عبدالرضا خلیلی

This study attempted to determine the viability of the pedagogic interventions in ESP writing courses that fall within the ambit of Written Corrective Feedback (WCF). Considering this objective, 93 intermediate-level ESP learners in 3 intact classrooms of a medical sciences university in Iran were assigned to three groups. They were provided with corrective feedback; using three feedback strategies comprising direct, indirect, and metalinguistic WCF over ten treatment sessions. The researchers endeavored to itemize the utility of the interventions mentioned above via analyzing the participants’ performance on an immediate and a delayed writing posttest. The results displayed the efficacy of WCF for the betterment of the ESP learners’ writing performance. Furthermore, they accentuated the short-term and long-term supremacy of explicit WCF strategies (i.e., metalinguistic & direct) over the implicit ones (i.e., indirect). The findings might enable syllabus designers and curriculum developers to redress the English courses for students of allied medical sciences.

Teacher factors encompass the teachers’ cognitive and affective characteristics that are likely to affect their instructional efficacy. Language teacher immunity is one of the affective factors that determines the teachers’ psychological well-being in their settings. The present study strived to itemize the factors in novice and experienced EFL instructors’ teacher immunity philosophy. To this end, first, the researchers used convenience sampling for selecting 62 EFL teachers including 38 novice and 24 experienced teachers at ten prominent language institutes in Tabriz (Iran) as the participants. Second, they conducted 30-minute interviews with the participants for determining the factors that influenced their TI philosophy using a researcher-developed semi-structured interview protocol. Lastly, they used thematic analysis in order to particularize the main factors in their teacher immunity philosophy. The findings of the study indicated that while the novice teachers considered external support as the main factor in their philosophy, the experienced teachers regarded their internal strength as the decisive factor that influenced their teacher immunity philosophy. The findings may have practical implications for teacher education courses in foreign language contexts.