مطالعات کاربردی زبان - Iranian Journal of Applied Language Studies

The study examined the impact of high school English teachers’ awareness of pedagogical competence on student learning. A psychometric measurement instrument of English language teachers’ pedagogical competence (ELTPC) was first developed through factor analysis with 320 high school teachers in Guilan, northern Iran. Based on the developed instrument, 36 teachers were divided into two groups of aware and unaware teachers of pedagogical competence (PC) according to Contrasting Groups Method. Then, 160 high school third graders received instruction from the aware and unaware teachers for 7 weeks. Finally, a survey regarding the teachers’ implementation of pedagogical competence in classrooms was conducted with 30 students. The findings showed that the students in the aware teacher group outperformed the students in the unaware group of teachers. Although based on the survey results, the aware teachers were reported to act better with regard to the students’ learning achievements, they were not reported as highly practicing the pedagogical competence. The findings can be practically used by teachers, teacher educators, and education administrators.

Pragmatic rating is considered one of the novel and crucial aspects of second language education which has not been maneuvered upon in the literature. To address this gap, the current study aimed to inspect the matches and mismatches, to explore rating variations, and to assess the rater consistency between the holistic and analytic rating methods of the speech act of agreement in L2 by non-native English teachers. In this regard, 12 discourse completion tests (DCTs) for agreement accompanied by EFL learners’ responses to each situation were rated by 50 non-native English teachers. Initially, they were asked to rate it holistically, and the content analysis of raters’ comments revealed twelve agreement criteria. Grammatical structure was the prominent criterion which suggested that the raters were predominantly concerned with pragmalinguistics. In particular, the results of descriptive statistics demonstrated that there was a degree of divergence in the frequency of the criteria applied. Additionally, the teachers were asked to rate the pragmatic outputs analytically which showed that the raters were more consistent in the analytic phase. Finally, the findings indicated that there was a convergence between the two rating methods. The results of the present study implicated the necessity of rater training with regard to the rubric-based pragmatic rating. This study offers crucial pedagogical implications for syllabus designers, materials developers, language testers, and some suggestions for further research studies.

Today technology is an integral part of professional translation; and it is generally assumed that translators’ attitudes toward translation technology tools influence their interaction with technology (Bundgaard, 2017). Therefore, the present two-phase study seeks to shed some light on what translation technology tools are and how professional translators feel toward them. The research method used is exploratory in nature, as it tends to discuss issues on which little research has been done and relies on secondary research for its data. The data required for answering the first question have been mined utilizing document analysis from language service providers’ (LSPs) websites, while the data for working out the answer to the second question have been obtained from ProZ.com Quick Polls. Based on our findings, translation technology tools fall into eight broad categories, of which the most commonly used are translation memory (TM) or computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools. In addition, it was found that most translators either do not have a love-hate relationship with technology or love it. This research is envisaged to form the basis of more detailed and conclusive studies.

Universities require highly qualified and committed instructors to carry out the significant tasks of educating the future generation of the society. The primary interest of this study was to explore the construct of teacher commitment to determine its dimensions and components and finally design EFL Teachers’ Professional Commitment Questionnaire. First, through a thorough analysis of the available literature as well as a semi-structured interview, the core dimensions and components were opted. Then, in the second qualitative phase, the researcher designed the early draft of a structured questionnaire which was handed into 25 experts. Content Validity Ratio was computed to ensure validity. Subsequently, the modified draft of the EFL Teachers’ Professional Commitment Questionnaire was designed and administered to 70 EFL university instructors to investigate the validity and reliability of the instrument employing Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling. As a result, three dimensions of Commitment to Students, Commitment to Profession, and Commitment to University along with 10 components were confirmed. The practical implication of this study is a validated EFL Teachers’ Professional Commitment Questionnaire performing as an evaluative tool to assess the level of teachers’ commitment with respect to their commitment to students, university, and profession in the EFL academic context of Iran.

Considering the paramount importance of writing logical arguments for college students, this study investigated the effect of dynamic assessment (DA) of Toulmin Model through teacher- and collective-scaffolding on argument structure and overall quality of argumentative essays of Iranian EFL university learners. In so doing, 45 male and female Iranian EFL learners taking part in the study were randomly assigned into three groups (two experimental groups including the teacher- and collective-scaffolding and one control group), each consisting of 15 learners. Toulmin Model of argumentation was used as an instructional tool in this research. The necessary data were collected through a pre- and post-test argumentative essay. During the experiment, the dynamic assessment groups wrote and revised their essays in response to teacher’s or peers’ supportive dialogue and zone of proximal development (ZPD) sensitive feedback on the argument structure of their essays; whereas, the control group did not receive such mediation and they were evaluated on their own independent performance. The results of statistical analyses carried out on post-test scores on argument structure and overall quality of the essays pointed out to the outperformance of the teacher- and collective-scaffolding groups on both variables. Furthermore, follow-up Post-hoc analyses revealed no significant difference between the teacher- and collective-scaffolding groups in terms of the overall quality of the argumentative essays. However, the statistically significant difference between the two experimental groups with regard to the argument structure indicated the outperformance of the teacher-scaffolding over the collective group. The obtained results support the fact that autonomy and improvement cannot be thrust upon learners, rather they need to be assisted wisely towards independence.

This study was an analytical account of EFL postgraduate learners’ use of verbs in citing other scholars in their own writing. Particular interest was differing extents of these verbs as categorised by Myer (1997), namely verbs representing a statement of scholarly writing, verbs communicating knowledge of scholarly writing, and verbs denoting cognition of scholarly writing, each of which has subcategories. To achieve this, 40 postgraduate dissertations and theses by the University of Dar es Salaam students were purposively selected. From these citation verbs from the introduction and literature review chapters were posted to the Microsoft Excel sheets and frequencies of occurrences were computed for each verb before assigning them to their relevant categories. The findings indicate the predominance of verbs of cognition of scholarly writing (notably perception and interpretation verbs) followed by those denoting knowledge of scholarly writing (notably procedural verbs). The least used category was verbs belonging to a statement of scholarly, especially inclusive verbs with only 10 instances of occurrence.

Employing an explanatory sequential design, the present study investigated the effect of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) blog-mediated writing instruction on the students’ learner autonomy. A number of 46 learners who were the students of two intact classes were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. Over a 16-week semester, the control group students (n=21) were taught based on regular in-class writing instruction and the students in the experimental group (n=25) made use of blogs in addition to the traditional in-class writing instruction. The data were collected through administering a learner autonomy instrument, consisting of metacognitive, cognitive, social, and affective components, and conducting semi-structured interviews. The results of both quantitative and qualitative data revealed that the blog-mediated writing instruction contributed to enhancing learner autonomy of the participants. More specifically, the students who experienced blog-mediated writing activities showed improvement in metacognitive and cognitive components of learner autonomy. The findings offer significant implications for EFL teachers.

Central to the spirit of reflective teaching is the ability to focus critically on one’s own beliefs, cognitions, and concerns. Numerous proposals have been developed for implementing reflective practices in pre-service teacher education contexts with the aim of producing highly competent reflective teachers. However, it is imperative to identify the candidates’ beliefs and knowledge base before any interventions could be introduced to effectively trigger a response. This study utilized a reflection oriented model to explore pre-service language teachers’ concerns about language learning/teaching. Interview techniques facilitated such an in-depth exploration among a conveniently sampled 13 candidates studying at a teacher college in Iran. The content analysis of the interviews revealed that affective factors, classroom management, language-related fears, and tensions between their beliefs and practices were the candidates’ major concerns. On the whole, candidates’ preexisting learning experiences seemed to cast a shadow over their cognitions and concerns. Implications regarding reflective practicums in teacher education programs are discussed.