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Given the role philosophical mentality can fulfill in bringing individuals the essential skills of wisdom and well thinking, the present paper, by applying Smith’s (2007) theoretical framework, strived to explore the extent philosophic-mindedness exists among the participants. Considering the fact that, a philosophic mind begets philosophical answers, the participants’ philosophical thinking ability was evaluated through analyzing their answers to philosophical questions. To this end, through convenience sampling, a group of 40 EFL students in BA degree, 21 female and 19 male with the age range of 19 to 35, at Shiraz University, Iran, were selected. They were asked to read two simple short passages, story and non-story, and answer the related questions. Based on three characteristics of philosophic-mindedness (i.e. comprehensiveness, penetration, and flexibility) it was revealed that the majority of the participants signified rigidity and dogmatism in their way of thinking and were in the habit of shallow and superficial thinking. They seemed to be unable to afford themselves a profound insight into the questions. The minority, on the other hand, took notice of different options in the questions, reappraised their varying strands, and provided reasonable answers.  In addition, it was inferred that lack of comprehensiveness alone assures lack of philosophical mentality. Finally, the three dimensions of philosophic-mindedness recommended in the framework can be utilized by stakeholders in educational fields to realize a person with (non-) philosophical mentality.

Teacher enthusiasm and its impact on students’ learning and emotions have remained unnoticed in the realm of second language learning and teaching. This study aimed at exploring the possibility of boosting language teacher enthusiasm and its potential relationship with language learners’ effort and attitude for language learning. In order to foster teacher enthusiasm, the highly novel concept of vision was utilized and a vision enhancement program was conducted to improve language teacher enthusiasm. Four EFL teachers and their 46 students participated in the research project. Two of the teachers were assigned to the six-week visionary intervention and the other two received no treatment. A Likert-scale questionnaire measuring perceived teacher enthusiasm, intended effort, and attitude to language learning was administered to all the students before and after the treatment. Results of ANCOVA revealed that those students whose teachers were subjected to vision enhancement were significantly different from the students whose teachers did not receive the treatment. Moreover, linear regression analyses demonstrated that students’ perception of teacher enthusiasm can positively predict their effort and attitude. The efficiency of visionary training for improving teacher enthusiasm gained empirical support. Besides, the findings underscore the link between teacher enthusiasm and students’ effort and attitude.

The major objective of this experimental research was to assess the differences between two varieties of focus on form instruction, namely proactive and reactive across multimodal vs. traditional input settings in both comprehension and production of modal auxiliaries. The participants of the study were 75 Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) high school students at the elementary level in three classes. The students in each class took part in a pre-test including both comprehension and production items. Then, they were randomly exposed to one of the three types of grammar instruction, i.e. proactive focus on form in which students were exposed to multimodal input through preplanned techniques of input enhancement and input flood, reactive focus on form in which the tasks occurred in multimodal episodes including negotiation and correction by the instructor through recasts, clarification requests, and repetition techniques. Lastly, in the control group, the students were provided with a pamphlet and their teacher’s explanations. The post-test was then administered to the three groups, and the results were analyzed by conducting a one-way-analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) which revealed a significant difference among these three groups. The results showed that the proactive group outperformed the reactive and control groups both in the comprehension and production of modal auxiliaries. At the end of the experiment, a brief survey which was accomplished through an interview revealed that the majority of the students highly favored PowerPoint presentations, teacher's explanations, and video clips respectively.

This study investigated the quality of metacognition at its inter-individual level, i.e., socially-shared metacognition, across two collaborative writing tasks of different difficulty levels among a cohort of Iranian EFL learners. Moreover, it examined the correlation between the individual and the social modes of metacognition in writing. The analysis of think-aloud protocols of a number of pre-intermediate and advanced EFL learners revealed instances of episodes in which peers used metacognitive activities at pair level. Besides, comparing think-aloud protocols of tasks indicated more frequent and longer use of socially-shared metacognitive episodes in more difficult writing tasks. The study also found high correlation between the social mode of metacognition in L2 writing and learners’ individual metacognition. The pedagogical implications include the provision of learning opportunities in which learners are challenged to exploit metacognitive strategies, such as planning, monitoring, and self-evaluating.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of various online techniques (word reference, media, and vocabulary games) on reading comprehension as well as vocabulary comprehension and production. For this purpose, 60 language learners were selected and divided into three groups, and each group was randomly assigned to one of the treatment conditions. In the first session of treatment, a vocabulary test was administered as the pretest of the study. During treatment, the language learners in those three groups were instructed through online vocabulary games, online media along with transcript and online word reference. At the end of the treatment, a reading comprehension test, a vocabulary comprehension, and a vocabulary production test were given as the posttests. The collected data were analyzed using three one-way ANOVA procedures. The results showed that the online media group outperformed the other groups. Based on the findings of this study, it can be concluded that different online tools may have differential effects on learning different aspects of language. This implies that adhering to any single online tool may not necessarily bring about desirable results. The conclusion to be drawn from this is that teachers need to make use of a combination of these tools.

An utterance may constitute act. Hence, performing acts through speech are commonly committed by people currently; it is no exception for the EFL students. Some linguists assert that learning communicative competence is of great importance in communication including the act of speaking in the social context. This study was carried out to investigate the students’ acquaintances with speech act. A survey was conducted in this study so as to know their acquaintances with speech act. This study focused on the divisions of speech act including locutionary act, illocutionary act, perlocutionary act, and direct and indirect speech act. The data resource was the sixth semester students of class B at University of Islam Malang majoring in English Education Program. A questionnaire was distributed to know if they have an acquaintance with the speech act. The data was analyzed with descriptive statistics after being collected. The findings revealed that the students still committed errors towards the speech act competence. They, a considerable part, did not know parts of speech act which is salient to recognize. For this reason, the researcher expects that the students will be capable of recognizing more on speech act by learning either from this paper or from other resources regarding speech act learning.

In this study, the use of speech-like pragmatic markers in Iranian EFL students’ academic writing was investigated. Speech-like pragmatic markers, such as I think, well, I guess, actually, anyway, anyhow, etc. are linguistic components that are more specific to conversation than writing, and writers may wrongly include them in their academic writing. To examine the students’ use of speech-like pragmatic markers when writing an essay, samples of Iranian students’ and English native students’ argumentative essays were analyzed using Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (CIA). Moreover, the overuse or underuse of such items was compared between English native students and Iranian EFL students. Native English data were collected from the Louvain Corpus of Native English Essays (LOCNESS) and non-native English data were gathered from Iranian students’ essays during an academic semester from Islamic Azad University of Najafabad, Islamic Azad University of Abadan and Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz in Iran. Iranian participants were 71 EFL upper-intermediate (based on the Oxford Placement Test) graduate students that were selected randomly from male and female students. A frequency analysis of pragmatic markers indicates significant differences between Iranian students’ and English native students’ use of speech-like pragmatic markers. Quantitative analyses of the non-native corpus data revealed that students apply these spoken components in their argumentative essays, which may adversely affect their text in terms of a correct style and tone. By investigating the results, the language teachers and materials writers are recommended to recognize the features of Iranian English students’ interlanguage and to provide them with planned input about appropriate use of pragmatic markers.

Japanese exhibits a large degree of flexibility in terms of word order. Thus, not only SOV but also OSV (scrambling) and SVO (postposing) are grammatical. In terms of discourse function, there are some similarities between scrambling and (non-pause type) postposing. According to Author (2017) and Shimojo (2005), scrambled objects and postposed elements are anaphorically salient but cataphorically non-salient. Yet, Shimojo (2005: 202) observed no example with a postposed object. In order to explain this tendency, I propose that scrambling is not as costly as postposing due to the following two reasons. First, scrambling follows given-new-ordering whereas postposing does not. Second, rightward movements are more costly than leftward movements in Japanese (Fukui: 1993). Therefore, postposing is expected to be selected when scrambling cannot be chosen. As scrambling can be used for the object but not for the subject in SOV, postposing is dominantly utilized for subjects.

Many studies have been conducted on the ways of promoting willingness to communicate in learners in EFL/ESL contexts. While different scholars have undertaken studies on many of these variables, few of these studies have aimed at EFL university students in Iran. This study reports on the role of international posture and perceived communication behavior on Iranian EFL learners’ communication in English. The participants who accepted to attend the survey completed questionnaires on WTC, international posture and perceived communication behaviors. The results driven based on this research indicated that Iranian English BA students are generally tended to speak in English. The participants' willingness to communicate in English was found to have a significant relationship with their perceived communication behaviors and international posture. The findings of this study will be beneficial for various policy makers and practitioners, including those dealing with curriculum development and teacher education to focus more on the elements influencing communication in English. Many studies have been conducted on the ways of promoting willingness to communicate in learners in EFL/ESL contexts. While different scholars have undertaken studies on many of these variables, few of these studies have aimed at EFL university students in Iran. This study reports on the role of international posture and perceived communication behavior on Iranian EFL learners’ communication in English. The participants who accepted to attend the survey completed questionnaires on WTC, international posture and perceived communication behaviors. The results driven based on this research indicated that Iranian English BA students are generally tended to speak in English. The participants' willingness to communicate in English was found to have a significant relationship with their perceived communication behaviors and international posture. The findings of this study will be beneficial for various policy makers and practitioners, including those dealing with curriculum development and teacher education to focus more on the elements influencing communication in English.

This study sought to compare Iranian EFL novice and expert teachers regarding their professional knowledge at Iranian language institutes and universities. To achieve the aim of study, a questionnaire was developed based on the literature, the theoretical framework and the results of a qualitative study carried out by Yazdanpanah and Sahragard (2017). This questionnaire was administered to the whole sample of the study who was 200 Iranian EFL teachers from different genders and educational contexts. The participants were selected conveniently as going through random sampling was not possible. Based on the results of the exploratory factor analysis, six factors emerged under the main category of professional knowledge for Iranian EFL teachers. The findings of this study revealed that: (a) Iranian EFL expert teachers have higher levels of professional knowledge than Iranian EFL novice teachers (b) expert teachers have higher levels of knowledge about language and knowledge of language skills and components than novice teachers (c) expert and novice participants of this study are more or less similar in the modification they make in their teaching presentation, and d) there was not a significant difference between Iranian EFL expert teachers and Iranian EFL novice teachers due to knowledge of language teaching, knowledge of teaching methods and knowledge of language learning.

This study is an attempt to extend our current knowledge by exploring the relationship between spiritual intelligence (SI) and multiple intelligences (MI) on one hand and the relationship between spiritual intelligence and language learning strategies (LLS) on the other hand among 30 MA TEFL learners of a state university in Tehran. To this end, King's Spiritual Intelligence Self-Report Inventory, Oxford's Language Learning Strategy Inventory, and Multiple Intelligences Inventory developed by McKenzie were utilized to gather data. The obtained results revealed a moderate positive correlation between some subscales of SI and MI including: personal meaning production and musical intelligence, and also between existential intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence and critical existential thinking. Furthermore, a moderate positive correlation was found between conscious state expansion and metacognitive strategies as two subscales of SI and LLS. Based on the results, implications for further research are discussed.