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Overviewing the current literature on Western and Islamic orientations to English language education and illuminating the advantages and challenges of each orientation, this study endeavored to critically examine English language teaching in the context of Iran. In effect, this study elaborated on modernist, postmodernist, and Islamic orientations to language teaching. In tandem, this critical examination initiated from the modernist orientation because this orientation constituted the basis of contemporary academic disciplines. The findings revealed that there exists a strong similarity between postmodernist and Islamic orientations, when Islam is studied as an educational paradigm rather than a political issue. Moreover, the critical examination of the relevant studies on the context of Iran showed the prevalence of the native speaker ideology, systematicity, and standardisation as manifestations of the modernist orientation leading to unequal Englishes. In reality, unequal Englishes can be considered as a colonial enterprise illegitimizing non-native speakers and downplaying local varieties. Analyzing the concept of unequal Englishes, we have also argued that there is a real need to establish a dialogue across postmodernist and Islamic orientations to challenge power relations and foreground knowing as an act of identity. Accordingly, we called for an ontological turn in English language education in Iran, which revolves around super-diversity and perceives language as a practice situated in a social-cultural-historical context.

Language assessment literacy has been addressed in a wealth of research. However, many studies have attempted to measure teachers’ assessment literacy, there is still a gap that prompted us to investigate the area from the EFL teachers' assessment literacy needs perspective. To accomplish the purpose, in line with the changes in classroom assessment over the past decades, this study was an attempt to develop and validate an inventory on Teachers Assessment Literacy Needs (TALNs). As the first stage, a set of items was generated through an extensive review of the relevant studies. In the quantitative phase, the developed inventory was administered to 159 English as a foreign language teachers selected through convenience sampling. An inventory construction and validation framework consisting of exploratory analyses was used to examine the construct validity of the proposed inventory. The results indicated that the inventory can be best explained by four components which are knowledge of language assessment literacy, consequences of language assessment literacy, processes of language assessment literacy and teachers’ expectations of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programs. The TALNs inventory developed in this study aimed to help practitioners and researchers to investigate teachers’ needs in assessment literacy. Fulcher’s (2012) assessment literacy framework was drawn on as the analytic model guiding the study.

This paper aims to study 7 to 12-year-old Persian-speaking children’s comprehension of polysemy through semantics. The research method is descriptive-analytic, and two kinds of methodology in data collection such as documentary resources and fieldwork have been applied. For collecting data, each of the six elementary school grades course books ‘Farsi’ (2018) has been studied and all polysemous words within each of these course books have been extracted. Accordingly, to evaluate polysemy comprehension in children, a multiple-choice test containing two questions was prepared for each grade and asked 25 participants to answer in each grade and each gender from among elementary schools in Tehran. In each grade, 100 answers were received and based on the number of correct answers children’s polysemy comprehension was evaluated. These tests were administered under school authorities’ control and children had to answer in 15 minutes. The results show that most children found the polysemous words without problem only within a context and in relation to the collocated words. Also, children can comprehend the exact meaning of polysemous words based on the encyclopedic viewpoint of meaning which is rooted in human social and physical experience. Moreover, children based on their background knowledge differentiate between multiple meanings of polysemous words.

Based on the importance of virtual classrooms and due to the inevitability of using them in difficult situations such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the current study was an attempt to investigate the perception of high school EFL teachers toward virtual learning systems' experience. Also, probing the perception of high school EFL teachers toward virtual learning systems' opportunities, exploring the perception of high school EFL teachers toward virtual learning systems' challenges and threats, and informing the educational society of the solutions to the barriers of virtual learning systems based on the perception of high school EFL teachers were the other objectives of the current study. To this end, the attitudes of 120 EFL teachers (males=67, females=53) with the age range of 30 to 50 who were teaching at different high schools of West Azerbaijan province, Urmia, Iran, were gathered via a researcher-made questionnaire. The results of the study show that although high school teachers faced some barriers such as low internet access, low interaction, and low concentration by learners, actually they actually have positive attitudes toward the use of digital learning, particularly in virtual classrooms. Furthermore, the findings showed that data retention power and quick and easy access were favored by most of the teachers, and they believed these two items can be regarded as positive opportunities. In addition, teachers presented some comments such as adding visuals to the virtual classrooms, using chat boxes, and planning interaction hints to resolve the virtual classrooms’ existing problems such as poor connection and low concentration. The implications of the study will be discussed.

A needs analysis (NA) study was carried out to determine how well course objectives and actual classroom activities aligned with the English language needs of learners enrolled in a communicative EFL course in Iran.  Brown’s (2016) NA framework was adapted with a focus on the democratic and discrepancy view of NA. A case study design utilizing triangulation of data collection was employed to collect and analyze both quantitative and qualitative data. A questionnaire, classroom observations, and post-observation interviews were among the methods used to collect information from 143 learners and 10 teachers. The questionnaires were quantitatively analyzed using frequency counts, percentages, and one-way repeated measures ANOVA analyses to identify learners'' language needs. The qualitative dimension of the study provided a complete picture of course objectives and classroom activities and tasks. The results of the questionnaire showed that the majority of learners agreed that all general English skills were fundamental to communicating in English and ranked speaking skill, followed by writing, as the most needed skills. Also, a review of course objectives indicated that the learning objectives of the English course aligned with learners’ English language needs.  However, according to classroom observations and post-observation interviews, classroom goals were not focused on attaining communicative tasks and activity objectives. In fact, teachers’ teaching objectives did not meet the learners'' communicative needs and were limited to teaching four skills at comprehension, grammatical, and lexical levels. Misalignment between assessment tasks and course objectives was reported as one of the contributing factors.

Given that students’ personality traits can have a powerful role in language learning, this study sought to investigate how well L2 leaners’ communication apprehension and request speech act can be predicted through the components of the Big Five Personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness). The study also examined which of these traits could be the best predictor of L2 learners’ communication apprehension (CA) and request speech act. One hundred and seventy-nine Iranian EFL learners at three universities in Shiraz, Iran were recruited. To single out the participants for the study, Oxford Placement Test was employed. To identify the learners’ personality traits, gauge their pragmatic competence of request speech act, and measure their communication apprehension, The Big-Five Inventory, Discourse Completion Task, and the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA-24) were applied, respectively. Standard multiple regression was used and the results showed that the Big Five personality can predict L2 learners’ communication apprehension and request speech act ability. Moreover, the results evidenced that extraversion and neuroticism largely contributed to L2 learners’ request speech act ability and CA, respectively. The findings offer implications for EFL teachers in helping their students increase their speech act productions and managing their communication apprehension based on their personality traits.

Since language is an integral part of a culture, inspecting linguistic expressions can unveil the hidden cultural memes of a society, conceptualized as cultuling (culture in language) analysis. The present study examined the cultuling of ‘making accreditation with English’ used by Persian native speakers from the upper, middle, and lower social classes. To this end, 623 pieces of natural utterances, embracing this cultuling, were extracted from people's conversations in public and private places and from Iranian movies. Then, 279 utterances were analyzed from linguistic, cultural, and psychological perspectives based on the cultuling analysis (CLA) model. Additionally, more data were acquired through semi-structured interviews with 198 participants aged 19 to 54. The results of the study revealed that Iranians use English for various purposes in their conversations, including accreditation, power, education, superior identity, and higher social class in public/ private and formal/ informal contexts. Moreover, the analysis of Iranians’ different reactions to hearing English words in conversations manifested their hidden cultural patterns, including indirectness, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, high context, collectivism, low trust, and overstating

This qualitative study aims to investigate the sources of burnout from Iranian EFL teachers’ perspectives. To this end, thirty-four Iranian male and female EFL teachers participated in the semi-structured interview to comment on the burnout sources and then rank them in terms of priority. Also, one hundred teachers responded to an online open-ended questionnaire. The coding scheme revealed two external and internal nodes, five themes, and fifteen subthemes. Under the external node lay financial, organizational, and teacher training problems. The internal node involved teachers’ psycho-affective traits and personal life affairs. The results showed that external sources outweighed the internal ones. Among the external sources, teachers’ low pay, the supervisor’s maltreatment, and workload, and among the internal ones, teachers’ low problem-solving abilities, low motivation and self-efficacy held high ranks. No one attributed burnout to teachers’ gender and age, and almost all participants unanimously criticized the educational administration system of Iran for not providing teachers with the necessary means of burnout recognition and prevention. The study has implications for educational policymakers and practitioners.

The objective of this study was to validate a bilingual Spanish-English version of the Vocabulary Size Test (VST) considering its potential use as a discriminator between learners in terms of language competence. This version was designed based on the two forms available on one of the creators’ websites as well as considering practices recommended regarding the elimination of cognates and loans. A one-way ANOVA test was used to confirm the test’s capacity to discriminate among learners of different linguistic competence. Additionally, Principal Axis Factoring (PAF) was conducted to revise the existence of only one underlying variable. As a result of this study, a VST version for Spanish speakers consisting of 9 vocabulary frequency levels is shared. This version is in line with validation standards put forward in previous research. It is expected that this instrument will help future studies that seek to measure Spanish speakers’ competence in English as a foreign or second language without having to deal with the interference of other intervening factors.

The present research aimed to investigate gender-specific charactonyms in the Persian Translation of John Bunyan’s (1684) The Pilgrim's Progress, Part 2. It also aimed to reveal whether the TL preferred equivalents for the SL gender-specific charactonyms could convey the meanings and the characteristics of the names in the Persian translation. The material was borrowed from the book Seir-o Solouk-i Za’ir, Bakhshe Dovom (‘سیر و سلوک زائر، بخش دوّم’) translated by Golnaz Hamedi in 2002 (1381), and also its French and Arabic translations. Thus, SL gender-specific charactonyms were compared with TL equivalents in Evelyn Hatch’s (1992) macro-level analysis. According to Hatch (1992), characters, as one of the main elements of a story, play a significant role and affect the macrostructure of the story. The results showed that the Persian equivalents used by Hamedi (2002) ranged from transparent to problematic ones. Hamedi (2002) less preserved the meanings of the names and sometimes replaced the female charactonyms with already-used male charactonyms that affected the novel due to the change of the characteristics and additional information the charactonyms bear in their inner forms.

This mixed-methods study sought to examine any significant impact of Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers' collaboration in rating speaking tests and brainstorming theoretical concepts of language assessment (LA) on their literacy, perceptions, and practices of speaking assessment. Forty-one Iranian EFL teachers selected through purposeful sampling were asked to fill out a questionnaire, including 20 components of LA, so as to measure their knowledge and perceptions of LA components. Then, 21 of the teachers volunteered to score the video-projected speaking performance of 12 international students in the Key English Test (KET) using KET speaking rating scales. Having received six in-service speaking assessment training sessions based on their collaboration, the 21 participating teachers completed the same questionnaire and scored the same videos again. An ANCOVA was used to compare the quantitative data from the questionnaire and teachers’ scoring of KET speaking tests before and after the treatment and also to investigate any significant differences between the novice and experienced Iranian EFL teachers in terms of their knowledge and perception of LA, and the assessment of KET speaking tests. Moreover, the 21 volunteered teachers were interviewed to further discover their perceptions about the in-service speaking assessment training course they attended. The findings revealed that the collaboration of the Iranian EFL teachers in rating speaking tests and brainstorming theoretical concepts of LA significantly impacted their knowledge, perceptions, and practices of LA. However, the effects were unequal and different for novice and experienced EFL teachers.