درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study was an endeavor to develop a model of cultural identity among Iranian advanced EFL learners. To achieve this end, a multiphase design was implemented. Initially, it was attempted to investigate different factors of cultural identity to propose and validate a model. Thus, 20 EFL learners studying in Safir English language institute in Tehran were interviewed about their views of their cultural identity in the qualitative phase. After extracting four factors of cultural identity including: “religion, culture, nationality, and language”, a questionnaire was constructed which reflected these factors. Then, in the quantitative phase, the 30-item questionnaire went through an exploratory factor analysis for the sake of validity and after its validity and reliability were corroborated through a pilot study with 183 learners, it was distributed among 384 EFL learners. In addition, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis was run through LISREL 8.8. to confirm that the final proposed model enjoyed validity for future research. To do so, a confirmatory factor analysis was run and the model of cultural identity was developed. Eventually, the possible relationship between 384 EFL learners’ cultural identity and their English language achievement scores was examined and the results of this phase indicated that there was a significant and positive relationship between learners’ cultural identity and their English language achievement scores. The findings of this study can enhance awareness among English teachers, materials developers, and syllabus designers to equip themselves with the updated techniques to handle the possible challenges that may occur in EFL learning contexts.

Along with growing technology, the flipped learning model has emerged as an alternative to conventional teaching methods. The present study attempted to investigate the students' perceptions of a flipped learning classroom experience contrasted with those of a non-flipped or conventional classroom. To this end, 23 Iranian EFL learners were assigned to two groups. During the first ten weeks, non-flipped teaching was applied to class A and flipped learning to class B. After the midterm, during the next ten weeks, the teaching methods were reversed. The students were interviewed in-depth about their impressions of the learning experience. Also, a questionnaire and students' portfolios were used to draw comprehensive conclusions. The qualitative analysis of data revealed four themes: flipped or non-flipped, working with technology, group commitment, and student-teacher relationship. Overall, learners had contrasting views about learning in the flipped classroom. In general, they preferred non-flipped classroom.

Working memory is believed to interact with a second language (L2) learning at the cognitive level. The present study sought to explore the impact of L2 readers’ prior knowledge on the contribution of working memory to reading comprehension. Eighty Iranian English learners were divided into two groups of high and low by their scores on L2 knowledge and the topic knowledge tests. Their working memory spans, and reading comprehension abilities were measured via a working memory test and a reading comprehension test respectively. The results indicated that working memory significantly predicted L2 reading comprehension only when the readers had sufficient topic knowledge. The results also show that the learners’ comprehension was mostly determined by their L2 linguistic knowledge, even when they had considerable working memory capacity. The findings imply that readers’ prior knowledge could moderate the contribution of working memory in L2 reading comprehension. A certain level of knowledge in the target language and on the topic is required for L2 readers to help working memory work more efficiently.

This study aimed to investigate the effect of teaching discourse markers (DMs) on Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ speaking achievement. In the first step, 60 homogeneous intermediate students out of 110 were chosen from a private English language institute and randomly divided into two equal groups, namely an experimental group and a control group. Then they were pretested through a researcher-made speaking test. During the treatment, the experimental group was taught DMs by conversations. Then, they found the DMs in transcriptions of conversations. Also, the researcher used a researcher-made booklet containing the instructional materials related to DMs to be taught to the learners. On the other hand, there was not any direct instruction to DMs to the students in the control group. They only narrated the assigned storybook, and performed conversations by role play. These posters were used based on the related topics of the learner’s textbooks. After the treatment which took 12 sessions, the researcher administered the modified version of the mentioned pre-test as the post-test to find out the effect of the treatment on the participants’ speaking achievement. When the data were collected, one-way ANCOVA was run to analyze them. The results showed that there was no significant difference between experimental and control group in the post-test. Indeed, the findings indicated that teaching discourse markers (DMs) did not have any effect on Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ speaking achievement.

The present study investigated the educational objectives of the English literature curricula at the undergraduate and graduate levels at Iranian universities based on Bloom’s revised taxonomy. Using a detailed checklist based on Bloom’s revised taxonomy and the respective classifications, the educational objectives associated with knowledge ( factual, conceptual, procedural , and metacognitive ) and cognitive ( remember , understand , apply , analyze , evaluate , and create) dimensions were analyzed. The results of the content analysis revealed the dominance of the lower-order thinking skills in the undergraduate curriculum and the prevalence of the higher-order thinking skills in the graduate curriculum. The results showed that the most frequent objective in terms of the knowledge domain was understand in both curricula. Regarding the knowledge dimension, conceptual and procedural knowledge occurred most often at both curricula, confirming that acquiring the knowledge of concepts and the processes safeguards the commended quality for the curriculum designers. Moreover, it was found that the metacognitive-related categories were almost missing from the categories. The results of the cross-tabulation revealed the superiority understand / conceptual in BA and the supremacy of understand/procedural in MA objectives. The findings entail the revisions of the educational objectives to accommodate critical thinking. The findings have pedagogical implications for EFL teachers, the curriculum developers, and policy makers.

The current study aimed to investigate the relationship among English for academic purposes instructors’ interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence types, language teaching anxiety, and classroom management beliefs taking a correlational research design. To this end, a convenient sample of 98 EAP instructors were asked to complete the excerpted sections of McKenzie’s Multiple Intelligences Questionnaire, Teacher Anxiety Scale, and Behavior and Instructional Management Scale. The results of Pearson product-moment tests revealed a significant negative relationship between interpersonal intelligence and classroom management beliefs while no significant link was observed between intrapersonal intelligence and classroom management beliefs. The same results were obtained for the possible relationship between these two intelligence types and language teaching anxiety. Furthermore, a significant negative relationship was found between EAP instructors’ language teaching anxiety and classroom management beliefs. The multiple regression analysis also showed that interpersonal intelligence could strongly predict EAP instructors’ classroom management beliefs. Furthermore, the two independent samples t-tests demonstrated that language and content instructors differed with regard to their language teaching anxiety and classroom management beliefs in EAP classes. The results were discussed in light of previously existing literature and some pedagogical implications were presented for EAP teacher training courses.