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Teacher professional development, as a burgeoning term, has attracted a surge of interest in English language teaching. In second language (L2) professional development, the common orthodoxy has been one which considers teachers as that of knowledge consumers. It is commonly argued that top-down approaches to teachers’ professional development has done little to maximize teachers’ professionalism. To unravel the above-mentioned dilemma, this study was an attempt to implement collaborative action research, as a viable means, to boost teachers’ professional development in a networked community of shared knowledge. To this end, thirteen male and female Iranian English teachers, within the age range of 22-35, were selected through convenience sampling. The selected participants were added to a group in WhatsApp. The online classes began with plenary debate, mostly in the form of workshops through problematizing a particular topic, which were directly linked to teachers’ actual teaching experience. Insights into the EFL teachers’ professional development were acquired through the triangulation of data from four main sources (i.e., teachers’ professional journals, reflective journals, action research projects, and semi-structured interviews). The findings revealed that engaging EFL teachers in a collaborative dialogue in a networked community of shared knowledge ultimately culminated in development of action research projects which resulted in sustained L2 professional development, whereby participating teachers developed a broader understanding of research and adopted reflective inquiry in their L2 teaching practices. The findings have important implications for language teachers in general, and EFL teachers, syllabus designers, and material developers, in particular.

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.

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.

Burgeoning research in applied linguistics has underscored the interplay among individual, cognitive, and social variables that can delineate the ultimate attainment in various areas including vocabulary learning and the need to explore how innovative conflation of these dimensions may promote learning outcomes. The present quasi-experimental study examined the impact of Thematic Vocabulary Instruction (TVI) with and without Multiple Intelligence-oriented tasks on advanced EFL learners’ vocabulary learning and scrutinized probable differences among individual learners with varying intellectual propensities. Thus, a stratified homogeneous sample of 80 advanced EFL learners was selected and randomly assigned to four groups; the first and the second experimental groups (EG1 and EG2) received TVI with tasks compatible and incompatible with their dominant intelligence, respectively. The third experimental group (EG3) received TVI focused on coursebook exercises and the control group (CG) received non-thematic instruction based on textbook exercises. A parallel vocabulary test was administered to measure the participants’ vocabulary learning. The research data were analyzed via the Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests and revealed that the EG1 significantly outperformed the other groups and intrapersonally-intelligent learners significantly underperformed their peers in the EG1. The findings underscore the significance of taking individual differences into account and offer a number of pedagogical implications.

This study sought to promote EFL learners' speaking ability drawing on Bakhtin’s notion of dialogic discourse pattern (DDP) and to explore their perceptions towards implementing dialogic teaching (DT) in a speaking classroom. To this end, from the population of students in different language institutes, 47 students were selected based on a purposive sampling method. The data were collected at two step-wise processes adopting a mixed-method approach. First, the researcher directed two EFL teachers to apply the DDP principles in a dialogic (DG) and non-dialogic group (NDG). The intervention lasted for 12 weeks. Then, a posttest of speaking was conducted to track the possible improvement. The findings attested that the dialogic talk could promote EFL learners’ speaking ability. Next, DG group was required to complete a written discourse completion task to determine the extent to which incorporating DT could promote learners’ speaking ability. To analyze the data, Thomas's (2006) inductive approach was adopted comprising the dominant themes. The results revealed different themes and sub-themes such as developing self-directed learning skills, disseminating critical literacy practice, fostering language learning, promoting motivation and affective factors, to name but a few. The findings propose some implications for classroom management, materials preparation, and language policy program.

This study examined the association between teacher educators’ personality traits and their interpersonal behavior at Farhangian University (Teacher Education University in Iran). A sample of 148 student teachers majoring in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) at two branches of Iranian Teacher Education University evaluated their teacher educators’ interpersonal behavior by the questionnaire for teacher interaction (QTI). The teacher educators (N=17) also completed the QTI and the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI). The results of correlational analyses indicated significant associations between educators’ personality traits and their interpersonal behavior. More associations were observed between educators’ personality and student teachers’ perceptions of interpersonal behavior while fewer associations were observed between educators’ personality and the educators’ self-perceptions. Moreover, the results revealed that all educators’ personality traits except for Openness were significantly correlated with the two interpersonal behavior dimensions of Influence and Proximity. When stepwise regression analyses were done for the Influence dimension, the strongest model for prediction included Neuroticism and Conscientiousness while for the second dimension, Agreeableness emerged as the sole, significant predictor of educator Proximity.

The literature on foreign language reading instruction has witnessed a significant bulk of research reporting the effectiveness of strategy instruction in improving reading outcomes. However, few studies have investigated the effects of reading strategy instruction on reading affective variables among young English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of teaching second language (L2) reading strategies on young Iranian EFL learners’ reading self-efficacy and reading attitudes. To this end, a sample of 48 Iranian EFL learners, aged 11-13, was recruited through convenience sampling and randomly assigned to an experimental group (N = 25) and a control group (N = 23). Using a quasi-experimental design, the researchers employed an experimental group that received a 12-week reading strategy instruction and a control group that were taught with the regular method without any strategy instruction. The Reading Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (RSEQ) and Reading Attitude Questionnaire (RAQ) were administered to measure the reading self-efficacy and reading attitudes of the participants as pre-test and post-test of the study. The strategy instruction intervention for the present study was based on Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA). The findings of the study indicated that the learners in the experimental group significantly outperformed those of the control group in terms of L2 reading self-efficacy. However, it was revealed that there was no significant difference between the reading attitudes of the two groups at the end of the semester. Overall, it may be concluded that EFL practitioners can incorporate teaching of reading strategies into their classrooms in order to help learners to gain both confidence and competence to address reading tasks more effectively.

The current mixed-method research aimed to investigate the effects of self-constructs on self-regulation. To this end, a number of 127 Iranian EFL learners were chosen randomly as the sample of the study. To collect data, semi-structured interviews were designed. Also, correlation analysis and regression analysis were run on the data. The results of interview data suggested that motivated learners who reported self-regulation tended to display positive visualization of their ideal L2 self and self-efficacy beliefs. Besides, the result of correlation analysis indicated that ideal L2 self had stronger association with self-efficacy beliefs than with self-regulation, suggesting that it is necessary to hold positive beliefs towards language learning in order to visualize oneself as a proficient and successful language user. Of the two self-constructs, self-regulation turned out to be most strongly associated with self-efficacy followed by ideal L2 self indicating that what characterizes self-regulated learners is that their levels of self-efficacy is higher compared to those who are not. Finally, the result of regression analysis revealed that self-efficacy and, to the lesser extent, ideal L2 self were found as direct predictors of self-regulation. It seems unlikely to be a motivated learner without the actual beliefs in ones’ ability and a strong actualization of one’s image as a successful language user.   

This study aims to explore the attitudes and practices of Iraqi EFL teachers regarding formative assessment (FA). A total of 102 teachers from primary school to university filled in the Arabic version of Teachers' Conceptions and Practices of Formative Assessment Questionnaire. The questionnaire was translated from English into Arabic first and was validated using confirmatory factor analysis (Hazim Jawad, 2020). Findings showed that a 7-factor model had acceptable fit indices (GFI=0.90, CFI=0.91, RMSEA=0.05). Descriptive statistics were used to explain Iraqi EFL teachers’ attitudes and intentions regarding FA. Findings showed that the majority of Iraqi teachers believe that formative assessment is a useful procedure for measuring students’ learning and is helpful in their education. They also indicated that they have a positive attitude towards FA and are willing to use it. Correlational analysis showed that Affective Attitude, Instrumental Attitude, Subjective Norm, Controllability, and Self-Efficacy were strong predictors of intentions to use formative assessment. However, only Instrumental Attitude had a small significant correlation with the Behavior Scale. In other words, those teachers who believe that FA is useful in improving students learning tend to actually employ FA in their teaching. Findings also showed that female teachers have more positive attitudes towards FA and tend to use it more in their teaching. Implications of the findings for improving English language teaching are discussed.