عباسعلی رضایی

English as a foreign language (EFL) textbooks play a significant role in these cultural exchanges. On the other hand, English is known as an international language and acquiring a good Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) in EFL classes is considered as one of the primary goals. The present research reports a qualitative study on firstly, the representation of the elements of intercultural competence in Iranian EFL high school textbooks (Prospect Series) and secondly, the potentiality of the textbooks to develop students’ ICC. To this end, an in-depth content analysis of Prospect 1, Prospect 2, and Prospect 3 was done based on Byram’s (1997) model. Next, a group of 300 Iranian high school students was provided with the AIC questionnaire (Fantini, 2009a, p. 196) to examine the extent to which EFL lessons in Iranian high-school English textbooks significantly develop learners’ intercultural competence. The results of the statistical analyses revealed that the cultural topics covered in Prospect Series have little emphasis on developing students’ ICC, and also the dimensions of ICC tasks in the textbooks are distributed unequally. Moreover, Iranian EFL textbooks could not significantly develop learners’ ICC to become aware of cultural differences by being a source of ICC experience.

Despite the widely recognized significance of values education in a rapidly changing world and teachers’ education-related beliefs, little research has investigated how English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers navigate values in their classrooms. The study reported in this paper explored in-service EFL teachers’ perceptions of values education and their conceptions of their moral roles, aiming to develop an instrument related to values education. To this end, this exploratory sequential mixed-methods study recruited 10 EFL teachers selected through maximum variation sampling. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the teacher participants and the data were analyzed inductively through thematic analysis. Furthermore, the existing literature and the insights gleaned from the initial phase of the study led to the development of a questionnaire, which was administered to 332 EFL teachers in the quantitative phase of the study. Six overarching themes were identified through thematic analysis of the interview data, namely relational values, personal growth, academic excellence, regulatory values, teachers’ personal standards and global values with teachers prioritizing students’ motivation and wellbeing over other value types. In addition, confirmatory factor analysis of the developed questionnaire verified a five-factor structure. Only 23 items out of 53 initial items were retained in the final version of the questionnaire. Overall, the results revealed that master obligation of teachers, associated with nurturing students’ dignity was prioritized over teachers’ prima facie obligation which promotes students’ learning and intellectual growth. After a detailed discussion, implications and suggestions for future research are presented in the end.

Objective: The present study sought to explore EFL teachers’ cognition of rapport establishment and maintenance, as one of the aspects of classroom management, in the context of Iran’s foreign language institutes’ face-to-face EFL classes.Method: The study involved 12 Iranian teachers who taught adult learners. The sample size was determined based on reaching saturation, and the participating teachers were selected through purposeful sampling. The main instrument utilized in this qualitative study was a semi-structured one-to-one in-person interview, which aimed to elicit the participants’ cognition of rapport development. These individual interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed thematically.Results: The findings revealed that the participants believed in the importance of rapport creation for efficient classroom management. Besides, they recommended strategies for establishing rapport with learners, such as familiarization, verbal immediacy, non-verbal immediacy, attention to learners’ emotions, judicious L1 use, playing games, and utilizing social media. Moreover, they held that teachers’ personality traits and communication skills could impact their approach to building rapport.Conclusion: Altogether, the participants had a sound cognition of rapport maintenance as one of the aspects of classroom management. The findings of the current study provide implications for teacher educators, teachers, and institutes’ supervisors.

The current study used Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) as a statistical technique to test a hypothesized mediating model to uncover the underlying relationship between the L2 motivational self-system, L2 anxiety, and L2 willingness to communicate (L2 WTC). This study is significant because it considers the unique experiences of English as a foreign language (EFL) learner in the era of globalization by incorporating the L2 motivational self-system. The mediating effect of L2 anxiety was also accounted for, providing a deeper understanding of how emotional factors influence L2 WTC. The data were collected through a questionnaire administered to 260 students at six public universities in China. The results showed that (a) two subcomponents of the L2 motivational self-system (ideal L2 self and L2 learning experience) were positive predictors to L2 WTC; (b) the higher the degree to which learners were motivated by their ought-to L2 self, the higher the anxiety of English learning; and (c) L2 anxiety had a suppressing effect between the L2 motivational self-system and L2 WTC. Specifically, L2 anxiety weakens the direct positive effect of the L2 motivational self-system on L2 WTC, leading to a decrease in L2 WTC. Pedagogical implications and future research directions were also addressed.

Research on the effect of implicit and explicit instruction on developing learners’ explicit knowledge by the use of measures of explicit knowledge abounds in the literature. However, measuring learners’ implicit knowledge employing fine-grained measures has rarely been the concern of researchers in the field. Therefore, the present study is an attempt to scrutinize the effectiveness of implicit and explicit instruction through administering a Word Monitoring Task (WMT), as a more valid psycholinguistic measure of implicit knowledge. The necessary data were collected from 47 pre-intermediate participants in three different groups, i.e., (1) the implicit group received textually enhanced texts of verb complementation, (2) the explicit group was presented with metalinguistic explanations and examples of the target feature, and (3) the control group was deprived of any instruction. The results of the mixed between-within subjects ANOVA revealed that although both implicit and explicit instructions facilitated the development of the implicit knowledge of the target feature, the learners in the explicit group outperformed their counterparts in the implicit and the control groups in both the immediate and delayed post-tests. Moreover, the results indicated more durable effects of implicit instruction compared with those of explicit instruction. Overall, the findings provided evidence for the superiority of explicit instruction and the long-term effect of implicit instruction in developing relevant knowledge of verb complementation. The findings of the study can benefit both teachers and learners in developing teaching/learning strategies to improve and facilitate the grasp of both explicit and implicit knowledge.

When constructing a test, an initial decision is choosing an appropriate item response format which can be classified as selected or constructed. In large-scale tests where time and finance are of concern, the use of response chosen known as multiple-choice items is quite widespread. This study aimed at investigating the impact of response format on the performance of structure tests. Concurrent common item equating design was used to compare multiple-choice items with their constructed response stem-equivalent in a test of grammar. The Rasch model was employed to compare item difficulties, fit statistics, ability estimates and reliabilities of the two tests. Two independent sample t-tests were also conducted to investigate whether the differences among the item difficulty estimates and ability estimates of the two tests were statistically significant.  A statistically significant difference was observed in item difficulties. However, no significant difference was detected between the ability estimates, fit statistics, and reliabilities of the two tests.

Code-switching (CS), an alternation between two or more languages or language varieties, has long been researched in language education. A great number of studies by applied linguists have explored the reasons for, and the potential usages of code-switching in foreign language education over the past years. This study explores the perceptions of English language learners across various proficiency levels concerning teachers’ use of CS, in this case Farsi in English classrooms. It also examines the roles and functions of CS in the classroom. Fifty teachers and 105 language learners from University of Tehran Language Center (UTLC) in Tehran, Iran were involved in this study. The necessary data were obtained through questionnaires. The results suggested that the Elementary (EL) learners seem to benefit from the teachers' use of first language in class, whereas English-only classroom is preferred by Intermediate (IN) and Upper Intermediate (UI) ones. It was also revealed that maximum exposure of the learners to the target language seems necessary. The results suggest that, concerning the learners' levels (EL, IN and UI), teachers’ and learners’ Code Switching can work as a useful language teaching strategy. The findings of this study can have implications for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms and can be used by language teachers.

پژوهش حاضر رابطه ی بین باورهای انگیزشی زبان آموزان انگلیسی و استفاده از راهبردهای یادگیری را بررسی می کند. سه جز انگیزه (جز انتظار، ارزش و عاطفه) در رابطه با راهبردهای شناختی، فراشناختی و مدیریت تلاش بررسی شدند. دویست و پنجاه و هفت زبان آموز انگلیسی از سطوح مختلف توانش زبانی پرسشنامه ی فارسی ر اهبردهای انگیزشی برای یادگیری را پاسخ گفتند. بررسی تاثیر سطح زبانی بر باورهای انگیزشی بیانگر تاثیر معنا دار سطح توانش زبانی بر اضطراب آزمون و رویکرد هدف بیرونی بود، بدین معنا که زبان آموزان با توانایی زبانی پایین تر در مقایسه با زبان آموزان سطوح بالاتر به طور معنا داری مضطرب تر بوده و رویکرد هدف بیرونی بیشتری داشتند. نتایج همچنین نشان داد که خودباوری، کنترل عقاید یادگیری، رویکرد هدف درونی، و ارزش تکلیف حدود ۷۰ درصد از واریانس راهبرهای خودتنظیمی را توضیح می دهد. این پژوهش با پیشنهادهایی برای تقویت عقاید انگیزشی و راهبردهای یادگیری زبان پایان می یابد.

Testing pragmatic competence has always posed daunting challenges to researchers and practitioners. As a step to address the gap in pragmatic testing, this paper delineates the procedural stages of developing and validating a context-sensitive Multiple Choice Discourse Completion Test (MDCT). Following a unitary view of validity, tenable argument and empirical evidence was accumulated to support the construct validity of the test. While 136 advanced learners of English took the developed test, it exhibited reasonable internal consistency (α= .72). Furthermore, the results of correlational studies revealed acceptable association between the scores of this MDCT with both a written version of the same test and a previously validated test of pragmatics from the literature endorsing its concurrent validity. Also, the MDCT proved efficient in differentiating between native speakers and EFL learners as suggested by the results of an independent samples t-test. Finally, a pretest-posttest experimental study with 26 intermediate EFL learners was designed to check the sensitivity of the test towards developments in learners’ interlanguage after which a t-test analysis corroborated the construct validity of the test. This array of evidence denotes that the suggested MDCT can be reliably used in EFL contexts as a valid measure of pragmatic competence.