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Fossilization has become the focus of many L2 studies since its introduction in 1972 as many learners fail to achieve native-speaker competence. Researchers have tried to unravel the causes of fossilization, among which noticing has been claimed to be of great importance. This study aimed to explore the effect of noticing on fossilization. To achieve this aim, a mixed methods approach was utilized. Sixty advanced L1 Persian learners of English studying in Iran were chosen to perform two written and three spoken tasks twice. Qualitative data included the content analysis of the participants’ performance on the written and spoken tasks while the quantitative data included percentages of noticed errors and recurrent erroneous forms. The errors observed in both performances were counted and classified. Six main categories named Grammatical Errors, Lexical Errors, and Cohesive Errors were identified. The observed errors were further classified into 61 subcategories. When learners’ ability in noticing their errors was investigated, it was found that they could notice 37.4% of the 3,796 fossilized forms they had produced. Most of the errors observed were categorized in the category of grammatical errors. Noticing affected the number of errors produced. It can be concluded that becoming aware of ones fossilized forms, one will produce fewer fossilized forms. The results of the current study have implications for English language teachers and learners. By being informed of the errors learners make while learning a language and how their noticing affects fossilization, teachers can improve their teaching practice which in turn enhances learning.

The present study examines the role of Gal’perin’s Concept-based Instruction (CBI) as a pedagogical approach in teaching cognitive grammar-based (CG-based) concepts of tense and aspect to EFL students. Following the sociocultural theory of L2 Acquisition (SCT), arming L2 learners with scientific concepts can lead to L2 development by deepening their understanding and raising awareness of L2 structures. To this end, over the course of eight weeks 28 third grade middle school students (14 years old) received the concepts in the CBI framework and 30 third grade middle school students received a traditional type of instruction. There were three sets of data including definition of the concepts of tense and aspect before and after CBI, concept verbalization data during CBI, written discourse performance plus responses to a set of grammatical questions before and after CBI. It was found that although both groups improved significantly after receiving the instruction, the students who received CBI performed significantly better than those in the traditional group. The students who received CBI also produced a significant definition of the concepts and their written discourse performance and responses to the grammatical questions improved after CBI. The result provides insight into the application of scientific concepts in L2 instruction.

In their attempt to shed light on the factors contributing to the incongruity between L2 reading teachers’ beliefs and practices, most of the researchers have resorted to teachers’ personal perspectives. As a partial replication of the research carried out by Karimi and Dehghani (2016), the current study sought to broaden this restricted scope by examining the role of teacher education in shaping L2 reading teachers’ beliefs/practices. Data were collected from 84 L2 reading teachers through a survey and follow-up classroom observations. Overall, both undergraduate and graduate teachers had an equally heightened tendency toward competence-based theoretical orientation. However, both groups substantially utilized instructional moves conforming to text-based orientation. There were also significant frequency differences between undergraduate and graduate teachers in their recourse to competence-based pedagogical moves. It is concluded that while the inclusion of a finite number of theoretical coursework may sway L2 teachers to sanction competence-based theoretical orientation, a more clinical approach to teacher education should be embraced to promote the symbiotic belief-practice relationship among L2 reading teachers.

Reconciliating the logics of Post-method Era, Critical Pedagogy, and Sociocultural Theory in its conceptual framework, this study postulated Iranian EFL teachers’ socio-pedagogical identity as comprising conformity, criticality, and conformity-criticality mediation in order to explore and model the different aspects of Iranian EFL teachers’ “transformative teaching self,” probably contributing to their pedagogical ZPD and sociocultural identity development. To this end, Systematic Reflexive Constructivist Grounded Theory was utilized as the methodology of this 63-participant study managing both the data collection procedures, i.e. interview, focus group, observation, field notes, and document analysis, and the data analysis procedures, i.e. tabulation, open coding, initial memoing, axial coding, intermediate memoing, selective coding, advanced memoing, and theoretical sampling. The findings of the study were put into a putative model, delineating Iranian EFL teachers’ transformative teaching self at its core, which can constantly stimulate the teachers’ three interactive triplex identity types, i.e. conformative, critical, and mediational identities. Finally, this study entailed some implications such as updating teachers’ knowledge of mediational identity, professional retraining about mediation, encouraging teachers to achieve an understanding of their transformative teaching self, and preparing them to be efficient transformative teaching learners and practitioners of the model in this study.

English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses are currently well-established university programs. These courses are run independently by English Language Teaching (ELT) instructors and content instructors without any collaboration. However, ELT instructors and content instructors do not receive the same level of collegiality and social support from the organizations and students. This paper probed burnout among Iranian EAP teachers, including content instructors and ELT instructors in 28 state universities and its variations in relation to their demographic and organizational characteristics. To this aim, the Persian version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) was administered to content instructors (N=185) and ELT instructors (N=86) in the state universities in Iran. The results of the study indicated that while most of EAP teachers, both content instructors and ELT instructors, had low burnout, a considerable number had mid-levels of emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment. The findings of the study also indicated that the ELT instructors had higher emotional exhaustion than the content instructors, and it was also found that the content instructors with more than 13 years of experience and the ELT instructors with more than 20 years of experience in teaching such courses had the lowest burnout. Based on the findings of the study, educational administrators are suggested to take remedial and preventive actions against EAP teachers’ burnout and enhance ELT instructors’ occupational well-being. It also seems necessary to assist EAP teachers in adapting to the requirements of teaching EAP courses through pre/in-service teacher training courses to obviate the need for extensive experience for gaining expertise in it.

Cognates are the words celebrating their similarities from phonetic, orthographic, and semantic points of view across two or more languages. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of cognate-based instruction strategy on vocabulary learning among Iranian EFL learners. To achieve the goal of the study, 80 EFL learners (15-27 years old) took part in the study; all of them were learning English at language institutes of Lorestan and Isfahan provinces in Iran. Half of the participants who were native speakers of Laki language were assigned to experimental group and the remaining 40 who were from Isfahan and not familiar with Laki language were assigned to control group. Oxford Placement Test (OPT) was administered to make sure that the participants were homogeneous. The participants in both groups were taught target words (42 English-Laki cognate words), by the researcher, during six sessions. A pretest was administered for both groups before the treatment and a posttest was managed after the treatment for both groups. Three weeks after the treatment, a delayed posttest was administered for experimental group, only. One sample t test for pre and posttest, and paired sample t test for delayed posttest were run. Findings of the study showed that participants in the experimental group outperformed the participants in the control group, resulting in null hypothesis rejection. In addition, the results indicated similar performance of experimental group in both posttest and delayed posttest, confirming that new cognate words were not forgotten over a period of time.