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The transformational approach (Freire, 1998) can be achieved through critical pedagogy. The present study describes the development and validation of a questionnaire to access critical pedagogy for evaluating teachers’ perceptions of critical pedagogy in two different contexts i.e. public and private schools. This study used a mixed-method design. In the qualitative phase, 15 experienced high school teachers from public and private schools in Sabzevar, Iran, participated in a semi-structured interview. Based on the result of the constructivist grounded work and the literature review, the main constructs of critical pedagogy were described. Then, an eight-construct operationalization of language teaching was presented, describing the fundamental principles of language teaching from the point of view of critical pedagogy. In the quantitative phase, 180 valid questionnaires, obtained from 59 males and 121 females, were used to run the Confirmatory Factor Analysis using the software LISREL 8.5. This resulted in a 70-item, five-point Likert-scale instrument with satisfactory construct validity which was based on the 21 constructs of critical pedagogy. As a validated measurement, the Critical Pedagogy Questionnaire can be highly useful for the researchers and designers in the field of ELT, English teachers, and instructors to evaluate the perception of their learners on critical pedagogy.

This study was conducted with the purpose of examining Persian speakers’ article acquisition and use with reference to Ionin, Ko and Wexler’s (2004) model, which is based on the prediction of Fluctuation Hypothesis (FH) that EFL learners of [-article] languages, like Persian, make erroneous article use in [+definite, -specific] and [-definite, +specific] contexts. From among the students of an Iranian university, 90 participants were randomly selected and divided into three groups based on their proficiency levels (elementary, intermediate and advanced). They completed a forced-choice elicitation task, consisting of 20 dialogues, similar to Ionin et al.’s (2004) questionnaire. It was hypothesized that as proficiency level increases, the accuracy level increases, while article misuse and omission decrease. The overall results suggested that the performance of the participants of the study, even the advanced group, was below the ceiling level (90% accuracy observed in native and near-native speakers). Moreover, as the level of proficiency increased, the accuracy level of article use increased and omission error decreased, but article misuse showed no significant decrease. It was concluded that low performance of Persian speakers is due to the lack of correspondence between Persian and English determiner phrase (DP) structures and lack of adequate input.

: This study aims to explore the relationship between syntactic and lexical complexity and also the relationship between different aspects of lexical complexity. To this end, speech monologs of 35 Iranian high-intermediate learners of English on three different tasks (i.e. argumentation, description, and narration) were analyzed for correlations between one measure of syntactic complexity (mean number of clauses per Analysis of Speech Unit) and two measures of lexical complexity (diversity and sophistication). Spearman’s rho was used to calculate correlations between the average scores for syntactic and lexical complexity obtained from the three tasks and also for each of the three tasks individually. The results showed that the average scores for lexical diversity and lexical sophistication correlated positively, but the correlation was found only for the narration task. Also, the average scores for syntactic complexity did not correlate significantly with any of the average scores for the two measures of lexical complexity. However, the pattern of results differed across the three tasks. In the argumentation task, syntactic complexity correlated significantly only with lexical diversity. Syntactic complexity did not correlate significantly with any of the two measures of lexical complexity in the description task. In the case of the narrative task, there was a significant correlation between syntactic complexity and both measures of lexical complexity. The results are discussed in light of Levelt’s (1989) speaking model

Nowadays, English has become an international language and is used for communication and interaction among different countries and cultures across the world. So, the ability to communicate in a comprehensive way is one of the major goals of any second language educational setting. The aims of the present research were to investigate the relationship between Iranian EFL learners’ social intelligence (SI) and their willingness to communicate (WTC) across gender, as well as to find out any possible difference between male and female learners in SI and their WTC relationship. To this end, 240 male and female EFL learners from different institutions were selected as the participants of the study with different age ranges based on convenient sampling. Then two standardized questionnaires, i.e., SI and WTC, were administered for all participants to answer. After collecting the required data and its analysis, the findings revealed a positive and significant correlation between male and female SI and their WTC. In addition, further statistical analysis using formula showed no difference between learners’ SI and WTC relationship across gender. The findings of the present research could be applicable for EFL learners, teachers, and material developers. Keywords:

The study examined language learning anxiety factors, hindering EFL learners’ process of learning, particularly in speaking settings and recommended useful approaches to cope with it. Using the quantitative approach as well as a qualitative semi-structured interview and focus-group discussion method, this study tried to examine the factors behind language anxiety among Iranian language learners both in the classroom and in the social context. 100 TEFL students participated in this study. The language proficiency was measured by TOEFL IBT test to make sure that the students were homogeneous. The findings suggested a variety of approaches to cope with language anxiety. It also revealed that there was a significant relationship between the participants’ language anxiety and their language proficiency. The results of the interviews showed that the teachers had a key role in increasing and decreasing the students’ language anxiety concerning psychosocial linguistic factors. The findings of the study can be helpful for providing some teacher-training courses, teaching language teachers some effective psychological techniques to decrease language learning anxiety factors, improving language learning process. Keywords: language le

This study investigated a new blended approach for enhancing vocabulary achievement. To this end, the project used a convenience sample of 50 intermediate EFL learners ranging from 19-35 years of age from three intact classes studying English translation at university. They were randomly assigned to two groups of 25 students each. In the experimental group, the treatment consisted of providing photos/cartoons related to the sessions’ course of instruction on Instagram, with the learners discussing and exploring the meaning of vocabularies via peer scaffolding using metacognitive strategies. The control group followed the syllabus and assigned homework according to the class program. To investigate the vocabulary achievement of the participants, a piloted multiple-choice vocabulary posttest was administered. The results that were analyzed through independent samples T-test revealed that the blended approach could significantly affect the performance of the experimental group. This study has implications not only for teachers, researchers, and syllabus designers but also for EFL learners with unpacking the notion of metacognition and peer scaffolding, proposing an integrated framework that illustrates how it may pervade the teaching-learning process as an educational goal. The implication of this study supports student responsibility, a student-centered classroom, and higher levels of cognition.

This study aimed to investigate the impact of pre-speaking activities on Iranian intermediate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ oral performance. The study followed a quasi-experimental design in which subjects of the study were non-randomly selected. Oxford Placement Test (OPT) was used to select 100 intermediate EFL learners as the main sample. Then they were divided randomly into two experimental and control groups. Prior to the treatment, participants of both groups were given a pre-test of speaking to ensure their speaking ability. After a treatment of pre-speaking activities to members of the experimental group, a post-test of speaking was administered to seek the effect of it. A t-test was run to examine the difference between the mean scores of each group in post-tests. It was found that there was a statistically significant difference between the experimental and the control group. That is, the experimental group outperformed the control group in oral performance.

PhD thesis introductions help student writers to discuss the significance of their study and establish how their study relates to and draws on previous research. The present study used a genre-based approach to examine one subsection in introductions of applied linguistics PhD theses. To that end, Iranian PhD thesis introductions were textually analysed. A researcher-made questionnaire, grounded on the responses from a semi-structured interview, was administered to Iranian applied linguists and PhD students to seek their opinions regarding how the subsection should be written. Frequency counts and statistical tests were used to analyse the data using SPSS (version 22). Results of genre analysis showed varying lengths, non-alphabetic ordering of the terms, and frequent uses of indirect quotations to organise the subsection. Results of textual analysis also revealed significant overlap between the terms in introductions and keywords in abstracts. The terms primarily derived from research questions. Results of questionnaire response analyses showed no statistically significant differences between the attitudes of applied linguists and PhD students. Implications of the study for PhD introduction thesis writing are discussed.

The present study set out to identify the problematic areas of pronunciation among Iranian female EFL learners. Further, this study investigated the relationship between empathy and authentic pronunciation, along with gender as a moderator variable. Comparing segmental features and phonological processes of both languages helped teachers to predict the target errors. To reach such a goal, a total of 69 Iranian undergraduate EFL learners were recruited from the Vali-e-Asr University of Rafsanjan, majoring in English literature and translation studies participated in the study. The subjects were conveniently sampled and were taking the course Conversation I. After administrating the Basic Empathy Scale (BES: Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006), the students were assigned to two groups: high-empathic group and low-empathic group. Both groups participated in an oral interview twice (before and after segmental form-focused instruction). The data were collected through taping participants’ pronunciation of some words. Two raters analyzed students’ pronunciation in terms of segmental features. The results demonstrated that the absence of some phonemes in the Farsi sound system and some phonological differences between the two languages caused difficulties for EFL learners. Furthermore, it was witnessed that those in the high-level group (i.e., more empathic learners) were more successful in acquiring authentic pronunciation than those in the low-level group.

This paper seeks to probe cultural agendas pertaining to the images of celebrities in the widely-used English language textbooks. In fact, while visual analysis has solidified its position in ELT (e.g. Hurst, 2014; Mitsikopoulou, 2015; Romney, 2012; Taylor-Mendes, 2009) and caused the pendulum to swing away from the grammatical or textual content to the visual presentation (Giaschi, 2000), research into celebrities as the cultural representatives has been a barely touched issue. To address this gap, the researchers, drawing on Kachru’s (1985) orthodox model of the usage of English across the globe, examined the images of celebrities in four widely-used English language textbook series. In so doing, the terms depiction and mention (Toprak & Aksoyalp, 2014) were taken as a yardstick to pinpoint the type of intersection between the text and the image. Further, the images were thematically explored, which notably indicated the images relating to the field of media were the far most common theme in the English language textbooks. Lastly, it was revealed that whereas the images of the inner-circle outnumbered all, the images of the expanding circle surprisingly outnumbered those of the outer circle, an outcome which could point to linguistic schizophrenia (Kachru, 1992) as the main reason.