عباس اسلامی راسخ

The present study sought to investigate the effect of explicit instruction of lexical bundles (LBs) on the development of Iranian English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students’ writing quality and also their receptive and productive knowledge of Lexical Bundles (LB). Assigned to two experimental and control groups, the eighty participants took pre- and post-tests of writing tasks and the receptive knowledge test. Afterwards, the obtained scores were subjected to a series of Analyses of Covariance (ANCOVAs) and paired samples t-tests. Results of the within-group and between-group analyses indicated that explicit instruction of LBs enhanced the participants’ productive and receptive knowledge of LBs and also improved the overall quality of their written productions. Possible explanations are provided and the implications of the findings for the applicability of LBs instruction are discussed.

There is a growing interest among the higher education principals and policy makers to improve teacher evaluation methods and more important than that to use the evaluation data. A number of research studies implied the ineffective instruction of ESP courses in Iran (Atai, 2002; Eslami, 2005; Hayati, 2008; Ahmadi, 2008; Sherkatolabbasi & Mahdavi, 2012; Boniadi, Ghojazadeh & Rahmatvand, 2013). The basic objective of research in field of ESP/EGP instruction and evaluation is to facilitate informed decisions for the betterment of English classes. The literature suggested that most of the teachers and students were dissatisfied with the students’ progress in specific English courses. Data was collected from the teachers by various ways including observation checklist and feedback form. To carry out the study, 12 ESP and EGP teachers were observed using Marshall’s rubrics (2011) and observation logs’ analysis. Then, 18 teachers offered feedback on different aspects of their own courses. The data were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively using ANOVA statistical measurement. The findings firstly indicate that EGP teachers were more standard teachers in comparison to ESP teachers. Secondly, the feedback forms show discrepancy between the views of EGP teachers and ESP teachers in some areas including the material effectiveness and students’ interest. To reach a standard point in EGP/ESP instruction, more evaluation is to be applied by the faculty members, university principals and the teachers themselves. Politically correct attitudes towards teachers should not lead to ineffective English courses. Some practical implications are suggested to upgrade the current practice in ESP classes

زبان آموزان ایرانی اغلب به حضور خواننده در متن توجه نمی کنند، و این امر نمرات ضعیفی در نگارش آنان به دنبال دارد. مطالعه حاضر در یکی از دانشگاه های بزرگ ایران انجام شد تا به زبان آموزان آموزش دهد چگونه به حضور مخاطب در متن توجه نمایند. تعداد سی و پنج دانشجوی زبان انگلیسی به روش آموزش فرآیندی آموزش داده شدند و از آنان خواسته شد نامه ای به یک مقام عالیرتبه ی دولتی بنویسند. پس از دریافت نسخه اول نامه مذکور، ابعاد توجه به مخاطب به آنان آموزش داده شد تا بر همان اساس نسخه اولیه را از نظر سبک و ملاحظات مربوط به مخاطب اصلاح نموده و جهت نمره گذاری ارسال نمایند. سپس از آنان مصاحبه ای در خصوص نحوه توجه به مخاطب در نگارش، نحوه دخالت دادن مخاطب در متن، و استراتژی های به کاررفته در تکمیل متن نهایی گرفته و ضبط شد. متن نوار ضبط شده بر روی کاغذ پیاده شد و به صورت کیفی مورد ارزیابی قرار گرفت که از دل داده ها، دو درون مایه اصلی حاصل شد: ملاحظات زبانشناختی و ملاحظات غیر زبانشناختی. همچنین، شرکت کنندگان به طور ضمنی به سه مرحله از توجه به مخاطب اشاره نمودند: استراتژی های قبل، بعد و حین انجام تکلیف نگارشی. به طور خلاصه، آموزش زبان آموزان ایرانی به ارتقای استراتژی هایِ توجه به مخاطب در نگارش انجامید .

This research intends to explore the efficacious English teachers’ goals and strategies to effectively manage their own as well as their students’ emotions. The data of the study included interviews with 22 English teachers and 92 diary journals kept by 12 teachers who were among the top 20% of ELTEI (ELT teacher efficacy instrument) scorers and identified as efficacious English teachers. The results indicated that teachers’ goals for regulating their positive emotions included maintaining authority in relation to students, presenting unbiased teacher character, and enhancing teaching effectiveness. For regulating negative emotions, the goals included maintaining the teacher and students’ mental health, promoting teacher-student relationships, and reinforcing the image of teachers as moral guides. Teachers also used a variety of antecedent-focused and response-focused strategies hierarchically for effective emotion management including situation selection, situation modification, attention deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation. The findings were discussed with reference to the role of culture in emotion regulation and effectiveness of different sub-strategies. The results may promise some implications for teacher education programs and teacher educators about the inclusion of professional development opportunities for EFL teachers in terms of effective emotion management

Taking the significance of teacher motivation in professional practice and pedagogical achievements of teachers, students and their educational goals, this study aimed to investigate EFL teachers’ motivation affected by the introduction of the Fundamental Reform Document of Education in Iran. For the quantitative phase of the study, a researcher-made questionnaire developed based on the four aspects of motivation by Dornyei and Ushioda (2011) was distributed among 98 Iranian EFL teachers. Afterwards, to capture the salient factors of teachers’ motivation, a set of semi-structured interviews with 7 volunteer teachers were conducted. The results revealed that this reform has had a positive effect on teachers’ motivation yet it has not been that much comprehensive to take into account all the motivation factors except for the contextual ones.

Every discourse, written or oral, is the conveyer of some hidden agenda of the producer, most importantly in such genres of speech as journalism, politics, propaganda, and advertisements. Given the role of translation in discourse, a difference exists between when the translator carries the ideological values of the elite in contrast with one with patriotic preferences. In this study a comparison was made between translation products resulting from the work of 15 postgraduates of translation studies viewed as freelancers and another published product carrying the elite’s ideology whose works appeared in published in the state media. The results of our comparisons, both qualitative and quantitative showed that there existed two types of difference: the ideology of the elite on the one hand, and the preferred culture related valuesof the freelancers on the other. The differences revealed that both groups translated under the influence of some pre-disposed influence dividable into different categories. Employing strategies of manipulation would be considered as an identity marker showing the social identity of the translator. The effect could be either their cultural preferences or, in contrast, the elite’s favorable set of preferences imposed on both the translator and the product of translation. 

Professional identity has been perpetually an underlying factor in teacher development. The maintenance of a strong professional identity is a key factor in teacher development which is ultimately a fundamental aspect in the prosperity or failure of any educational system. As a dynamic phenomenon, teachers’ professional identity can be influenced by a variety of factors and particularly any type of educational reform. The present study with an explanatory mixed method design was used to investigate transitions in Iranian EFL teachers’ professional identity in the context of Fundamental Reform Document of Education (2012). For the quantitative phase of the study, a researcher-made questionnaire developed based on the four components of professional identity namely, self-image, self-esteem, job motivation and task perception proposed by Kelchtermans (1993) was distributed among 98 Iranian EFL teachers. Considering the ongoing nature of the professional identity, the questionnaire was assigned to the teachers during the pre-reform and post – reform era. In the qualitative phase, in order to capture a comprehensive picture of the salient factors of teachers’ professional identity and their underlying reasons, a set of semi-structured interviews with 7 volunteer teachers were conducted. The findings revealed that the introduction of the curriculum reform made no change in teachers’ professional identity in terms of self-esteem and task perception, but it slightly affected teachers’ self-image and job motivation. The findings also revealed a potential transition path in Iranian EFL teachers’ professional identity development. Finally, some implications for policy-makers and material developers and suggestions for future researchers were discussed.