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While teachers’ confidence in their abilities is a crucial asset in teachers’ professionalism and their identity development, their efficacy doubts are also considered useful. Given the diversity of English Language Teaching (ELT) contexts, this paper probes the dynamic nature of efficacy doubts the teachers face and are expected to resolve in English for General Purposes (EGP) and English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) instruction. To this end, based on the existing theoretical frameworks in EGP and ESAP methodology and interviews with 25 university English teachers, two questionnaires were developed and administered to 170 Iranian EGP and ESAP university instructors. The results of factor analysis confirmed five factors underlying ESAP teachers’ teaching efficacy doubts and four factors for EGP teachers’ teaching efficacy doubts. The results may promise implications for ESAP and EGP teacher education programs; teacher educators may address the common efficacy doubts identified in this study and expose the current in-service and future ESAP and EGP teachers to the typical factors which may potentially hamper their efficacy and help them resolve their efficacy doubts as a means towards professional development

مطالعه حاضر کاربرد گفتگوی با خود توسط فراگیران زبان انگلیسی را در ساماندهی فعالیت های ذهنی آن ها بررسی می کند. برای این هدف موارد گفتگوی با خود 30 زبان آموز سطح متوسط بزرگسال در حین انجام فعالیتی حاوی معماهای چالش برانگیز به زبان انگلیسی ضبط شد. سپس موارد گفتگوی با خود زبان آموزان از نظر شکل، محتوا و کاربرد مورد بررسی قرار گرفت. نمونه های متعددی از بلند خوانی، تکرار، توضیح برای خود و همچنین مرور مطالب نشان می دهد که گفتگوی با خود در هدف گذاری، مدیریت ذهن، انگیزش و کنترل اضطراب نقش دارد. به علاوه، نتایج کاربردهای مفید گفتگوی با خود از قبیل هدف گذاری، مدیریت ذهن، انگیزش و کنترل اضطراب را در میان بسیاری دیگر نشان می دهد. این مطالعه بر آموزش کاربردهای گفتگوی با خود به زبان آموزان تاکید می کند و همچنین مدرسین را به هنگام سکوت فراگیران در فرایند آموزش زبان خارجی به صبر دعوت می نماید.

یادگیری یک زبان خارجی از طرفی با نوعی دانش راهبردی و از طرف دیگر با سطحی از اضطراب آزمون ارتباط دارد، اگرچه معمولا داشتن اندکی اضطراب آزمون طبیعی است. مطالعه اخیر به بررسی رابطه میان استفاده از راهبردهای شنیداری، اضطراب آزمون و عملکرد آزمون شنیداری فراگیران ایرانی سطوح متوسطه و پیشرفته ی زبان انگلیسی به عنوان زبان خارجی پرداخت. بدین منظور 80 فراگیرایرانی زبان انگلیسی ( 40 نفر در سطح متوسطه و 40 نفر در سطح پیشرفته ) در این تحقیق شرکت نمودند و پرسشنامه ی استفاده از راهبردهای شنیداری لی (1997)، مقیاس اضطراب آزمون ساراسون(1975) و دو مونولوگ از عملکرد آزمون شنیداری که از بخش شنیداری تافل TOEFL ETS)) انتخاب شده بود را کامل نمودند. نتایج آزمون همبستگی پیرسون نشان داد که بین اضطراب آزمون وعملکرد آزمون شنیداری رابطه منفی معنی دار و بین استفاده از راهبردهای شنیداری و عملکرد آزمون شنیداری رابطه مثبت معنی داری وجود دارد.همچنین نتایج تحلیل رگرسیون چندگانه نشان داد که استفاده از راهبردهای شنیداری پیش بینی کننده ی بهتری برای عملکرد آزمون شنیداری است.به علاوه نتایج آزمون تی مستقل نشان داد که بین فراگیران ایرانی سطوح متوسطه وپیشرفته ی زبان انگلیسی در میزان استفاده از راهبردهای شنیداری و میزان اضطراب آزمون تفاوت معنی داری وجود دارد.

This paper provides a fairly detailed corpus-based vocabulary profile of the Iranian EFL books used in public schools. To this end, the WordPerfect files of all the seven books were converted to text format to get rid of the formatting features and be compatible with the software used for analysis. The software tools used were the Compleat Lexical Tutor suite, version 6.2 (Cobb, 2011), AntConc (Anthony, 2012), and AntWord Profiler (Anthony, 2012). The output of the analysis included general counts of words in Iranian school books at different levels, the frequent function and content words, frequent n-grams, frequent metalinguistic words, the coverage of several well-known, corpus-based word lists in these books, the range of the words across the books, and the amount of vocabulary recycling. The paper discusses the vocabulary representativeness and recycling and the adequacy of exposure to English in these EFL books. Detailed word frequency tables as well as some practical implications of the quantitative results constitute important features of this article

Pragmatic assessment and consistency in rating are among the subject matters which are still in need of more profound investigations. The importance of the issue is highlighted when remembering that inconsistency in ratings would surely damage the test fairness issue in assessment and lead to much diversity in ratings. Our principal concern in this study was observing the criteria that American and Iranian EFL/ESL teachers consider when rating Iranian EFL learners’ pragmatic productions regarding the speech act of compliment. The instrument utilized in this study was WDCTs and a speech act rating questionnaire administered to sixty American and sixty Iranian EFL/ESL teachers. In order to come up with the criteria, the reasoning and justifications of the raters when rating learners’ pragmatic productions were analyzed carefully through content analysis. The results showed that overall the raters considered nine general criteria when rating. They included: “Strategy use”, “Affective factors”, “Politeness”, “Interlocutors’ relationships”, “Linguistic accuracy”, “Sincerity”, “Authenticity”, “Fluency”, and “Cultural issues”. Also, the most frequent criterion among the native and non-native raters was “Strategy use” and “Politeness” respectively. Finally, it was concluded that due to some inconsistencies and variations in the ratings and criteria of both native and non-native raters, it seems that both groups are in need of pragmatic workshops and training sessions. The results of this study can have important implications for EFL/ESL teacher educators who are considerate of the importance of pragmatic training and instruction.

از دیدگاه زبانشناسی کاربردی یکی از مسایل بنیادی در برابر معلمین زبان، روش شناسان آموزشی زبان و برنامه نویسان درسی زبان آموزی این است که اصولا چه روند و مسیری در آموزش زبان خارجی یا زبان دوم کارآتر است: آموزش زبان برای کاربرد آن یا کاربرد زبان برای آموزش آن؟ بی تردید، برای این که گویشور زبان توانایی باشیم، معلومات و دانش در زمینه ساخت زبان و نظام و شیوه کارکرد آن امری است ضروری؛ ولی این دانش فی النفسه کافی نیست. به همین علت، در سال های اخیر گرایش و چرخشی ویژه از معلم و روش زبان آموزی به سوی خود زبان آموز صورت گرفته است. بدین ترتیب، در تعریف مؤلفه های توانش زبانی و مکانیزم ها و استراتژی های درگیر در فرآیند آموزش زبان تغییرات عمده ای صورت گرفته است. در مقاله حاضر، ماهیت و ویژگی های استراتژی های زبان آموزی یعنی ویژگیهای شناختی، فراشناختی، زبانشناختی و جامعه شناختی زبان مورد توجه قرار گرفته اند؛ و نقش مهم و تعیین کننده استراتژی های فراشناختی در آموزش استراتژی های زبان آموزی مورد تاکید ویژه قرار گرفته است .

This study investigated the characteristics of effective secondary school Iranian EFL teachers from students’ and teachers’ perspectives. To this end, 376 junior secondary school students and 32 EFL teachers teaching at various Iranian secondary schools participated in the study. A validated open-ended questionnaire was distributed among the student and teacher participants and asked for their opinions on key characteristics of an effective EFL teacher. A semi-structured interview was also conducted with the teacher participants to investigate why they deemed the characteristics important. The results of the content analysis of the data obtained from the questionnaire and the interview indicated that students and teachers were approximately of the same opinion, both highlighting teachers’ professional qualities (e.g., knowledge of the subject matter, ability to impart knowledge properly, etc.), classroom management-related qualities (e.g., involving all students by assigning pair work/group work activities, assessing their learning progress regularly, etc.), and interpersonal relationships as being of crucial importance for effective EFL teaching. However, they differed in the degree to which they perceived these qualities to be important

ELT has recently witnessed a shift away from a method-bound orientation and toward a post-methodic view of teaching English. Consequently, the focus of some second language teacher education programs has shifted toward sociopolitical aspects of ELT (Miller, 2004) and its contributions to reinforcement or transformation of the status quo (Kumaravadivelu, 2003a). Yet, in many countries, including Iran, ELT teacher education has maintained a relatively method-bound focus on technical dimensions of teaching English and has avoided adopting a critical and sociopolitical approach to ELT. In order to investigate the ways in which teacher education as currently practiced facilitates or stifles implementation of postmethod in ELT, the present study explored English teachers’ perceptions of the dominant approaches to teacher education in ELT centers in Iran and their ideological and pedagogical bases. To this end, 23 language teachers were interviewed about the logistics, content, and procedures of the teacher education programs they had attended. The analysis of the interviews, as directed by grounded theory, yielded three themes, namely no/little teacher learners’ involvement in course design and implementation, dominance of a transmission model, and dominance of a linguistic and technical focus

امروزه موضوع ارتقای سطح آموزش در سیستم های آموزشی نوین، مسئله ای مهم است. کیفیت آموزش به عوامل گوناگونی از جمله فعالیت استاد، فعالیت زبان آموزان و مواد درسی وابسته است. در این کار پژوهشی نقش تأثیر مواد درسی برروی کیفیت زبان آموزان در محیط های آموزشی ایران بررسی می شود. بر همین اساس، در این مقاله نقش مطالعه متون ادبی در خانه در بالابردن سطح کیفیت آموزش، تجزیه و تحلیل می گردد. منظور از مطالعه در خانه، مطالعه ای است که زبان آموزان برای تکمیل و بهبود مطالعه مواد درسی مرتبط با موضوعات آموزشی و فهم بهتر محتوای آن ها در خارج از محیط آموزشی به آن می پردازند. مؤلفان معتقدند که مطالعه آزاد متون ادبی در خارج از وقت های آموزشی می تواند تأثیر به سزایی بر روی کیفیت آموزش زبان روسی داشته باشد. در این مقاله برآن هستیم تا مشخصاً با ذکر دلایل و شواهدی تأثیر مثبت مطالعه آزاد متون ادبی را بر روی کیفیت آموزش زبان روسی به دانشجویان فارسی زبان اثبات کنیم و درعین حال معیارهای لازم را برای انتخاب متون ادبی برای دست یابی به هدف فوق و نیز مقدار و نحوه مطالعه آن ها ارائه نماییم.

This paper elaborates on Persian and English orthographic shared aspects to study the effects of L1 Persian on learning English as a foreign language. While there are some examples of letter and sound mismatches in the orthographic system of both languages, those of English are more complex than Persian. In order to see the effect of the mismatch between orthography and transcription, 40 Persian EFL learners were divided into two proficiency groups i.e., advanced and elementary, and their performance was examined on comprehension and production tasks. The learners’ production skills were checked via a list of 76 pseudo words requiring the learners to read them while their voices were recorded. After one week time interval, a comprehension test consisted of 34 items was administered, requiring the learners to listen and choose among the orthographic forms presented to them. It was hypothesized that being educated in L1 Persian comprising semi-opaque orthography system, the learners would tackle the English opaque graphemes better on the mismatches. However, it was observed that both elementary and advanced groups had difficulty learning English orthography system, showing almost no positive effect from L1. Only in rare cases more proficient learners performed better due to more schooling education in English.

The present study chiefly aimed to compare two forms of dynamic assessment and standard assessment of EFL learners’ listening comprehension. 59 Iranian EFL learners were randomly assigned to three test administration groups and assessed on listening for main and supporting information in listening tasks. In the first group, dynamic assessment in a form of scaffolding in which for any incorrect answer graded prompts were progressively presented to learners until they answered correctly was implemented. In the second group, dynamic assessment in a form of direct instruction of listening tasks was implemented. The third group was in a form of standard assessment; learners completed the task independently without mediation. The results revealed statistically significant listening improvement in favor of dynamic-supported and dynamicinstructed assessment groups rather than standard assessment one. The findings of the study indicate that dynamic assessment can gain better insights into learners’ level of comprehension and their potential for future development and provide better learning effectiveness than those in statistic assessment group.