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This study investigates the effect of four types of oral corrective feedback, namely, explicit elicitation, implicit elicitation, explicit recast and implicit recast on the most commonly mispronounced phonological features among Iranian EFL learners through immediate uptake and retention. Five classes were randomly categorized into four experimental groups and one control group, each with 18 intermediate-level male learners. The treatment was conducted in the form of a retelling task in nine sessions. During the feedback sessions, the learners’ uptake was recorded. The learners’ retention was also perused in one immediate and one delayed post-test. The results revealed that those learners who received explicit recast obtained the highest score in terms of correct uptake, and that the groups performed differently across different time periods. The learners’ scores enhanced over time; however, the increase then leveled off and even dropped in the delayed post-test in all the experimental groups except for the group which received explicit elicitation, apparently leading to more retention of the target phonological features. The study offers insights to teachers regarding the effect of recast and elicitation in their explicit and implicit form on L2 pronunciation.

The present study investigated the potential role of tasks in engaging Iranian EFL learners in task-supported language learning, affecting on learner-centered instruction and the correspondence between the objectives and contents in current pre-university English course book (Learning to Read English for Pre-University Students). To do this, 100 Iranian EFL teachers of pre-university grade were invited to participate in this study. They were asked to fill out a 5-point Likert scale checklist (adapted from Lawrence, 2011). The checklist was initially piloted on 20 EFL teachers in order to see to what extent the items were clear and comprehensible to the subjects of the study and to find out the internal consistency or reliability of the items. The results of statistical analyses indicated that teachers tended to agree on the point that tasks have significant capability in engaging learners in communicative language use or task-based language learning. The vast majority of the teachers expressed that using tasks in textbook can improve learner-centered instruction. The evaluation of the textbook showed the contents are corresponded to their objectives.

This research aimed at investigating different strategies used by translators in translating political English concepts into Persian between two revolutions. To this purpose, the researchers extracted and examined six cases of English political concepts from a book called “Iran between Two Revolutions” and their corresponding Persian translations. Qualitative research was used to gain insights into the experiences, perspectives, and thoughts for analyzing the quality of the translation. To analyze the data, first the samples were analyzed based on Chesterman's communicative norm, and then, they were compared with their Persian equivalents to determine to what extent the communicative norms had been observed in the translation of political concepts. The results of the analysis showed that the translators faced problems in translating political concepts concerning equivalence, synonyms and cultural specific items.

In recent years, Instagram has gained considerable attention in scientific research because of its popularity among English language learners. This study aimed to conduct a systematic review of empirical studies that investigated the use of Instagram as a mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) tool in ESL/EFL and attempted to perform a scientific mapping of the literature. To this end, a corpus of studies since 2010 was retrieved in January 2023 from six academic databases and reviewed through the stages of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA). A critical appraisal of 48 experimental studies included in this review was carried out and a meta-analysis of 11 eligible studies was conducted. The results of the meta-analysis confirmed the significant effect size of the use of Instagram in ESL/EFL. The bibliometric analysis revealed that the research productivity is up and found writing and vocabulary skills as the main focus in most of the studies. This study could have implications for teachers and researchers to gain a broad overview of the integration of Instagram in English language teaching and to know the current research trends in the field for future research.

Multiple-choice (MC) item format is commonly used in educational assessments due to its economy and effectiveness across a variety of content domains. However, numerous studies have examined the quality of MC items in high-stakes and higher education assessments and found many flawed items, especially in terms of distractors. These faulty items lead to misleading insights about the performance of students and the final decisions. The analysis of distractors is typically conducted in educational assessments with multiple-choice items to ensure high quality items are used as the basis of inference. Item response theory (IRT) and Rasch models have received little attention for analyzing distractors. For that reason, the purpose of the present study was to apply the Rasch model, to a grammar test to analyze items’ distractors of the test. To achieve this, the current study investigated the quality of 10 instructor-written MC grammar items used in an undergraduate final exam, using the items responses of 310 English as a foreign language (EFL) students who had taken part in an advanced grammar course. The results showed the acceptable fit to the Rasch model and high reliability. Malfunctioning distractors were identified.

Writing effective and persuasive manuscripts for submission to the high-indexed Iranian and international English-medium journals for the purpose of publication deserves having to-the-point knowledge and proficiency, which the Non-Native English writers of the non-English speaking countries seem to be lacking. Therefore, researchers need to identify problems and challenges that the group of writers encounter in the field of English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP). Therefore, this study aims to identify the ERPP needs of the Physical Education Ph.D. students and writers. Hence, interviews were conducted with a group of Physical Education content experts and Ph.D. students to identify the writers’ problems and challenges. The interviews were tape recorded as the participants had already been informed of the recordings and research aim. The tape recordings were then transcribed and analyzed in the thematic analysis and the grounded theory methods. The data analysis came up with four major themes (gained in the selective coding stage), 20 sub-themes (gained in the axial coding stage) and 83 themes (gained in the initial/open coding stage). The four major themes were `problem with language,’ `problem with content,’ `problem with journals,’ and `the demotivating factors.’ The fourth major theme, i.e., `the demotivating factors’, consisted of the sub-heading the technological illiteracy problem, which should be regarded as the novelty feature of this paper. The research is useful for material designers and instructors of the English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) and others to offer tailor-made education to the tertiary level Physical Education students.

The present study investigated the use of lexical bundles (LBs) in research articles authored by English L1 and Persian L1 academic writers, with a special focus on the syntactic roles of LBs in a larger context of sentence level. Four-word bundles were retrieved and classified structurally. The use of identified LBs was compared in two writer groups. The syntactic roles and relative complexity of the bundles’ structures were analyzed in relation to Biber, Gray, and Poonpon’s (2011) hypothesized stages of writing development. The results indicated different patterns of reliance on LBs, with Persian writers making greater use of LBs at higher frequency. In addition, Persian academic writers tended to use high frequency bundles differently from native-speaker academic writers. The results of the syntactic analysis of LBs reflected more frequent use of LBs functioning as compressing lexico-grammatical structures in a native English-speaker corpus, which is indicative of a more complex academic register compared to that of a Persian L1 corpus. The pedagogical implications of the findings for the explicit instruction of syntactically complex corpus-driven LBs for discipline-specific genre writing and suggestions for future research are discussed.

This research was carried out to examine the effect of using careful online planning vs. pressured online planning on learning multi-word expressions among intermediate English learners. To this end, two samples of learners through an Oxford Placement Test (OPT) were selected as the careful online group and pressured online group. After the pretest, the researcher exposed the experimental group to all multi-word expressions, adapted from input text. The experimental group was supposed to listen to some audio files and learn the multi-word expressions and then they must have been able to produce those expressions while speaking. They were asked to watch a film of The Donkey and The Master , take notes, and retell the story in six minutes for pressured online planners and then the time for careful online planners. The first time was for pleasure; the second time, they were expected to retell the story using Multi-Words Expressions in the film. After three weeks of instruction, the posttest was given to the students of both groups to assess their achievement. After quantitative data analysis, an independent sample T-test was performed. The results indicate that pressured online planning was more effective. This study has implications for EFL teachers and instructors.

The primary aim of this study was to shed light on the impact of a new instruction model, reflective reciprocal teaching (RRT), on English as a foreign language learners' (EFL) reading comprehension ability. Its mode of inquiry was a mixed-method, and it took on a quasi-experimental design, including a pretest, treatment, and posttest paradigm. The sampling techniques were both convenience and random sampling by which 100 EFL freshman learners were selected and assigned into three groups of reflective reciprocal teaching (RRT), reciprocal teaching (RT), and control. Two tests, namely Oxford Quick Placement Test and Michigan English Language Assessment Battery, were used to measure EFL learners' proficiency level and reading comprehension ability in its quantitative phase. ANOVA was utilized to analyze the collected data. Also, during the next step, which aimed to explore the learners' perceptions of RRT instruction, semi-structured interviews were used to collect qualitative data. The results indicated that the RRT group outperformed the control group regarding their reading comprehension ability; however, the RT instruction did not significantly impact this issue. Accordingly, the qualitative data analysis findings indicated that self-regulated learning, perceived competence, metacognitive awareness, confidence, and intrinsic motivation were the significant results of the RRT instruction model, contributing to the learners' reading comprehension ability.

This study aimed to investigate the effect of oral and written contextualization of collocation teaching on the learning and long-term retention of semantically semitransparent collocations by Iranian EFL learners. To this end, 65 students were selected from a cohort of students who were studying English at an English language institute in Sanandaj, Iran. They were randomly divided into two groups based on whether they would receive oral and written contextualization. Then, each group was further subdivided into two groups based on whether they would receive instruction on the concept of semantic transparency, yielding two experimental groups each including 16 learners as the Written Practice Group plus and minus instruction on the concept of semantic transparency, two experimental groups as the Oral Practice Group plus and minus instruction on the concept of semantic transparency, including 16 and 17 learners, respectively. Their initial general English proficiency was measured through the Preliminary English Test (PET), and they were pretested on semitransparent collocations through a researcher-made collocation test. Finally, two equivalent researcher-made collocation tests were used to measure the participants’ learning and retention on the immediate and delayed posttests. The results of two-way ANOVAs revealed that the oral group outperformed the written group on the immediate and delayed posttests and the plus transparency instruction groups in each modality (oral and written) group outperformed the minus transparency instruction groups. The interpretations of the findings and their pedagogical implications have been discussed.

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.