سعید کتابی

As a new shift in the ELT field, critical pedagogy (CP) originated from Freirean philosophy. It aims at raising both teachers and learners’ awareness towards the instrumental view of ELT and its superficial neutrality. Despite the recent growth of CP in Iran, it is unknown whether or not CP is supported and practiced in the teacher development process of Iranian universities. Moreover, to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, an appropriate questionnaire dealing with such a concept has not been developed yet. The present study, therefore, aimed at developing and validating a CP-oriented scale to be used in ELT education system in Iran. To validate this instrument, 150 EFL teachers and students from three universities of Iran were selected through convenience sampling. The researchers employed exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The results indicated an acceptable level of internal consistency and satisfactory construct validity. This measure can be helpful for those who support practicalizing CP tenets in the field of ELT, in general and in teacher development process, in particular.

This study intended to investigate critical thinking-based teaching strategies EFL teachers of Iranian high schools integrate into their teaching. To this purpose, the inter-relationship between the teachers' frequency of use of critical thinking-based teaching strategies and their teaching experience, their attendance at critical thinking in-service training courses, and their higher university degree were explored through a survey questionnaire. To analyze the collected data, means, frequencies, standard deviations, percentages, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), correlation coefficient, and five-point Likert scale were utilized. The obtained results showed that teaching experience was negatively correlated with the frequency of strategy use, and that no significant relationship was found between the frequency of strategy use and teachers’ higher university degree. The results further showed a significant relationship between the frequency of strategy use and critical thinking in-service training courses attended by teachers. The findings of this study imply that critical thinking should be reinforced in Iranian education system as well as in high school teaching schedule.

Translation studies essentially deals with a socio-communicatively driven and contextualized enterprise. Viewed hence, it seems that no discipline tends to provide the possibility of studying the interrelations between interlocutors to generate meaning within the interactive social context as precisely as sociolinguistics (Federici, 2018). A sociolinguistic approach to translation seems to be increasingly gaining ground, at the crossroads of Translation and Interpreting Studies (TIS) and sociology within the sociological turn (Wolf, 2010). Accordingly, the present study took a sociolinguistic approach to shed some light on The Great Gatsby (1925) and its Persian translation by Emami (2000). In so doing, an extended version of Hatim and Mason’s (1997) sociolinguistic model was employed to examine the texts in question. The source text (ST) and its target text (TT) version were investigated at both textual and extra-textual levels in light of the model’s respective sub-components. The results of this comparative study, analyzed individually for each register variable, revealed that the translator dealt rather superficially with both use-related categories of register variation like tenor and user-related aspects like idiolect. By contrast, the predominant features of literary expression were mostly retained in the translation.

Recently translation researchers have endeavored to adopt new directions in the current translation quality assessment (TQA) approaches. To this end, they made them more congruent with the desired requirements of a translator’s competence, especially considering the latest paradigm shifts, including ideological skewing and localization (Tiselius & Hild, 2017). Thus, such frameworks as Angelelli’s (2009) definition of translation competence (TC), as the study’s theoretical framework, need to be improved. An attempt was made in this study to design a rubric based on the proposed TQA model representing the TC construct with its comprehensive sub-components and finally, to test its applicability to the Persian translation of The Catcher in the Rye . The assessment procedure through which the obtained results were textually analyzed based on the proposed rubric specifically for each sub-component, revealed the inadequacy of the translation quality on the whole and the underlying implications of the rubric’s applicability to other translation products.                                                                                                                                                                   

Perhaps the degree of test difficulty is one of the most significant characteristics of a test. However, no empirical research on the difficulty of the MSRT test has been carried out. The current study attempts to fill the gap by utilizing a two-parameter item response model to investigate the psychometric properties (item difficulty and item discrimination) of the MSRT test. The Test Information Function (TIF) was also figured out to estimate how well the test at what range of ability distinguishes respondents. To this end, 328 graduate students (39.9% men and 60.1% women) were selected randomly from three universities in Isfahan. A version of MSRT English proficiency test was administered to the participants. The results supported the unidimensionality of the components of MSRT test. Analysis of difficulty and discrimination indices of the total test revealed that 14% of the test items were either easy / very easy, 38% were medium, and 48% were either difficult or very difficult. In addition, 14% of the total items were classified as nonfunctioning. They discriminated negatively or did not discriminate at all. 7% of the total items discriminated poorly, 17% discriminated moderately, and 62% discriminated either highly or perfectly, however they differentiated between high-ability and higher-ability test takers. Thus, 38% of the items displayed satisfactory difficulty. Too easy (14%) and too difficult (48%) items could be one potential reason why some items have low discriminating power. An auxiliary inspection of items by the MSRT test developers is indispensable.

The incorporation of applied games in university differentiated language instruction is increasingly prevalent. This interventional study was conducted through non-crossover design in the academic years 2020-2021 among the students of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. The quantitative and qualitative data were gathered by soliciting participants' attitudes towards English for Specific Purposes writing through (game)-based differentiated instruction, assessing their academic and professional writing, and debriefing their insight into how differentiated instruction might enhance English for Specific Purposes writing. While the quantitative data were analyzed through Wilcoxon signed-rank test and repeated measures ANOVA, the qualitative data were content analyzed through theme-based analysis. It was revealed that mixed reality harnessed the synergy of augmented reality and virtual reality in English for Specific writing education. Findings showed that single-minded preoccupation with a game type undermines the potential of game-based differentiated instruction in English for Specific Purposes writing. The results and implications are explained.

Flow, introduced as one of the founding concepts in positive psychology by Csikszentmihalyi (1990), refers to the complete absorption in a challenging mental, emotional, or physical task to the exclusion of attention to any other surrounding thing. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, whole aspects of human life have changed, and language learning is no exception. The present study explored various obstacles in experiencing flow among Iranian EFL learners while completing tasks in three different modalities: face-to-face (F2F), text-based, and audio-based interaction during the Covid-19 pandemic. The data were elicited from 55 upper-intermediate learners divided into three groups completing the tasks in pairs, each through one of the three modalities, as a part of their classroom activity. Immediately following class time, they were interviewed individually or through group chats via WhatsApp. Under the three different modalities, the qualitative content analysis identified obstacles in achieving flow and categorized them into five themes. The results revealed that the main barriers in the face-to-face group were related to contextual or environmental factors as well as to task-induced issues. However, technological, task-based, and teacher-related factors gained higher percentages among text-based and audio-based interaction themes. The findings offer insight into flow perception by second language learners in different task modalities during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Crowdsourcing Translation as a Post-Editing Method (CTPE) has emerged as a rapid and inexpensive method for translation and has drawn significant attention in recent years. This qualitative study aims to analyze and synthesize the approaches and aspects underpinning CTPE research and to identify its potential that is yet to be discovered. Through a systematic literature review focused on empirical papers, we examined the limited literature thematically and identified recurring central themes. Our review reveals that the topic of CTPE requires further attention and that its potential benefits are yet to be fully discovered. We discuss the eight core concepts that emerged during our analysis, including the purpose of CTPE, CTPE areas of application, ongoing CTPE processes, platform and crowd characteristics, motivation, CTPE domains, and future perspectives. By highlighting the strengths of CTPE, we conclude that it has the potential to be a highly effective translation method in various domains.