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The preface which initiates textbooks is a significant convention in writing academic textbooks as it introduces the book, explains assumptions, clarifies expectations, and convinces the readers to read on. In the present study, using Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal framework, ninety textbook prefaces written by both native and nonnative writers, in both hard and soft sciences, were selected and analyzed aiming at exploring writers’ preferences for the type and frequency of appraisal resources. The statistical analysis of the data revealed that the writers plentifully used appraisal resources in the prefaces to express their attitudes, positions, and goals of the inclusion of various sections in the book. Attitude resources, in terms of frequency, are the most frequent, and Engagement elements are the least with Graduation items coming in the middle position. This is quite natural as all academic writing is to express opinions and positions, and prefaces, specifically, are less probable to indicate others’ attitudes and stances, but the authors’ positions and purposes behind the book. Based on the findings, it is concluded that native textbook writers are superior to nonnative writers in terms of communication power, establishing solidarity, and a convincing and forceful voice. The frequency of the subsystem of the main appraisals is also detailed in the article. This study can have implications for textbook writers, teachers, EFL learners, and materials developers.

AbstractThe interference of the native language in acquiring a foreign language is unavoidable. In an attempt to explore the phenomenon why this occurs, the study was conducted in English as a foreign language writing. The study also investigated how the native language interference occurred in the writing process. In fact, this qualitative study explored the reasons and the process of native language interference in writing performances of EFL learners. The data were collected from Thai undergraduate students through semi-structured interviews. Results obtained from the analysis of this study suggested that the reasons of native language interference in EFL writing were found in three main themes: learning strategies of language learners, inadequate knowledge of the target language, and attitude towards English. Furthermore, the interference of the native language appeared in the initial stage and repeatedly occurred throughout the entire writing process. Finally, the suggestions related to the teachers’ awareness of the problematic area, the use of English as the classroom language, and the use of monolingual dictionary are offered to the EFL writing instructors in order to help their EFL students to minimize the errors caused by the native language interference.

This review article examines the underpinning of the little-researched, influential elements that create linguistic injustice in the specific contexts of linguistic imperialism through standardization. To this end, with a review of critical views that includes argumentation and discussion of theoretical and empirical studies, we further aim to highlight linguistic injustice in writing for publishing. The domination of the English language as a lingua academia has not happened neutrally and can create unjust and unequal situations. In knowledge construction, the prosperity of researchers and academics is tied to international publication, and this action supports globalization, individualism, and standardization in favor of native English users. The domination of the English language in academic settings may be a hegemonic practice of native Anglophones to maintain power.  In this review, we underline the possibilities for privileged communities to pinpoint linguistic inequality and injustice.  The nature of academia should be liberal and liberating; however, in reality, academic settings are politically partisan and at the service of the powerful and wealthy. Still, there is slim hope that the system can change, and one of such profound changes may happen with equal access to resources and mentors for marginalized communities. In this case, the minorities’ voices may also be heard and respected globally.

The well-established affiliation of metadiscourse research tradition to the philosophy of ESP raises some inevitable expectations on how much and how well the concept has been geared to meet the practical necessities of academic writing pedagogy. In light of such an expectation, a corpus of 35 academic writing coursebooks published during the last three decades were evaluated in terms of the possible realizations of key resources of interaction in pedagogical tasks. Due to its theoretical rigor and analytically operationalized nature, Hyland’s model of metadiscourse (2005a) was taken as the guiding framework for the current evaluation. The quantitative findings emerging from the analysis of the corpus did not sound sufficiently promising, suggesting that that theoretical developments have not yet been ideally translated into pedagogical designs; however, the rich range of resources identified in the tasks (i.e. the fifty five categories emerging from the evaluation of the corpus) suggest that the rigorous tradition of research in metadiscourse has contributed to the effective operationalization of the concept for pedagogical objectives. It has been argued that through the effective introduction of the concept of metadiscourse into pedagogical designs and its appropriate operationalization, novice participants of academic/scientific discourse communities would be enabled to redefine the nature of academic communication and get rid of a large number of misconceptions which have become fossilized through long years of the dominance of a positivistic thinking.

The study aimed at examining the effects of scaffolding ESP readers, by using graphic markers and highlighting syntactic and emphatic prosody, on their Foreign Language Reading Anxiety (FLRA) and fluency. A mixed-methods research design was used for a deeper understanding of the obtained data. An experimental design was planned with a control and an experimental group including 38 students of two fields, museum studies, and conservation of historic buildings in Shiraz University of Arts. Participants of the experimental group were scaffolded to develop reading fluency with different graphic markers, while members of the control group had their usual ESP classes. The participants’ FLRA and reading fluency levels were assessed prior to the study and after it ended. Statistical analysis of the results proved that scaffolding the students with graphic markers had the potential to lower their FLRA. Also, the results of fluency assessment frameworks including Words Read Correctly per Minute (WCPM), Multidimensional Fluency Scale (MDFS) and National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) confirmed the effectiveness of scaffolding the readers with graphic markers. For a deeper understanding, the data were explored using qualitative data classification and analysis by the NAEP framework. The qualitative analysis of the observations showed while graphic cues can scaffold the learners to notice their shortcomings toward an optimum level of fluency, they could not be the sufficient condition for achieving the goal. It was also concluded that online decoding, sight-word reading, and sensitivity to stress and intonation are pre-requisites of fluent and prosodic reading with expression.

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.

Textbook evaluation serves as a useful tool at teachers‘ disposal to cope with uncertainty in opting for the proper material prior to embarking on their teaching career. This study aims at comparing two different ESP textbooks, one of them English for students of Mechanical Engineering, design of solids (SAMT publication), and the other one English in Mechanical Engineering (Oxford University Press). For the purpose of comparison and contrast, Textbook Evaluation Checklist (Miekley, 2005) was used against which the components of these two books were weighed to show what they have in common and where the point of departure from any commonality is. Although based on evaluative questions some inherent inefficiencies of these textbooks were revealed, it was generally concluded that both of them have tenable justification to be taught as an ESP course book.

The present study investigates the central concerns of the use of visuals within the four EFL textbooks taught at Iranian high schools which have been prescribed by the Ministry of Education. To do this, the four EFL textbooks were evaluated and analyzed. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze data quantitatively. The analysis indicated that over the four textbooks, 95.71 percent of all visuals were drawings and 4.29 percent were photos. The analysis revealed, then, among three fundamental categories of pictures function (i.e. Illustrative, Stimulus-Response, and Student-Generated), stimulus-response pictures constituted the largest percentage (70.50%) which tend to focus on low-level language skills; illustrative pictures constituted 29.49%, while none of them were used for the student-generated purposes. The visuals, furthermore, were largely being used for fairly grammatical part of language practice (87.45%). Moreover, all the pictures within each of the four textbooks under consideration were used for the purpose of 'talking about a picture'; no exercises were found to meet the 'talking with the picture' criterion. Findings of the study pedagogically call for using appropriate pictures of real people and real environment which provide sufficient input for language learners

This study investigated the effects of planned focus-on-form instruction (pFFI) on developing oral grammatical accuracy in Iranian English EFL learners. To this end, 60 lower-intermediate EFL learners studying English in a private English language institute in Tehran, Iran, were randomly assigned to two classes. Both classes received a task-based instruction on grammatical points elicited in oral production of English sentences with the only difference that one class, the experimental group (N=30) had a pFFI instruction (i.e., the target grammatical structures selected in advance), and the other class, the control group (N = 30), had a task-based instruction without any focus on planned grammatical structures. Learners’ oral performance was observed in their answers to pictorial cues in the pretest and posttest. The results of the study revealed that although both groups significantly improved in their oral performance in terms of grammatical accuracy, pFFI instruction was more effective on the experimental group since they significantly outperformed the control group.

Willingness to communicate is subject to the moment-by-moment fluctuations in the classroom. Therefore, teachers’ decisive role comes to the foreground as they can increase learners’ desire to communicate at a particular moment by their interventions. Online instruction, despite furnishing learners with authentic material, has failed to culminate in communication thanks to connection problems or lack of non-verbal clues. Thus, the present study aimed to explore Iranian EFL teachers’ perceptions of strategies to promote willingness to communicate of learners in online classes. The mixed-methods design was employed to answer the research questions. To this end, a self-designed questionnaire was first piloted and then administered to the main sample which included thirty-seven teachers. The questionnaire subsumed five effective factors garnered from extant literature. Five teachers were interviewed as to their perceptions of pros and cons of promoting WTC in online classrooms. The results indicated that teachers’ motivational strategies were perceived to promote WTC best in online classes followed by teacher immediacy. Qualitative reports also corroborated the numerical data. Lack of non-verbal clues i.e. body language was perceived to decrease learners’ motivation and participation; however, technological resources like games were reported to increase WTC in online classes. Teachers should pay heed to their crucial role in inciting positive atmosphere and get better equipped to capitalize on online affordances to increase participation in online classes.

Among the fans of animated films young children are the most popular. This has led the dubbing industry to produce domesticated animations for the young audience of a different language and culture. In other words, in most cases dubbers attempt to adopt domestication procedures to make the language of animations easier and more tangible for children. The domestication strategies may bring both children and their parents great satisfaction. However, as a result of domestication, the dubbers may go too far and utilize a language which is not appropriate for children. Based on Venuti’s theory (1995) of domestication, the present study took a look at the merits and demerits of this procedure. It actually aimed at exploring different cases of inappropriate domestication in the two dubbed cartoons “The Incredibles” and “Barnyard”.