Dr. Ali-Asghar Aghbar

Serving the Composition and TESOL Students at Indiana University of Pennsylvania By Ryan Costanzo

This presentation is intended to provide the Composition and TESOL student with a basic understanding of Professor Aghbar’s teaching duties and scholarship. Included are sections on his formal education, academic appointments, major contributions, and selected publications. This presentation was created following a personal interview and an examination of Professor Aghbar’s vita and selected scholarly publications.

Formal Education

• Undergraduate in English from the University of Mashad in Iran • MA in English from Kent State University and MS in Linguistics from Georgetown • Doctorate from Georgetown, where he studied applied linguistics, theoretical linguistics, and English • Instructors included Walter Cook and Richard Tucker (personal interview) • At Georgetown, Aghbar was awarded a Distinction in PhD Comprehensives and a Distinction in PhD Dissertation Source: vita, unless otherwise indicated

Academic Appointments

• Currently appointed Professor of English at IUP • After Georgetown, worked as ESL Instructor and Testing and Research Coordinator at George Mason University, where he would also serve as Assistant Director for the English Language Institute • Taught English as a Foreign Language at the University of Mashad Source: vita

Contributions to the Field of Literacy and Linguistics

• Fascinated by collocations (personal interview), which are defined in his research as “two words that are linked together in our memory” (Fixed Expressions, 1990, p. 2) • Other interests include second language writing and testing and linguistics (personal interview) • Has held the office of Vice-President and President with Three Rivers TESOL (vita) • Teaches the following graduate courses:

American English Grammar

,

Linguistics and the English Teacher

,

Second Language Acquisition

,

TEFL/TESL Methodology

, and

ESL/EFL Media and Materials

(vita)

Selected Publications

• “Fixed Expressions in Written Texts: Implications for Assessing Writing Sophistication” (1990) • “Grice’s Maxims as Applied to the Translation of Fiction” (1995) • “Partial Credit Scoring of Cloze-Type Items” (1991) • “When Theory and Intuition Meet: An Approach to Composition Instruction” (1985)

“

Fixed Expressions in Written Texts: Implications for Assessing Writing Sophistication” (1990) • Addresses the knowledge of collocations and other “formulaic language” (p. 1) as a key factor in English fluency • Contains statistical analysis of data from IUP faculty, American students, and ESL students • Concludes that “the proper use of the proper registers of formulaic language is an important aspect of language ability and writing sophistication” (p. 7) • Very practical research piece

“Grice’s Maxims as Applied to the Translation of Fiction” (1995)

• Appears in

Studies in the Humanities

• Applies Maxims of Quality, Quantity, Relevance, and Manner to a short story by Bernard Malamud that appeared in a Persian translation • Theoretical yet comprehendible • Should be examined by any student interested in translation studies or the relationship between linguistics and the literary text

“Partial Credit Scoring of Cloze-Type Items” (1991)

• Timely and relevant: All educators are focused on evaluation and assessment • Aghbar and Tang build on the notion that “Native-like fluency depends heavily on the mastery of fixed expressions” (p. 2) • Includes a complex analysis of students’ responses “scored on both the partial credit scale . . . And a dichotomous scale following the conventional procedure of assigning a score of 1 to the best answer and a score of 0 to all other answers” (p. 4) • Authors explain that computer applications hold great potential for the open-ended testing of ESL students (p. 15)

“When Theory and Intuition Meet: An Approach to Composition Instruction” (1985)

• Aghbar and Trump “tried to show how composition instructors can use . . . knowledge of the writing process to make their classrooms more conducive to good writing” (pp. 36-37) • Aghbar’s personal experience as a second language learner adds a special touch • Monolingual educators will benefit from this article

Conclusion: Professor Aghbar’s dedication to IUP Composition and TESOL students

• Commitment to scholarship demonstrated by his active involvement as a dissertation director, and also by his numerous conference presentations and publications (see vita) • Enjoys teaching all of his classes at IUP, especially

American English Grammar

• Scholarly interests are a balanced combination of the theoretical and the practical

References

• • • • • • Aghbar, A. A. (1990). Fixed expressions in written texts: Implications for assessing writing sophistication. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED329125) Aghbar, A. A. (1995). Grice’s Maxims as applied to the translation of fiction.

Studies in the Humanities 22

(1-2), 76-85.

Aghbar, A. A., & Tang, H. (1991). Partial credit scoring of Cloze Type items. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED339201) Aghbar, A. A.

Vita.

Aghbar, A. A., & Trump, K. (1985). When theory and intuition meet: An approach to composition instruction. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED267587)

ProQuest Digital Dissertations

. Accessed November 11, 2003, from http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/results?set_num=3