مجید الهی شیروان

This study sought to explore the association between English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ foreign language learning boredom (FLB) and foreign language enjoyment (FLE) (i.e., personal enjoyment, teacher appreciation, and social enjoyment) as well as the mediating role of student-perceived teacher humor styles (i.e., affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating). In doing so, we firstly investigated the relationship between 229 (67 male and 162 female) Turkish EFL university students’ FLB, FLE, and perceived teacher humor styles. We then probed to determine whether perceived teacher humor styles predict their FLB and FLE. The results indicated that all three indices of FLE had significant negative correlations with FLB. While affiliative and self-enhancing humor styles were significantly and positively correlated with FLE, they were negatively associated with FLB. Aggressive humor had only a significant negative correlation with the teacher appreciation subscale of FLE whereas self-defeating humor indicated a significant positive correlation with FLB. The results also showed that FLE could negatively predict FLB. Finally, the results of the mediation analysis indicated two significant mediation relationships which were significantly related to FLB through affiliative and self-enhancing humor. Implications are discussed in the context of teacher education.

What is “the best method” of language teaching? It has been one of the oldest questions of language teaching and learning during the last century. However, no comprehensive quantitative study has tackled the issue. In order to answer this question, the researchers meta-analyzed 56 studies with 7960 participants from many contexts. A coding scheme of 46 variables, in the form of four major moderator sets, including design characteristics, language characteristics, participant characteristics, and teaching characteristics, was developed. The overall effect size (g= 1.00) was found to be positive, strong, and significant for all language teaching methods. The findings showed that all language teaching methods, irrespective of various contexts, were positively effective. The results of moderator analysis showed that most of the moderators, excluding language skills and place of the study, had no significant effect on language teaching methods. Implications for current theory and practice, for both method and postmethod, are discussed.

Having witnessed the unprecedented prevalence of online education during the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide, the present research was motivated to explore the challenges facing an EFL teacher throughout an online English course of intermediate level. To this aim, a process-tracing approach (Checkel, 2006) was employed to unravel the causal mechanisms involved in the beginning, middle, and end of the course. The results showed that deficient technological resources caused the greatest challenges throughout the course, especially in the initial and mid-sessions. Also, the two other causal categories, human and content resources, were at their peak at the beginning of the course and were no longer noticeable at the end of the course. The most troublesome challenges the teacher faced were platform limitations, internet connection, and human resources’ unpreparedness for online education. Furthermore, the teacher’s and most students’ technological knowledge, as well as their media literacy, increased by the end of the course, but some students’ rather slow adaptation to the sudden online environment challenged the teacher during the course. Finally, suggestions were made to prevent these challenges or handle them effectively upon occurrence, especially in developing countries, where the required infrastructure for online education is lacking, and the majority of teachers, students, and institutions might not be yet adequately prepared for the online mode of teaching and learning languages.

The effect of motivational self-regulatory strategies on L2 learners’ achievement has scarcely been examined within the context of our country, Iran. This study is concerned with examining the relationship between motivational self-regulatory strategies and their L2 reading and L2 writing achievement. It also explores the relationship of motivational self-regulatory strategies and use of language learning strategies among EFL learners. The results of the study indicate that 1. There is a significantly positive relationship of EFL learners’ motivational self-regulatory strategies and both their L2reading and L2 writing achievement; 2. There is a significant and positive relationship between motivational self-regulatory strategies and use of language learning strategies among EFL learners. The results of the interviews are also clearly in line with those of the questionnaires. The findings of these study postulate that EFL teachers should enrich their learners’ motivational self-regulatory to help them sustain their efforts and motivation while performing L2 reading and writing tasks.