درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The quality of students’ relationships with their peers plays an important role in developing their academic achievement. The present study aimed at constructing an accurate, reliable, and valid instrument that could assess the EFL students’ perceptions of peer support. The instrument includes different subscales, namely Informational Support, Emotional Support, Instrumental Support, Feedback, and Companionship Support. The Peer Support Questionnaire was administered to 212 Iranian undergraduate EFL students studying at two public universities in Iran. An exploratory and a confirmatory factor analysis were conducted, and the overall factor loading estimates indicated a quite satisfactory level of convergent validity for the developed Questionnaire. Both the degree of factor loadings and the construct validity test supported the convergent validity of peer support factors and their related items. The findings demonstrated that PSQ could be a valid and reliable instrument for measuring the concept of peer support in both academic and educational settings.

Language teacher immunity has recently attracted the attention of the scholars interested in teacher psychology. Following the previous line of research in teacher psychology, the present study explored the immunity types among 260 Iranian EFL teachers working in schools and language institutes. Drawing on Hiver’s (2017) categorization, this study found that the participants were classified into productively and maladaptively immunized teachers through cluster analysis. It was also found that gender played a significant role, and female participants were more productively immunized than men. Regarding the role of teaching experience, it was found that EFL teachers’ immunity fluctuated in the late stages of their practice to a more fossilized, negative one. Regarding age differences, the results also suggested different immunity types among the participants of different age groups. The results implied that teacher education programs should enhance EFL teachers’ understanding of language teacher immunity as an important factor in their effectiveness and well-being as well as students’ achievement.

This study investigated the comparative effects of audio-visually prompted collaborative dialogue on the listening comprehension development of symmetrical, asymmetrical, and asymmetrical teacher-fronted EFL learner groups. Besides, it explored the attitude of the participants of the groups concerning the effectiveness of collaborative dialogue for their listening comprehension improvement. The participants of the study were 120 Iranian female EFL learners who were conveniently chosen from several English language institutes and put into three experimental and one control groups, each with 30 learners. In the first experimental group, coequal learners engaged in collaborative dialogue. In the second experimental group, the expert peer(s) and less knowledgeable peers applied collaborative dialogue, and in the third experimental group, in addition to the peers, the teacher was involved in collaborative dialogue with the group members. As for the control group, the collaborative dialogue was abandoned and the participants worked individually. Quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed that collaborative dialogue in asymmetrical teacher-fronted, asymmetrical peer and symmetrical peer groups were respectively the most effective procedures for listening comprehension development of the EFL learners. Also, it was found that the participants of the asymmetrical teacher fronted group had a more positive attitude towards the efficacy of audio-visually prompted collaborative dialogue compared with asymmetrical and symmetrical peer groups. The findings underscore the cognitive and affective efficiency of a more knowledgeable source, either a teacher or a peer, in asymmetrical dyadic interactions for the less knowledgeable partners' ZPD sensitive development.   

Designing appropriate materials and activities to enhance vocabulary learning is one of the primary goals of language courses. Among the claims about efficient pedagogical tasks is the Involvement Load Hypothesis (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001) according to which vocabulary development is contingent on the amount of cognitive process a task involves. Building on the previous research on this hypothesis, this study seeks to explore the extent to which three post-listening tasks of different involvement loads along with single-versus dual-mode glosses affect receptive and productive vocabulary learning of advanced English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. The participants (n = 204) listened to an expository text while twenty lexical items were presented through text-only or text-plus-picture glosses. Subsequently, they were assigned to one of the task type groups (sentence writing, gap-fill, and paragraph writing). Paribakht and Wesche’s (1997) Vocabulary Knowledge Scale was employed as the pre and post-tests. The results pointed to the efficacy of dual-mode over single-mode glosses concerning both receptive and productive vocabulary learning. The sentence writing task produced the highest scores in the vocabulary tests, whereas the gap-fill and paragraph writing tasks did not significantly differ. Hence, the results only partially confirmed the Involvement Load Hypothesis. The current study corroborates other studies verifying the modality effect on vocabulary learning and suggests that task type is a significant factor in EFL vocabulary learning.

In the realm of second language acquisition (SLA), task-based language teaching (TBLT) and input enhancement (IE) have been the focus of a great number of studies. However, the idea of investigating the effects of focus on form instruction through input-enhanced tasks along with pre-task planning time as one of the features of task-based language teaching has been rarely explored in the field of SLA. Therefore, the current research set out to examine the impacts of focus on form instruction via textually-enhanced reading tasks along with strategic pre-task planning on L2 learners’ grammatical development in terms of learning English passive voice. For the purpose of the study, 60 intermediate learners of English were selected and divided into two groups of thirty namely as enhanced and unenhanced. Then, each group was divided into two sub-groups of fifteen as +planning and -planning. The participants were provided with a pretest prior to the treatment, then, they were instructed via the materials chosen for the purpose of the study for ten sessions and at the end they were provided with the posttest of the study. Their performance on the pretest and posttest were analyzed to find out the possible effects of the instruction provided throughout the treatment phase. The results revealed that learners who were exposed to enhanced reading tasks along with strategic pre-task planning time outperformed the other learners. The findings of the present study can be of use for language teachers, syllabus designers, and task designers.

In educational psychology, mindsets refer to a set of core beliefs about intelligence and its role in successful learning in a specific domain. This study investigated the extent to which, the EFL learners’ mindsets might predict their English achievement considering the mediating roles of engagement and self-regulation. The data were collected by means of three questionnaires: The Language Mindset Inventory (LMI), the University Student Engagement Inventory (USEI), and the Academic Self-Regulated Learning Scale (A-SRL-S), as well as the institutes’ reports on their English achievement. We analyzed the data quantitatively using the SPSS 20 and Amos 8 Software. The results revealed that there was a significant direct relationship between language mindsets and English achievement of the EFL learners. Besides, this relationship was significantly mediated by the learners’ engagement and self-regulation. Drawing on the findings of this research, the challenge for teachers is to cultivate in students the mindsets that emphasize growth and potentials rather than constraints and stagnation.

Mixed in method, the present study investigated whether there was any significant difference between students’and teachers’perceptions of Iranian medical English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students’ language needs. In so doing, 220 EAP students of medicine, 30 subject-matter teachers of EAP, and 20 teachers of English for General Purposes (EGP) teaching medical EAP completed a Likert-scale questionnaire. Fifty of the students and 20 of the teachers also attended a semi-structured interview. The results of both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics indicated that, overall, there was a significant mismatch between the students’and the teachers’perceptions of medical EAP students’ needs. However, both teachers and students perceived reading comprehension as the most important language skill. Moreover, the students, in general, were found not to be satisfied with the EAP program presented to them. The results might prove fruitful for curriculum designers, materials developers, and teachers in (medical) EAP contexts to hear students’voices and to incorporate them in their programs, syllabi, and teaching.

The worldwide spread of English as the dominant language of globalization has accelerated the development and implementation of Foreign Language Education Policy (FLEP) in many countries. However, Iranian macro policymakers seem to be reluctant to develop an overt FLEP due to ideologized agendas. This study employs document analysis to explore FLEP in eight major national policy documents in Iran including, inter alia, National Vision 2025, Comprehensive Scientific Roadmap, and National Document of Education. This analysis was based on Kaplan and Baldauf’s (1997, 2003) framework for language-in-education planning, which covers Access, Curriculum, Methods and Materials, Evaluation, Personnel, and Resourcing policy as its major components. The data, coded through MAXQDA Software, revealed that the documents relatively deal with almost all components of FLEP excluding the Resourcing policy. Curriculum policy and Methods and materials policy receive the highest attention. Further, some contradictions, conflicts of interest, and gaps are observed in the documents regarding FLEP. Although these documents deemed English necessary for the development of the country, there are worries that it may lead to Westernization. The findings also show that FLEP in Iran is top-down and hardly reflects the needs and attitudes of the community. This has resulted in the failure of ELT in public schools and, in turn, its boom in the private sectors.