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This experimental study aimed at discovering the impact of Metacognitive Intervention Program instruction on the reading advancement of Iranian dyslexic primary school learners. The participants consisted of 32 male and female, grade three primary school students, with the age range of 8 to 11 years and 90 to 110 IQ average. They were selected through convenient sampling and divided into two control and experimental groups of equal size. Then, the experimental group was exposed to the Metacognitive Intervention Program instruction for 10 weeks. Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) and Dyslexia and Reading (NEMA) tests were used as instruments.  To evaluate the participants’ reading progress, a pre-test and a post-test (NEMA) were conducted. The results of covariance analysis showed that the employed program was effective in the reading comprehension development of the participants. The findings of this study suggest that primary school instructors need to think more about using the Metacognitive Intervention Program instruction on different steps of reading comprehension and do more effective activities to assist students in removing their reading difficulties.    

Textbooks in ELT perform different functions since their content can serve different purposes. Particularly, the content of textbooks can affect learners’ views to a great deal. Accordingly, designing ELT textbooks can generate much disagreement. Thus, textbook content is considered important and demands critical evaluation. This study explored the representation of national identity in the English Vision textbook series for Iranian senior high schools. For this aim, corpus analysis and content analysis were carried out, respectively, aimed at providing a description of the terms associated with nationalities, and describing aspects of national identity represented in the textbooks. The data in the corpus analysis phase were collected through obtaining frequencies of reference to nations and in the content analysis phase by means of a researcher-made checklist. Results revealed that Iranian identity is the most frequent aspect, for which 13 categories of reference were observed. Similarly, six major themes were found regarding aspects of national identity. This study offers implications for Iranian education policy-makers, textbook designers, and education practitioners.

Despite the voluminous body of research investigating linguistic, disciplinary, and cultural variations in citation practices in research articles, these practices have not been examined in light of the interplay between disciplinary conventions and research methodological underpinnings in the field of linguistics. Adopting a multi-faceted design, this study analyzed 180 research article introductions from two close-knit disciplines (Theoretical Linguistics and Applied Linguistics) to look into the contextualized citation functions and authorial evaluative stance toward citations. The corpus was purposively selected to sample three research methodologies. Comparisons were carried out at disciplinary, research methodological, and combinatory levels. The findings of the study show clear variations in the citation functions and evaluative stances taken toward citations. These variations are thought to be the result of the disciplinary conventions which authors must abide by as well as the paradigmatic underpinnings of the research methodologies which the articles are built upon, though the latter have greater impacts. As a partial contribution to the field of second language writing, a practical taxonomy is also proposed to account for the contextualized citation functions in the two disciplines. The study concludes with some pedagogical implications

This study aimed at developing and designing a new model and instrument to explore attitudes of Iranian EFL Teachers towards reflection-for-action through their teaching. In so doing, the researchers followed several rigorous steps including extensive literature review, content selection, item generation, designing the rating scales and personal information part, item revision, and detecting factor structure. An initial draft of the questionnaire consisting of ten dimensions along with 49 items, investigating teachers’ attitudes towards the components of reflection-for-action scale based on the literature and interview with a panel of experts. Then, it was distributed to a group of 150 Iranian EFL teachers to refine it more. Finally, Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of the obtained data revealed that the questionnaire consisted of a seven-factor structure including Academic Qualification as the (first factor), Experience (second factor), Professional Development (third factor), Collaboration (fourth factor), Perception (fifth factor), Efficacy (sixth factor), Motivation (seventh factor).        

The design, implementation and outcomes of curriculums must be ongoingly evaluated. Using quantitative gap analysis, this study evaluated Iranian EFL teachers’ satisfaction with their pre-service education in developing their assessment literacy in reference to the perceived importance of knowledge and skills areas of classroom language assessment.  To this end, the study included 100 EFL teachers who graduated from state universities in Iran with at least a Bachelor’s degree and three to five years of teaching experience at public schools. Data were collected using a 44-item researcher-made semantic differential Likert scale. It involved two parts tapping into their perceptions of importance and the level of their pre-service preparation. Descriptive analysis and inferential statistics revealed that the teachers rated all the areas almost highly (M ≥ 4.67 out of 6). The participants attached the highest importance to the areas of "assessing different language skills and sub-skills". In contrast, the areas relating to "interpreting students’ test performance” and “making the appropriate decision about the students’ test results and test washback" were perceived to be the least significant in classroom assessment. The gap analysis also indicated that there was a significant difference between the teachers’ perception of the importance of assessment knowledge and skills areas and their level of pre-service education, construed as their under-preparedness for classroom assessment. Further, the gaps were perceived to be sharper in assessment skills areas.  The study discusses the implications of the findings in the context of teacher education and classroom assessment in Iran.

The present study aimed to examine the effects of an educational technology called smart learning pen (i.e., iPen) as an ICT tool on young Iranian male and female EFL learners' speaking accuracy and fluency. A group of 180 young (6-9 years old) male and female learners with no previous formal education in English were randomly assigned into three different conditions: those who used the iPen in class and at home (IPC), at home only (IPH), and those who did not use the iPen at all (NIP). As gender was an independent variable, each condition had male and female groups. To address the research questions, the participants' performance on the oral sub-test of the posttest was put into analysis. The two-way ANOVA run on the effect of the independent variables (iPen and gender) and their interaction on the participants' speaking accuracy, and fluency revealed that using iPen helped the IPC and IPH participants significantly outperform the NIP group in terms of both accuracy and fluency. However, such an analysis did not show any significant effect for gender, nor did it show any significant effect when the interaction of gender and other variables was taken into account. The study has practical implications for policymakers, language teachers as well as software, hardware, and mobile phone application developers.

While metadiscourse has been extensively examined across several genres, contexts of publication, disciplines, and languages over the past two decades, researchers have mainly limited themselves to the qualitative checking of candidate metadiscourse markers for the various functions they serve. In the present study, however, we drew on retrospective methods coupled with semi-structured interviews to gain a deeper understanding of metadiscourse features applied linguistics apprentice and professional authors use in their research articles (RAs) in national and international English-medium journals. To achieve this goal, we built on Hyland’s (2019) interpersonal metadiscourse model to analyse RAs in three subsections including introductions, results, and discussion. We ran chi-square tests to examine the RA variations, following the descriptive analysis of the use of metadiscourse markers. A follow-up stimulated recall through semi-structured e-mail interviews was used. We used MAXQDA to analyse the interview data from authors. The results of qualitative and thematic analyses showed that metadiscourse markers play key roles in conveying the writers’ message and intention to the members of discourse communities. The findings of the study suggest raising apprentice writers’ awareness of the way they frame their message in research writing

Graphic organizers have been employed to facilitate second language learners' vocabulary knowledge development; however, the examination of the effects of these graphic organizer options on learners' collocation knowledge development has remained unexplored. This research investigated the effects of using teacher-generated, individually-generated, and cooperatively generated graphic organizers on Iranian English language learners' collocation knowledge. The present study examined these effects by studying 80 intermediate second language learners who were selected based on convenience sampling. The participants were assigned to four groups randomly. The collocations were provided on the board in the control group, and explanations were provided orally. In the teacher graphic organizer group, the teacher provided the learners with pre-filled graphic organizers with collocations. In the individually-generated group, the teacher provided the learners with a list of words in groups, and they had some minutes to generate their graphic organizers. In the cooperatively-generated group, the participants had some minutes to generate their graphic organizers cooperatively with their peers. Using a pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test, the researchers examined the effects of these conditions on learners' collocation knowledge. The findings showed that all graphic organizer groups were more successful than the control group in developing learners' collocation knowledge. In addition, the mean value of the participants’ scores in the cooperative group was significantly more than that of the teacher-generated and individually-generated groups, and there was no significant difference between the mean scores of the teacher and individual-generated graphic organizer groups.  

Technology-supported collaborative writing has gained popularity in L2 writing pedagogy. The study investigated the effects of Edmodo as an online social platform on the writing accuracy of 50 Iranian intermediate EFL learners, who were chosen through the convenience sampling method. The researchers utilized a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design and assigned the participants to an experimental and a control group. The participants of the control group sent their assignments and received feedback asynchronously through email; whereas, the learners of the experimental group used Edmodo to work collaboratively on their writing assignments. Finally, after eight treatment sessions, the scores of the pretest and posttest were analyzed through using a paired-sample t-test and MANOVA. The results revealed that the application of Edmodo had a significant effect on writing accuracy. Moreover, the participants’ attitudes were assessed by running a Likert-scale questionnaire. According to the findings, they had a positive attitude towards integrating Edmodo into their writing curriculum. This study could bring about pedagogical implications for EFL writing courses.

This study aims to explore the relationship between Iranian undergraduate translation students’ level of anxiety and emotional intelligence (EI) when performing consecutive interpreting, and the quality of their interpreting performance. To this end, thirty Iranian undergraduate English translation students were invited based on convenience sampling to participate in this study. A researcher-made questionnaire was designed to measure students’ interpreting anxiety. Participants completed Schering's emotional intelligence and interpreting classroom anxiety scale (ICAS) to measure their level of EI and anxiety. The participants were then asked to consecutively interpret a three-minute video clip from English into Persian about anxiety disorder. Students’ interpreting performance was assessed by three experienced raters based on Carroll’s model of translation quality assessment for consecutive interpreting. The results showed that there was no statistically significant relationship between the students’ total score of EI and the quality of their consecutive interpreting performance. However, there was a negative correlation between students’ interpreting anxiety and the quality of their interpreting performance. Additionally, a negative association was found between students interpreting classroom anxiety and emotional intelligence. Consequently, the findings demonstrated that negative emotions and thoughts such as anxiety and stress reduce translation students interpreting ability. Moreover, based on the results, the interpreting theoretical instructions, as well as teaching psychological factors should be included in the translation teaching syllabus to train proficient and skillful interpreters in Iranian universities.

Teacher assessment identity (TAI) is a pivotal segment of teachers’ professional identity and practice that has recently gained momentum in second/foreign language research. However, its developmental trajectories in light of digital technologies over time have remained uncharted, to date. To fill this gap, this study intended to unpack the dynamics of EFL teachers’ assessment identity through e-portfolios uploaded on a website. In doing so, 22 novice and experienced Iranian EFL teachers were requested to prepare a series of e-portfolios for a period of two months across three phases. Furthermore, to capture the participants’ perceptions about TAI and its dynamism in light of e-folios, a semi-structured interview was held with 10 EFL teachers. The results of independent median tests demonstrated a significant difference between novice and experienced EFL teachers’ assessment identity at p < .05 with the experienced group being more affected by the e-portfolios. Based on Friedman’s tests, significant improvements in novice teachers’ assessment identity were found from phase 1 to phase 2, and phase 2 to phase 3 owing to the use of e-portfolios. However, the experienced participants did not show significant improvement from phase 1 to phase 2, while in phase 3, a significant improvement and jump were observed. Moreover, the thematic analysis of the interviews indicated that both groups concurred that e-portfolio could contribute to TAI development given its capability to inspire reflection on assessment practices. The study presents implications for EFL teachers, teacher educators, and L2 researchers regarding the dynamism of TAI in light of e-portfolios.