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This research explores translation dynamics through the innovative lens of chaos theory, focusing on how the butterfly effect manifests in linguistic transfer. By challenging traditional linear translation models, the study demonstrates how seemingly minor initial conditions can generate profound, cascading interpretive consequences across textual landscapes. Adopting a complexity science perspective, among others, the research examines translations of Rumi’s Masnavi and Camus’s L’Étranger to highlight translation’s inherently nonlinear and adaptive nature. The theoretical framework integrates insights from complexity science, poststructuralist theory, and translation studies, offering a sophisticated analytical approach that moves beyond reductive binary conceptualizations. Using purposive theoretical sampling, the study traces how subtle translation choices recursively shape semantic and cultural interpretations. By emphasizing translation’s sensitivity to initial conditions, the research contributes to emerging scholarship that views translation as a complex, dynamic system characterized by intricate interactive processes. Methodologically, the study employs qualitative case analyses to reveal the profound complexity of translation.

It is argued that in our current digital era, MALL (mobile-assisted language learning) is an indispensable mode either for independent self-learning or for integrating with the school curriculum. The present study explores the possibility of using gamification as a home assignment in English as a foreign language course for students of non-English majors at a university in Vietnam. Data was collected and analyzed using 69 questionnaire responses and 41 essays written by students in a class of General English. The questionnaire and essay topic prompt required students to provide an evaluation of their personal experience learning English with Duolingo outside the classroom, as part of the compulsory home assignments during a 15-week semester. The questionnaire items were in Vietnamese and the essays were either in Vietnamese or English for students’ convenience. The results showed detailed benefits and problems of learning English with Duolingo as perceived by the students. The key benefits include the fact that Duolingo is a valuable resource: rich and free; the limitation is mainly learners’ lack of experience with the application. It is suggested that with teachers’ guidance, Duolingo could be used as an effective and motivating tool for independent learning.  

The Elicited Imitation Test (EIT) is widely recognized for its reliability in research settings as a proficiency assessment tool. However, there exists a need to examine its predictive validity in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. This study investigates the extent to which the EIT, alongside the Oxford Placement Test (OPT), can predict students' academic achievements in an English for Academic Purposes course, including overall grade point average and scores in listening, speaking, grammar, and vocabulary. The study also examines the relationship between students' perceptions of their listening and speaking skills and their EIT performance. The study involves 41 participants, with data analysis conducted using both regression and correlation methods. Results show that the EIT significantly predicts students' grade point average and language skills. Students' self-perceived speaking and listening abilities reasonably align with their actual performance on the EIT, and it seems that factors related to comprehension weigh heavily in their considerations. These findings have significant implications for EFL research and pedagogy.

The present study aimed to investigate the impact of language assessment literacy enhancement (LALE) on Iranian high school EFL students’ assessment as learning of writing skill. It also aimed to examine if LALE affects Iranian EFL students’ attitudes toward assessment as learning. To this end, 80 intermediate-level high-school EFL learners were selected and randomly categorized into the experimental and control groups. Both groups wrote an essay in the pre-test phase. Then, The ESL Composition Scale was used to teach the students what makes good writing and what criteria and standards they are supposed to learn to be able to write and rate the essays of their own and their peers. The control group received no instructional information on assessment rubrics. The experimental and control groups wrote another essay on a specific topic in the post-test phase. In the qualitative phase of the study, ten high school EFL students from the experimental group were interviewed regarding their attitudes toward the practice of assessment as learning of the writing skill in their English classes. The findings indicated that LALE significantly affected Iranian high school EFL students’ assessment as learning of writing skill. Moreover, students believed peer and self-assessment techniques are rarely implemented in Iranian high school EFL classes. They were also uncertain and felt uncomfortable judging, evaluating, criticizing, and rating their peers. Besides, they felt that they were not knowledgeable and capable enough to play the role of an assessor.

The present study aimed to explore how the ELT curriculum is perceived, adopted, and implemented by EFL high school teachers. This study also shed some light on several effective factors in curriculum planning and practicing. Data for this study came from a survey and follow-up interviews with EFL teachers. The Findings revealed some critical systemic gaps between policy and practice: (1) a disconnect between policymaking processes and established ELT pedagogical theories; (2) insufficient incorporation of stakeholder voices, particularly teachers, during policy formulation; (3) neglect of teacher agency, professional needs, and motivational factors in curriculum design; and (4) an absence of foundational needs analysis research to inform policy decisions. The study underscores the imperative of prioritizing teacher autonomy, participatory policymaking, and evidence-based frameworks in curriculum development. To mitigate disparities between policy objectives and classroom practices, recommendations include decentralizing decision-making to empower educators, integrating teacher feedback into policy cycles, leveraging academic expertise, and fostering context-sensitive adaptations of global ELT methodologies. These insights contribute to broader regional discussions on educational equity, teacher professionalization, and sustainable language policy reforms in institutional settings.

This study explores Iranian EFL teachers' perceptions of integrating job crafting interventions with reflective teaching to enhance their teaching practices and well-being. Using a grounded theory approach, 25 experienced EFL teachers (minimum 5 years of teaching experience) were selected through purposive sampling to participate in a multi-phased intervention based on the PERMA model. The intervention included training workshops, self-set job crafting assignments, and reflective practices. Data were collected through semi-structured and focus-group interviews and analyzed to identify recurring themes. The findings revealed three themes: 1) reflective mindset, 2) sense of belonging and engagement, and 3) reflective avoidance. Results indicate that job crafting improved teachers' self-efficacy, motivation, and resilience, though some experienced challenges in implementation. Practical implications suggest incorporating job crafting strategies into teacher training programs to foster reflective teaching and enhance teacher well-being. This research contributes to the field by bridging positive psychology and reflective practices in SLA contexts, emphasizing the value of teacher-centered interventions in professional development.

Dynamic assessment (DA) is an innovative way of assessing students’ knowledge. Given the importance of knowing how to reduce writing apprehension and improve writing self-efficacy in language learning, this study investigated the effects of models of DA including Buddoff’s Learning Potential Measurement Approach (LPMA), Carlson and Wiedl’s Testing-the-Limits Approach (TLA), and Intensive Mediated Learning Experience (IMLE) on L2 writing apprehension and self-efficacy. The participants were 302 students in four groups. All groups were given the writing apprehension and writing self-efficacy questionnaires as pretests, followed by 20 sessions of treatment. The same questionnaires were given in the last session as posttests. The collected data were analyzed using one-way Analysis of Covariance. The results showed a significant difference among the four groups’ writing apprehension and writing self-efficacy mean scores on the posttests. The findings also revealed that the IMLE group outperformed the other two groups. Based on the results, it was concluded that employing DA models can be conducive to reducing writing apprehension and improving writing self-efficacy among EFL learners. The findings of the present study can have useful implications for teachers, students, material designers, and language assessors.

One of the key components for effective communication and promoting second/foreign language learners’ ability to produce meaningful performance is controlling their language anxiety. This study investigated the relationships among personality types, locus of control, and foreign language anxiety within the context of Iranian EFL learners. A non-experimental type based on a quantitative approach, the present study enjoyed a correlational design. Its participants were 317 Iranian EFL learners who all were undergraduate university students from both genders. The context of this study was the EFL face-to-face educational settings and the participants were from different fields of study at the university level in Iran. Data collection was conducted via three psychological questionnaires for measuring the variables. For data analysis, Pearson correlation and Regression analysis were used to specify the correlation between variables. To examine the mediation role of variables, Z Sobel and Bootstrapping tests were incorporated in the analysis. This study revealed significant relationships among participants’ personality types (extroversion and introversion), locus of control, and foreign language anxiety. The findings showed that there was a significant negative relationship between personality and locus of control and also a significant negative relationship between personality types and foreign language anxiety. Mediation analyses further illuminated the negative mediating role of the locus of control and the positive mediating role of the personality, shedding light on their nuanced dynamics. This study has implications for language educators, practitioners, and policymakers in terms of tailoring interventions to address individual differences and create supportive learning environments.

This study strived to specify and particularize Iranian medical field specialists and EFL teachers’ predominant and overriding textual interventions, which fall within the ambit of convenience editing. To this end, we required 20 field specialists and 20 EFL instructors to edit the unedited versions of 80 published medical research articles in a way that rendered them apt for publication in quality medical journals. We categorized the obtained data of the edited articles using an editing strategy framework that distinguished four editing micro-strategies and five macro-strategies. The findings revealed that medical specialists and EFL teachers’ micro-editing strategies outnumbered their macro-editing ones. Furthermore, there were significant differences between the editing micro-strategy uses of the above-mentioned groups of the participants. The results highlighted the need for a synergic collaboration between the medical field specialists and the EFL teachers to ameliorate medical articles’ formal, stylistic, and genre-related features and to expedite their publication process. 

Criticism of a translation evaluates its quality, accuracy, and effectiveness in communicating with the target readers. To ensure objectivity, such criticism requires a defined model. Pym’s (2007) model is based on two main concepts: directional equivalence and natural equivalence. Directional equivalence highlights the difference between the translation and the original, which is easily recognizable. In contrast, natural equivalence pertains to what different languages and cultures inherently produce within their own systems to convey a message, function, or referent. These two concepts make Pym’s model effective for broad evaluations of translations. This study applied Pym’s framework to objectively criticize the Persian translation of Melville’s (2021) Moby Dick to investigate the type of equivalence—directional or natural—the Persian translator employed. To do so, a comparison was made between the original and its translation to examine the translation techniques adopted by the translator at the micro-level, leading to the determination of his overall strategy at the macro-level based on Malone’s (1988) taxonomy of translation techniques, including matching, zigzagging, recrescence, repackaging, and reordering. The findings revealed that the translator employed all of Malone’s techniques but leaned toward those that prioritized naturalness over directionality. This approach enabled the production of a translation that maintained a close relationship between the source and target languages, ensuring effective communication with Persian readers. The findings of the current study offer pedagogical implications that may be beneficial for translation students, novice critics, and translation teachers.

The following paper was designed to focus on how learners’ process different communication inputs (Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing) and secondly, how gender differences play a significant role in this process. However, materials and instruction methods must also affect individual responses to given tasks. A study on these issues will necessitate the development of gender sensitive instructional materials with a special focus on improving individual comprehension strategies. First year graduate students with English as a compulsory subject of the two selected institutions were taken for our study. In this paper we have reported the differences between the male and female attitudes of the learners and their beliefs in acquiring LSRW skills for learning English as a foreign language (EFL). Survey questionnaires (through Google forms) and interview questions were designed. One sample T-test and paired sample test were taken whereas, interview question responses were analysed to validate the data. The findings revealed that average responses regarding the difficulty of listening skills are statistically significant and correlation between male students learning listening skills are better in the collaborative learning environment whereas the female students depict a positive and moderate correlation for the same. However, it is also found that there is no significant difference between the overall performance of female and male students and the implications have been discussed in the paper.

The increasing advancement of technology in the field of teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) has turned blended learning—a combination of online and in-person learning—into an innovative educational approach. Given the significance of investigating students' attitudes toward learning environments in different EFL contexts, this mixed-methods study was set to examine Iraqi university EFL students' attitudes toward blended EFL courses and investigate gender differences in this regard. Thus, 250 EFL students were selected from five public Iraqi universities via convenience sampling method and completed the questionnaire of the study. Of these participants, a random sample of 25 students was also selected for interview sessions. The questionnaire results suggested that due to serious technological and instructional drawbacks, such as lack of appropriate infrastructure and insufficient technology knowledge, Iraqi EFL students had generally negative attitudes toward EFL blended courses. Gender also played no significant role in students' attitudes. In interviews, they emphasized the importance of technology training programs to pave the way for effective blended EFL courses, mentioning some important benefits for this hybrid approach. The pedagogical implications of the findings are also discussed.

Foreign language (FL) teacher agency, as a significant part of teachers’ professional development, encompasses self-organized efforts to augment professional growth. This study aimed to develop an ecological FL teacher agency model through a sequential exploratory mixed methods design based on which an assessment scale measuring FL teachers' agency value was developed. In the qualitative phase, developing and validating the FL teacher agency model, firstly, an interview guide was developed and piloted in a group of 10 TEFL teacher educators from Farhangian Teacher Education University in Tehran. Then, 30 in-service EFL teachers were interviewed. The data were analyzed through MAXQDA to find the components of the tentative conceptual model of teacher agency.  Based on the interview analysis, the preliminary draft of the EFL teacher agency scale was developed.  The refined EFL teacher agency questionnaire encompassing the three components of Autonomy, Freedom, and Choice was administered to 354 randomly selected EFL teachers. The scale's reliability was gained through Cronbach's alpha, and its construct validity through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). The study findings could be used by foreign language teachers, teacher educators, and TEFL teacher agency researchers. 

The representation of future pre-configuration through policy-making processes has been an in-vogue area of study in the field of discourse analysis. Equally important is the reconstruction of future pre-configuration in the institutional translations of political text and talk. The objective of this study is to investigate the conceptualization of futurity in the preemptive policy-making in the speeches of the Iranian Supreme Leader and their English institutional translations. The data for the present study comes from 20 speeches of the Iranian Supreme Leader and their translations, spanning from 2015-2020, issued by the Office of the Supreme Leader. We employed semantic-syntactic analytical tools such as mood, modality, and aspect to study the conceptualization of futurity in the policy discourse. In conclusion, the findings of the study indicate that these reconstruction of futurity in the preemptive policy-making process in the English institutional translations are to a greater extent similar to the semantic-syntactic properties of the original texts. However, modalization and mood transformation are instances of differences between original and translated versions of texts. Besides, we argued that any instance of the occurrence of similarity or differences stems from on-line dialectic relationships between micro-pragmatic and macro-pragmatic factors