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Studies in literary religious discourses, including recent Quranic studies, suggest that speech act theory provides the researchers with variable pragmatic tools to interpret meanings that are constructed upon the intention of the speaker. This study draws upon speech act theory (SAT) to analyse the two ubiquitous speech acts of promise and threat in the Holy Quran. Employing the speech acts of promise and threat in the Quran to the detailed analysis of felicity conditions, this study, while arguing for the compatibility of SAT to the language of Quran, concludes that the main impetus behind the speech acts of promise and threat is creating the motivation in the addressees to conduct good and avoid evil deeds; therefore, the rules and conditions that drive the illocutionary force of promise and threat perfectly align with the motivational language of the Holy Quran.

Despite the increased research on various aspects of academic optimism (AO) in general education, this line of inquiry has not received adequate empirical attention in English language teacher education. The present mixed-methods study aimed to explore the role of AO in MALL-oriented listening instruction among Iranian EFL teachers, with a focus on variations in their experience ranges. A total of 168 teachers participated in the study and completed the study scales, and 15 teachers with higher levels of perceived AO were further interviewed to gather qualitative data. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to examine the quantitative data, while thematic analysis was conducted to analyze the qualitative data. The quantitative results indicated significant differences between novice, experienced, and highly experienced language teachers, with the latter holding more positive beliefs about AO and MALL in relation to listening. Additionally, a significant correlation was found between AO and MALL. The qualitative findings complemented the quantitative results by highlighting the pivotal role of academic optimism in driving teachers’ motivation, the positive impact of teachers’ optimistic attitudes on student engagement and motivation, and the pedagogical strategies employed by optimistic teachers to effectively incorporate MALL in their instructional practices. These findings provide implications for teachers and teacher educators, emphasizing the importance of integrating AO principles in MALL-related professional development courses to positively contribute to teachers’ professional growth. The study contributes to the limited empirical research on AO within the context of English language teacher education and provides valuable insights into the complex interplay between academic optimism, MALL-oriented listening instruction, and teacher-student interactions.

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to explore pre-service EFL teachers’ conceptions and self-efficacy for effective online teaching and (b) to determine their instructors’ conceptions of online teaching effectiveness and their approaches to preparing them for effective online teaching. The participants were 100 MA students of TEFL and 6 teacher educators at Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST). The data collection instrument was a questionnaire with 40 principles of effective online teaching classified into 7 categories of facilitating learning, interaction, deep learning, relationship, resources, engagement, and organization followed by two open-ended questions. A semi-structured interview was also conducted to examine teacher educators’ conceptions of online teaching effectiveness. The results revealed that pre-service teachers considered themselves more self-efficacious in fostering relationship while less in maintaining organization in online English language classes. To be an effective online teacher, they also held the view that teachers need to establish a friendly atmosphere and relationship, provide useful materials, have adequate technological knowledge, give prompt feedback, and engage learners in their learning process. For teacher educators, effective online teaching was having adequate technological knowledge, providing appropriate content, establishing an online presence, successful classroom management, and having positive perceptions of online teaching.

One strategy that eases the process of teaching argumentative writing might be teaching them how to express their thoughts, beliefs, and in general, ideologies in academic essays. This study aimed to investigate the effect of teaching writing skills on ideology transfer in the academic writings of EFL students. To this end, a sequential mixed-methods design was used. Participants were 80 male and female IELTS candidates who were selected based on some criteria such as proficiency level, age, and educational background. A sample Mock Writing Task 2 and a sample IELTS Writing Task 2 were used as instruments in the pre-test and post-test respectively. Learners’ essays produced during these stages were analyzed based on Fairclough’s (2001) three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis: description, interpretation, and explanation. To analyze the data, content analysis methods were applied during which discursive strategies used by the candidates were identified and coded, and the frequency and percentage of them were calculated. After the analysis, the following themes were extracted in the participants’ writings, as representing ideology transfer: tendency towards representation of identity, use of active voices, use of first-person pronouns, social views, author visibility, ideology-laden concepts, and idea development. Moreover, there were significant changes in the post-test writings of the participants in terms of the number of discursive strategies used to express ideology. This shows that teaching writing skills can significantly affect EFL learners’ ability to transfer their ideology into academic writing. The findings can have some implications for EFL learners, teachers, and curriculum planners.

In recent years, some language teachers have made investments in approaches and models such as mobile assisted flipped language learning. Some studies in Iran have examined flipped learning impact on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ language skills as well as language systems. However, no researches have been conducted on the impact mobile assisted flipped learning might have on improvement of intermediate EFL learners’ cohesive devices and their motivation to learn cohesion which is the focus of the current study. To this end, 40 female intermediate EFL learners in an English language institute in Kerman, Iran were recruited. Employing a quasi-experimental design, subjects were assigned to two classes of experimental (EG- N = 20) and control (CG-N = 20). Oxford Placement Test, researcher-made writing achievement tests, and Academic Motivation Scale (AMS) were utilized to collect the required data. The findings indicate that participants in mobile assisted flipped language learning group outperformed those in the control group. Moreover, the results of a chi-square test showed a significant relationship between mobile assisted flipped language learning and intermediate EFL learners’ motivation to learn cohesive devices. The findings might help stakeholders design, introduce, and address mobile assisted flipped language learning to their context-specific needs, thereby facilitating the language learning process.

Considering the body of research on the intersection of psychology and assessment that suggests assessment is not only under the influence of the model against which a translation is assessed, the present study aimed to investigate the role of raters’ personality traits in their assessment. It was also intended to see if the application of an agreed-upon unified assessment tool could change the way evaluations are made, and if this possible change is the same among raters with different personality traits. To this end, seven raters were asked to score an English text translated by 23 students twice with an interval of at least two weeks. In the first scoring, they were asked to assess the way they usually did with no specific guidelines. However, the second assessment was done through the application of an agreed-upon model. Moreover, the raters were scored on the personality traits of agreeableness and conscientiousness as it is believed that these two traits are predictors of leniency. The data analyzed revealed (1) a significant correlation between the raters’ score on agreeableness and the scores they assigned to the translations, and (2) a significant negative correlation between the raters’ score on conscientiousness and the scores they assigned to the translations. This proved that more agreeable less conscientious raters are prone to be more lenient. The value of Cronbach alpha also revealed that more conscientious less agreeable raters were more consistent in their assessments in both rounds of scoring. This, however, turned out not to be the case for less conscientious raters.

Synesthesia, among other rhetorical devices, has played a prominent role in conveying the intended messages in the realm of poetry. Nonetheless, it has not grabbed adequate attention to its nature and function. Belonging to the domain of comparative literature, this essay has benefitted from analogy studies as its methodology to render novel perspectives in the meaning and reading of the poetry of Sitwell and Ebtehaj. Here, we have attempted, firstly, to foreground the function of synesthesia and, secondly, to enrich the understanding of the mentioned poets. This paper concludes that the realization of synesthesia heavily and helpfully affects the perception of literary poems. In addition, to showcase such influence, a reasonable number of poems by Sitwell and Ebtehaj were subjected to scrutiny, indicating that a great deal of their poetry is best understood only after investigating synesthesia. This essay is merely concentrated on two poets, yet its findings can be helpful for the whole field of poetry.

Adaptive teaching addresses students’ diversity and their immediate learning needs. Particularly, in the high-interactive context of English teaching, fostering adaptive teaching in teacher professional development programs not only stimulates teacher change at the micro level, but also facilitates implementing the organizational and curricular innovations imposed by authorities at the macro level. The current English teaching literature lacks a measure for evaluating and fostering adaptive teaching within higher education. Hence, within the present study, the Interconnected Model of Teacher Professional Growth (IMTPG) was adapted and validated as a measure for evaluating and fostering teacher adaptability for 183 international English teachers in higher education. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was employed for validating two different enactment and reflection links in the original IMTPG, and the final adapted IMTPG for adaptive teaching (At-IMTPG) was proposed. The AT-IMTPG can be applied for evaluating how adaptive English teachers are, seeking to resolve the problem of implementing educational innovations by English teachers in higher education. It can also be used to design teacher professional growth programs for fostering adaptive teaching within English teaching higher education. Such a change in the classroom level is hoped to be translated into an educational change in English teaching higher education.

Technology-mediated instructional activities have received increasing attention in second language acquisition (SLA) studies. Yet, research on the role of technology in language learners’ emotional intelligence has been limited. More specifically, the role of data-driven learning (DDL) using concordancing, as a technology-mediated approach to learning English, in developing emotional intelligence has been left unattended. Through a mixed-methods explanatory sequential design within a quasi-experimental comparison group pretest-posttest design, the present study examined if DDL statistically significantly influenced the English learners’ trait emotional intelligence (TEI) and its attributes, including emotionality, self-control, well-being, and sociability. The results of questionnaires, open-ended surveys, and semi-structured interviews with 92 female undergraduate English learners indicated that DDL did not statistically significantly influence their TEI and its attributes. However, in terms of well-being, learners in the experimental group were slightly higher than learners in the control group. Finally, analysis of the qualitative data pointed to an increase in the learners’ TEI through enhancing self-confidence, stress management, and emotional perception.

Emotion labor is defined as any conflict between institutional demands and teachers’ professional beliefs and preferences. Engaging in emotion labor is an inevitable aspect of becoming a language teacher. Scholars agree that language teacher agency and identity are closely tied to emotion labor. This fact particularly looms large for novice language teachers, who tend to perceive contradictions between what they imagine prior to entering the profession and what they actually experience in their teaching contexts. This case study applied activity theory (Engeström, 2015) and Gee’s (2000) identity framework to explore how the emotion labor experienced by a novice Iranian female teacher of English as a foreign language (EFL) over a five-year career period at three private language institutes affected her language teacher agency and identity. The findings, obtained from class observations and semi-structured interviews, highlight two major sources of emotion labor: 1) profit-oriented policy, and 2) performance-constraining factors within the institute, which caused the participant to contemplate quitting her job. Implications and further research are discussed in line with the interplay among emotion labor, language teacher identity, and well-being.