موسی احمدیان

This study set out to examine how stereotypes as social psychological phenomena are enacted in everyday discourse. Besides discussing how ingroups and outgroups are formed in mundane talk, it is argued that stereotypes are ideological constructs that are jointly achieved in social contexts. Moreover, it is assumed that the ways in which stereotypes are constructed and discussed in discourse are informed by a number of underlying moral conceptualizations which might justify the potential face-threatening acts and the impoliteness inherent in prejudiced talk targeted to a third party. The study is an ethnographic case study informed by an eclectic approach to the analysis of data so as to shed light on how the expression of thoughts and feelings are constructed as talk in ordinary social interactions unfolds and what these expressions achieve. The analyses revealed that the construction of outgroup stereotypes is a mutual accomplishment and possibly a face-threatening act moderated by mitigating discourse features

   COPYRIGHTS ©2021 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publisher. This study set out to explore the efficacy of EFL teachers' digital literacy in improving language learners' speaking fluency and accuracy through the development of virtual languaculture tasks. To this end, 52 male and 68 female EFL teachers from different areas of Kurdistan province participated in the study by completing a digital literacy scale developed by Ng (2012). Moreover, three groups of teachers, 12 high and 12 low-digitally literate teachers who used virtual languaculture tasks and 10 teachers who used traditional teaching methods participated in semi-structured interviews, and their teachings were observed for 8 sessions. Besides, by conducting an IELTS speaking test, 121 male and 122 female EFL learners of the three groups of teachers were selected to participate in this study. After conducting 16-session treatments, a speaking test was used as the posttest.  The qualitative and quantitative data were analyzed via MAXQDA and SPSS. The results of one-way between-groups multivariate analysis of variance indicated the efficacy of the implementation of languaculture tasks in developing students' speaking fluency and accuracy. On the other hand, the qualitative phase of the study showed that being digitally literate influenced the development, implementation, variety, and complexity of languaculture tasks. Moreover, the attained results supported the superiority of the languaculture task as a mediator between instructors' digital literacy and learners' verbal ability. Accordingly, enhancing teachers' digital literacy and learners' critical languaculture awareness are suggested as useful strategies to improve language learners' speaking fluency and accuracy. 

One strategy that eases the process of teaching argumentative writing might be teaching them how to express their thoughts, beliefs, and in general, ideologies in academic essays. This study aimed to investigate the effect of teaching writing skills on ideology transfer in the academic writings of EFL students. To this end, a sequential mixed-methods design was used. Participants were 80 male and female IELTS candidates who were selected based on some criteria such as proficiency level, age, and educational background. A sample Mock Writing Task 2 and a sample IELTS Writing Task 2 were used as instruments in the pre-test and post-test respectively. Learners’ essays produced during these stages were analyzed based on Fairclough’s (2001) three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis: description, interpretation, and explanation. To analyze the data, content analysis methods were applied during which discursive strategies used by the candidates were identified and coded, and the frequency and percentage of them were calculated. After the analysis, the following themes were extracted in the participants’ writings, as representing ideology transfer: tendency towards representation of identity, use of active voices, use of first-person pronouns, social views, author visibility, ideology-laden concepts, and idea development. Moreover, there were significant changes in the post-test writings of the participants in terms of the number of discursive strategies used to express ideology. This shows that teaching writing skills can significantly affect EFL learners’ ability to transfer their ideology into academic writing. The findings can have some implications for EFL learners, teachers, and curriculum planners.

The current quasi-experimental research aimed at exploring the influence of Lexically-Based Language Teaching (LBLT) on task response and coherence and cohesion aspects of the writing proficiency of Iranian university EFL learners. The research sample of the study included sixty male and female university students (N = 60) attending two university classes. They were selected by using a convenient sampling procedure and were assigned to experimental and control groups. To ascertain the groups' homogeneity at the beginning of the study, the researchers gave two groups the Key English Test (KET). Prior to starting treatment, two groups took the pretest writing task. While the participants comprising the experimental group were instructed consistent with the lexical approach's underlying practices and activities, those constituting the control group were instructed based on conventional techniques applied to present essay writing in universities. At the end of the experiment, the posttest writing, identical to the pretest, was given to both groups. To compare the two groups' mean scores with respect to coherence and cohesion and task response aspects of post-test writing, One-way Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) and independent T-test were drawn upon. Version 20 th of the SPSS software was applied for this end. The attained results were indicative of a significantly positive influence of the lexically-based language teaching on both coherence and cohesion and task response aspects of writing proficiency. However, the attained improvement was greater in the task response aspect. The findings suggest some implications for English language teachers and university instructors.

Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, there have been three packages used in the state-controlled schools of the country, namely, Graded, Right Path to English, and Prospect/Vision series. These textbooks all include prefaces to indicate the general philosophy of language teaching and education, and how the agents (learners and teachers) have to play roles in the system. This article aims to have a postcolonial reading of the Islamic post-revolutionary English language textbooks published in Iran. To this aim, the prefaces are critically content-analyzed and explained taking into consideration the key concepts of postcolonialism. After developing the table of themes in relation to postcolonial issues, the findings indicate that the resistance prevalent in the prefaces is particularly hybrid, anxious, and unstable of the Iranian type due to the socio-politico-cultural background of the country. This resistance, thus, is a tragic attempt for developing a firm background for developing language learners'' knowledge.

L2 written corrective feedback has been investigated from different perspectives in SLA research (e.g. Ahmadian & Tajabadi, 2015; Bitchener & Knoch, 2010; Ferris, 2006). Taking the cognitive and sociocultural paradigms into account, the aims of the current study are twofold: Firstly, it attempts to find if corrective feedback is effective in improving the linguistic accuracy of L2 learners' tense/aspect use in writing. Secondly, it tries to measure which feedback type (direct, indirect, and negotiated) has a more significant effect on the mentioned linguistic structures. Seventy-five pre-intermediate university EFL learners were selected and asked to participate in the study; they were randomly divided into direct, indirect, negotiated feedback groups, and a control group. During six-week sessions of providing feedback on tenses/aspects, the participants were required to write diary journals on their academic life. The direct and indirect groups received feedback on their diaries, having 10 minutes time in the class to observe the feedback. The negotiated feedback group received 10 minutes one-to-one contingent feedback on the errors. After comparing the four groups, the results showed that all the treatment groups did outperform the control group which indicated that feedback was effective. Moreover, the findings showed no significant difference among the feedback types. This implies that teachers can provide any of the feedback types for learners so far as tense/aspect errors are concerned in their writing.

This study attempts to investigate the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic development of Iranian EFL learners cross-sectionally when making requests in different situations. To this end, 103 university students in three proficiency levels of pre-intermediate, upper-intermediate, and advanced were asked to write three discourse completion tests (DCTs) of requests in different situations with various social and power relation demands and 20% of them were interviewed about their DCTs. The analyses of these written and verbal reports suggested that parallel with proficiency there was a movement from directness to conventional indirectness and an expansion of the repertoire of both external and internal modification devices. Even though all the participants expressed their awareness of the sociopragmatic requirements of different request situations in their verbal reports, increasing proficiency led to the application of this awareness in practice. That is, advanced learners were more successful to differentiate among the situations both sociopragmatically and pragmalinguistically. The results are discussed in light of previous research and available developmental patterns.