هوشنگ یزدانی

As online learning gains popularity in educational settings, online exams have become efficient tools for evaluation. However, more research is needed on students' perceptions of online exams in developing countries like Iran. This study investigates the perceptions of 153 undergraduate students who have taken or are taking online general English courses at Yasouj and Shahrekord universities. The research aims to understand university students' perceptions of online English tests, including the ease and frequency of cheating, various forms of cheating, and reasons for cheating. A mixed-method approach was employed, incorporating interviews followed by a 19-item questionnaire. Parallel exams were conducted to compare students' performance. The analysis also examined differences in perceptions based on participants’ gender. The results indicate that cheating is easier and more prevalent in online exams than in traditional face-to-face exams. However, it does not occur more frequently in online English as a Foreign Language (EFL) exams than in other subject exams. The study identified various forms of cheating used by students and the reasons for cheating in online assessments. Additionally, gender was found to influence students' perceptions of cheating in online exams significantly. Based on these perceptions, strategies to combat cheating are proposed. The implications of this study are significant for educational stakeholders, particularly teachers and students, in their efforts to promote and maintain academic integrity.

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.

   COPYRIGHTS ©2021 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publisher. This study set out to explore the efficacy of EFL teachers' digital literacy in improving language learners' speaking fluency and accuracy through the development of virtual languaculture tasks. To this end, 52 male and 68 female EFL teachers from different areas of Kurdistan province participated in the study by completing a digital literacy scale developed by Ng (2012). Moreover, three groups of teachers, 12 high and 12 low-digitally literate teachers who used virtual languaculture tasks and 10 teachers who used traditional teaching methods participated in semi-structured interviews, and their teachings were observed for 8 sessions. Besides, by conducting an IELTS speaking test, 121 male and 122 female EFL learners of the three groups of teachers were selected to participate in this study. After conducting 16-session treatments, a speaking test was used as the posttest.  The qualitative and quantitative data were analyzed via MAXQDA and SPSS. The results of one-way between-groups multivariate analysis of variance indicated the efficacy of the implementation of languaculture tasks in developing students' speaking fluency and accuracy. On the other hand, the qualitative phase of the study showed that being digitally literate influenced the development, implementation, variety, and complexity of languaculture tasks. Moreover, the attained results supported the superiority of the languaculture task as a mediator between instructors' digital literacy and learners' verbal ability. Accordingly, enhancing teachers' digital literacy and learners' critical languaculture awareness are suggested as useful strategies to improve language learners' speaking fluency and accuracy. 

The present research was an endeavor to examine and compare the effects of digitally self-regulated and guided discovery learning instructions on Iranian EFL learners’ vocabulary acquisition. To this end, by conducting the Oxford Placement Test, 60 out of 140 Iranian EFL male and female learners from three language institutes in Isfahan, Iran, were randomly selected, and divided into three equal groups (i.e. two experimental groups and one control group). Prior to the instructions, a vocabulary pretest, designed and validated by the researchers, was conducted. Then, the experimental groups received two types of instruction, separately. The first experimental group was taught via digitally self-regulated learning (SRL) instruction based on Santangelo, Harris, and Graham’s (2008) six-stage model. The second experimental group was instructed via guided discovery learning instruction based on Brown and Campione’s (2011) stages. In contrast, the control group received the traditional method of teaching vocabulary such as word lists, dictionary use, and word translation. After conducting eight-session instructions, a posttest was administered. The data were analyzed via ANOVAs and post hoc analysis using the Tukey test. The findings of the study revealed that both digitally self-regulated and guided discovery promoted Iranian EFL learners’ vocabulary acquisition. Additionally, the findings indicated that digitally self-regulated instruction was more effective than guided discovery instruction regarding vocabulary acquisition. Eventually, the theoretical and pedagogical implications regarding language learners, teachers, and curriculum designs are also provided.

The present study aimed to analyze two secondary English school textbooks from Iran and Egypt to see to what extent these two middle-eastern countries with similar religious, historical, and social backgrounds include culture in their official textbooks.  For this purpose, Vision I , the Iranian secondary school textbook, and Hello I, the Egyptian English school textbook, were chosen. Four aspects of culture (topics, cultural dimensions, international/intercultural issues, and cultural references) were investigated in these two textbooks. The results show that Vision I has a more limited number of cultural content compared to Hello I . However, a lack of in-depth cultural information could be observed in both textbooks. Thus, it is necessary to take special measures concerning Vision I by including a greater array of cultural content and giving this content depth and detail. For Hello I , the cultural content needs to exceed in quality. The present study's findings might be insightful for syllabus designers, textbook publishers, and teachers to reconsider the essential role of culture qualitatively and quantitatively.

Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, there have been three packages used in the state-controlled schools of the country, namely, Graded, Right Path to English, and Prospect/Vision series. These textbooks all include prefaces to indicate the general philosophy of language teaching and education, and how the agents (learners and teachers) have to play roles in the system. This article aims to have a postcolonial reading of the Islamic post-revolutionary English language textbooks published in Iran. To this aim, the prefaces are critically content-analyzed and explained taking into consideration the key concepts of postcolonialism. After developing the table of themes in relation to postcolonial issues, the findings indicate that the resistance prevalent in the prefaces is particularly hybrid, anxious, and unstable of the Iranian type due to the socio-politico-cultural background of the country. This resistance, thus, is a tragic attempt for developing a firm background for developing language learners'' knowledge.

Grades represent one of the most common sources of evidence of student achievement in classrooms, though their relationship with test scores has remained understudied, particularly in settings such as in Iran, where English is taught as a foreign language. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between graded and tested achievement with respect to gender and proficiency level differences. Teacher-assigned grades and standardized achievement test scores of 693 Iranian learners of English taught by 15 teachers were examined. Primary analyses focused on the validity of teacher grades and the subsequent Pearson correlation coefficients revealed that grades associated positively with externally-validated test scores obtained from reliable tests, an indication of the validity of teacher grading. Additionally, the results of independent-samples t-tests showed that female students outperformed male students on achievement tests, but with fluctuations across proficiency levels. Higher proficiency levels gave male participants an advantage over female participants in achievement tests. Moreover, male teachers were found to grade female participants more accurately than their female counterparts. Implications are discussed for informing teachers about the validation of their grading practices, as well as for teacher education programs and teachers’ professional development.

This study attempts to investigate the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic development of Iranian EFL learners cross-sectionally when making requests in different situations. To this end, 103 university students in three proficiency levels of pre-intermediate, upper-intermediate, and advanced were asked to write three discourse completion tests (DCTs) of requests in different situations with various social and power relation demands and 20% of them were interviewed about their DCTs. The analyses of these written and verbal reports suggested that parallel with proficiency there was a movement from directness to conventional indirectness and an expansion of the repertoire of both external and internal modification devices. Even though all the participants expressed their awareness of the sociopragmatic requirements of different request situations in their verbal reports, increasing proficiency led to the application of this awareness in practice. That is, advanced learners were more successful to differentiate among the situations both sociopragmatically and pragmalinguistically. The results are discussed in light of previous research and available developmental patterns.