to help readers to become familiar with the background of the formulas, the theory on which they stand, what they are good for and what they are not with regard to a number of studies cited in this section.

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Readability of Texts: State of the Art

https://jslte.iaushiraz.ac.ir/article_532359_8f74da1761298b27f01ad93a9f976341.pdf

The Effect of Asynchronous versus Computer-mediated Corrective Feedback on the Correct Use of English Articles in an EFL Context

Language must be studied as a social behavior and the aim of language
instruction must be to facilitate learners’ acquisition of communicative
competence; the ability to speak both accurately and appropriately. Rules
of speaking must be included into second language classroom teaching. We
should teach linguistic rules along with social rules.
In this study a number of social functions in Persian are analyzed using the
“Natural Semantic Metalanguage” (NSM) framework. The results are then
compared and contrasted with those of English. The functions in focus are
suggestions, and rejection of suggestions.
The results of this study indicate that: (1) the NSM is applicable to the
communicative interaction routines in Persian, (2) cultural scripts can be used
to develop an awareness of cultural differences in the learners, and finally (3)
the model in question is suitable for cross-cultural contrastive analysis.

http://jslte.iaushiraz.ac.ir/article_518885_eb7ad57238cc6cf886959b7351017c87.pdf

Analysis of Cultural Scripts of Suggestions and Rejection of Suggestions in Persian and English within Natural Semantic Metalanguage Framework

One of the main concerns of teachers in modern learner-centered approaches
is whether published teaching materials can meet the needs of students at
a particular leaning situation or the teachers ought to prepare their own
materials. This dilemma gets worse when the teaching situation includes
a textbook prescribed by an authority such as the Ministry of Education. In
such cases, the teacher has to compensate for the deficiencies of the textbook
by providing the students with supplementary materials. The aim of this study
is to see whether Iranian EFL teachers are aware of and cater for the needs of
their students by providing them with supplementary materials. In this study,
teachers teaching at high schools for talented students were chosen because
their students have definitely different needs from others. Forty teachers at 23
high schools for talented students in different parts of Iran were interviewed
in person or through the telephone. The teachers who taught at other schools
too (21 teachers) were also asked whether they used the same supplementary
materials at other schools. Moreover, the teachers who used supplementary
materials were also asked about the types of materials they used. The
results showed that 33 (82.5%) teachers used supplementary materials at
schools for talented students.
Out of 21 teachers who taught at other schools, 14 (66.66%) teachers used
no or different supplementary materials at other schools. It indicates that
teachers adjust supplementary materials to the needs and abilities of their
students. Considering the types of materials, teachers used different types
of materials at different grades of high school, indicating their awareness
of different needs of students at different grades.

http://jslte.iaushiraz.ac.ir/article_518891_161f00cae1234b0804a9c5849414d90e.pdf

The Use of Supplementary Materials by Iranian EFL Teachers at High Schools for Talented Students

Textbook evaluation has been a matter of interest in almost every EFL/ESL context. Since some aspects of the quality of language learning and teaching stem from the instructor’s textbook adaptation and use and since different EFL/ESL textbooks target at touching different aspects of pupils’ needs, carrying out an assessment of a particular textbook before its adoption and adaptation is of paramount importance. Accordingly, scrutinizing the weaknesses and strengths of the textbooks that are currently being taught in the most popular and the biggest institute of Iran seems to be inevitable. Hence, the aim of this study is to evaluate the Intermediate ILI (Iran Language Institute) English Series. To this end, eighty highly experienced male and female teachers from different branches in different cities of Iran were called for cooperation. The teachers ranged from BA holders to PhD candidates. In order to obtain the intended data, a forty item questionnaire developed by David R.A Litz (2000) was given to every instructor. Analyzing the data was done by running Independent samples t-test and basic statistics in SPSS 16 package for windows. The results show that although the series favor some strong points, the majority of the sections of the textbooks suffer a few number of pitfalls. Moreover, the overall evaluation of the series manifests the average level of satisfaction in every component on the part of the teachers. Also, the ideas of male and female instructors were different in “Conclusion”, “Subject and Content” and “Language Type” categories.

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Mostafa Zamanian

Papers

Readability of Texts: State of the Art

The Effect of Asynchronous versus Computer-mediated Corrective Feedback on the Correct Use of English Articles in an EFL Context

Analysis of Cultural Scripts of Suggestions and Rejection of Suggestions in Persian and English within Natural Semantic Metalanguage Framework

The Use of Supplementary Materials by Iranian EFL Teachers at High Schools for Talented Students

Scrutinizing the Appropriateness of the Intermediate ILI English Series in the EFL Context of Iran