نرگس بکتاش

This research reports on how EFL teachers feel about their education based on knowing, analyzing, recognizing, doing, and seeing (KARDS) modular model. The researcher employed convenient sampling to choose 15 teachers. Due to the closure of schools in the pandemic era and the online nature of courses, English teachers are only available online or in meetings at the university. A KARDS questionnaire was used to record the teachers’ views. The questionnaire was researcher-made and it was either handed in the meetings or sent via e-mail or other routes. The data gathered showed that though the English teachers had the knowledge necessary about their jobs, most of them lacked the necessary insight required in terms of the 5 modules of education in L2 teaching. The data seem to imply that ELT education programs in Iran are mostly oriented towards teacher training, rather than teacher education.

This study is a mixed-methods parallel design aiming at exploring the perception of 49 ESP teachers toward formative classroom assessment with regard to their language assessment literacy (LAL) in Iran within the theoretical framework of Hay and Penney (2013). The data were collected through an online semi-structured interview and a questionnaire, extracted from Shahzamani and Tahririan's (2021) questionnaire, consisting of 13 Likert items and 9 open-ended questions which were validated for this study through confirmatory factor analysis. The results of a Chi-square test on the Likert items showed a significant difference between the participant’s responses to each item which revealed an overall tendency of the ESP teachers toward employing formative assessment as an efficient way for evaluating their own teaching efficacy, the quality of the teaching materials, and their students' progress. The results also revealed that the two features of 1) ability to assess learners based on cultural-related issues in a certain context, and 2) ability to design suitable assessment methods for multilevel ESP classes should be added to the components of LAL in the existing literature. The results have implications for teacher educators to consider these two features in teacher education programs. Also, academic authorities are to notice that reliance on summative assessment and evaluation merely based on final exam scores are not appreciated by most ESP teachers.