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This study investigated rhetorical functions and their associated linguistic realizations in English review article abstracts. The analysis was based on a corpus of 100 English review article abstracts from linguistics and applied linguistics disciplines and followed a corpus-driven discourse analytic top-down approach. MAXQDA and WordSmith were used to code the moves and analyze their associated sub-corpora, respectively. The results of calculating range and frequency distributions showed that English conceptual review article abstracts use a rhetorical structure, different from that of research paper abstracts. This rhetorical organization is realized through a different set of moves, namely 1) establishing the territory or area of study, 2) identifying the problem, 3) introducing the present research, 4) organizing the paper, and 5) concluding or reflecting. Moreover, each move was realized through a distinct set of sub-moves. In terms of range, the moves dealing with purpose and structure were the most widely present moves; in terms of frequency distribution, the move dealing with structure was the most frequent. Furthermore, the highly frequent use of plural self-mentions indicates that in review article abstracts the emphasis is on research as a group activity inclusive of the researcher(s) and objects of study. In addition, the presence of ‘establishing the territory’, together with ‘identifying the problem’ can be seen as an attempt to sell the research. Finally, the prevalent use of the five moves showed that most review article abstracts are indicative-informative in function

Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) assume different roles amongst which is leadership. To lead effectively, they need to possess some significant awareness of the language in order to adequately respond to learners’ needs. One domain of awareness is the ability to distinguish between structurally similar, yet semantically different structures. This study set out to assess ESL teachers’ level of semantic awareness in view of establishing their readiness to meet learners’ needs within their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The Follow-up Explanatory Research Design was used. Data on the cognitions of ESL teachers were elicited from a questionnaire survey while a test was used to quantify ESL teachers’ language awareness levels in the domain of semantics. The quantitative data from the test were analyzed using frequencies and simple percentages while the qualitative data were analyzed using the framework of Content Analyses. The findings reveal that though ESL teachers overestimate the level of their knowledge base in components that have a bearing on semantics awareness, a majority of them do not wield beyond a fundamental level of awareness as concerns applying that knowledge to differentiate the meanings of structurally similar pairs of sentences. It is therefore crucial for English language pre-service and in-service teacher training to seek ways of enhancing the professional knowledge base of ESL teachers especially in domains that are critical to establishing differences between pairs of sentences that tend to be similar.

The use of storytelling on students’ first language literacy and development were extended to foreign/second language learning, and a large number of researchers interested in the field attempted to use storytelling and story reading strategies in teaching oral language skills to foreign/second language learners. Despite the existence of a number of studies on the impact of storytelling on English language skills, the number of studies on the impact of storytelling and story reading approaches on pre- intermediate EFL learners’ oral language production and comprehension seems to be scanty. To do so, a quasi- experimental study was employed. Ninety Iranian language learners, from 6 intact classes (each consisting of 15), were divided to three sub-groups: storytelling, story reading and conventional groups. To one group, stories were told, one group only read the stories, and the third group received no stories. The data were collected through researcher developed oral language production and comprehension tests. One-way-ANOVA test and three independent samples-tests based on Bonferroni test were employed to analyze the data and locate the sources of the differences. Findings revealed that storytelling outperformed story reading groups on both production and comprehension tests. Story reading group outperformed the conventional group. It can be concluded telling and reading stories are effective techniques for improving EFL learners’ oral language production and recognition.

Despite a great number of studies exploring Schmidt’s noticing hypothesis in the cognitive perspective of language learning, the investigations focused on noticing in the ecological perspective are rather rare in number. The present study was an attempt to examine how noticing second language recast could affect the learners’ achievements of grammatical structures through these two perspectives (i.e., cognitive and ecological). To do so, one hundred and twenty first-year college students at Islamic Azad University and Applied Science University in Tehran took part in this study. The students were divided into two cognitive and ecological groups and received two different treatments. During the treatment, the learners in all groups received recast and their noticing was assessed through learners’ raising hands and underlining. In the end, a posttest was conducted to measure the effectiveness of the treatment. Data analysis revealed that the ecological perspective of language learning was more conducive to noticing and subsequent language learning. The study also made contributions by actualizing the ecological project-based meaningful activities, shedding light on the importance of affordance and interaction in the context of language learning.

The demand for learning English as a foreign language has significantly heightened the need to recruit efficient teachers. Related literature confirms the lack of studies on teacher characteristics that can affect their job satisfaction. This study aimed to study the relationship between Iranian EFL teachers’ professional development, job satisfaction, and reflective thinking. One-hundred and fifty-nine teachers from different universities, language institutes, and schools wer e requested to answer the professional development questionnaire, the Minnesota satisfaction questionnaire, and reflective thinking scale as the main data collection instruments. These questionnaires were given in three different ways: in person, email, and social networks. Structural Equation Modeling was used to examine the hypothesized model of associations. This model was confirmed following the application of the modification indices proposed by the software (Normal chi-square = 3.4; RMSEA =.03; RMR =.02; GFI =.94; AGFI =.91; NFI =.94; CFI =.94; IFI =.94). The findings showed that there were significant internal correlations between all the latent variables and their sub-scales. Furthermore, findings of multiple regression analysis revealed that professional development and reflective thinking positively predicted job satisfaction, with professional development exerting more predictive power compared to reflective thinking. Pedagogical implications of the results have been discussed.

The advent of Web 2 tools and their features have allowed Internet users not only to seek information but also to generate and edit on-line information. However, excessive reliance of students, particularly EFL students, on the Internet has raised the issue of information credibility or quality of the information found online. This study sought to investigate the relationship between Iranian EFL university students’ credibility judgment and their learning styles and critical thinking. It also intended to examine the extent to which the learners employ credibility judgment strategies to verify web-based information. To this end, 212 Iranian EFL students, 165 female(s) and 47 male(s) (or add) students, received three questionnaires: Honey’s (2004) Critical Thinking questionnaire, Kolb's (1984) Learning Style inventory, and the adapted version of Credibility Judgment questionnaire originally developed by Metzger, Flanagin, and Zwarun (2003). The results of descriptive as well as bivariate and multivariate correlation analysis revealed that, first, Iranian EFL students employ credibility judgment strategies at a moderate level, and second, critical thinking is a better predictor for credibility judgment behavior of EFL students than learning style. Moreover, three learning styles were significantly related to the currency sub-scale of credibility judgment. The findings can assist curriculum planners, policymakers, and instructors to develop plans for empowering EFL students with the skills they need to evaluate on-line information for accuracy, objectivity, authority, and currency.

Abstract Driven by Beijaard, Verloop and Vermunt’s (2000) theory of Professional Identity (PI), this study aims to investigate teachers’ perception of their PI in relation to the English textbooks they use in EFL classes. In-depth interview with four Iranian EFL teachers and the school principal was conducted. The teachers’ reports were employed to investigate their PI in relation to the textbooks they used. Furthermore, the school curriculum was analyzed through an interview with the school principal and examining the school documents. Content analysis of the interview data revealed that all the teachers viewed the content knowledge dimension of their PI reliant on the textbooks. Over the years, they had gained more autonomy in adapting the content or selecting more supplementary sources. Overall, the participants in this research highlighted the pivotal role of textbooks in the construction of their PI, most importantly in the formation of their content knowledge and the least in the development of their pedagogical knowledge. The analysis of the school curriculum revealed a heavy reliance of many decisions on textbooks directly or indirectly. The findings in this study will provide more insights for curriculum developers, language school managers, teacher educators and teachers who have a say in curriculum decisions when learning about the crucial role of textbooks in PI.

EFL learners’ ability to use advanced and varied vocabulary is a crucial issue in writing performance. This study aimed to investigate the effect of writing task type on lexical diversity and sophistication. The relationship between lexical sophistication and lexical diversity in the narrative, argumentative, and descriptive task types written by upper-intermediate EFL learners was also explored. To this end, 70 EFL upper -intermediate learners, enrolled in advanced writing tasks, were selected as the participants. They undertook narrative, descriptive, and argumentative writing tasks in a counterbalanced way. Then, Vocabulary Diversity (Voc-D) and Measure of Textual Lexical Diversity (MTLD) were used to measure lexical diversity. Lexical sophistication was measured using CELEX log frequency and Beyond 2000 Words (K3+). The writings were pasted into Coh-Metrix measure MTLD, Voc-D, and CELEX. VocabProfiler was also used to measure K3+ of the writings. In lieu of the purposes of the study, the research design involved repeated measures and correlation. Using Multivariate Analysis of Variance and Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient, the findings revealed that lexical diversity varied significantly across the three writing tasks. The highest scores of MTLD and Voc-D belonged to the narrative, argumentative, and descriptive writing tasks, respectively. Moreover, EFL learners used more advanced words in argumentative task type according to the measurement of CELEX and K3+ level words. However, learners' lexical sophistication in narrative and descriptive writings did not emerge as significantly different when measured by K3+. The significant positive relationship between lexical sophistication and lexical diversity was evident in all three task types.

World literature is replete with many texts that depict the imperialists using hypocritical language as an oppressive device for intimidating their subjects. The oppressors pretended to be the civilizers by inculcating the idea of “Benevolent Colonization” into the minds of the oppressed. In this paper, the researchers investigate how situational and linguistic contexts affect the meanings of utterances in George Orwell’s selected novels. It is aimed to remove the gaps in the multicultural world by scrutinizing the power of language pragmatically. The methodology is qualitative based on Grice’s theory of implicature. The novels under investigation both violate and adhere to the four maxims of Grice’s theory of Conversational Implicature. The findings of the paper indicate that language can be used as a suppressive weapon for supporting imperialist objectives or hamper satisfactory human relations, and that positive gifts of imperialism come with the caveat that they are being achieved at the cost of exploiting the oppressed.

Some universities in Iran have recently witnessed a shift in admission criteria from university admission test performance towards high school records. This sudden change seems to be unwarranted since the predictive power of high school records has not been explored. To fill in this gap, this study aims at showcasing the predictive validity of high school records for undergraduate students of English language and literature. To this end, a random sample of undergraduate students studying at Shahrood University of Technology were selected as the participants, the predictor variables were operationally defined as the participants’ grade point average (GPA) in three school subjects including English, Persian and Arabic languages along with their overall high school GPA, and the explained variable was operationalized as the participants’ overall GPA for the first academic year. The results of Pearson correlation revealed a significant but very low correlation between the variables of interest. Moreover, the results of multiple regression analysis revealed that none of the predictor variables well predicts academic success in English language and literature. Although the results of this study are case-specific, they have clear implications for policy makers and interested researchers nationwide.

The need for a strong educational system is felt more than ever due to globalization. In this respect, teacher agency has an important role in educational change. This qualitative meta-study, therefore, addressed the attitude of the teachers towards agency and the way they enact agency to facilitate learning process. To this purpose, the needed data were gathered from the narrative of life, professional history and class observations of five English teachers in Iranian context. Then, based on the Grounded Theory Approach, the data were analyzed and the obtained results showed that teachers’ pre-teaching and during teaching processes were made up of complex relationships among different resources; that is, teachers’ life ideology (their perception towards themselves and their job) and financial status. At the same time, the results revealed that teachers’ instruction experiences highly affect both their magnification of agency and their decision-making processes. It was further seen that agency was not stable at all, meaning that social factors and environmental conditions played important roles in shaping teacher’s agency.

Problem-based Learning (PBL) as one of the newest teaching methods in the area of language teaching in second and foreign contexts, has been used by teachers in the last two decades in different institutes. In the current study, attempts were made to find out the effect of the two PBL subcategories, i.e. Hybrid Problem-based Learning (H-PBL) and Pure Problem-based Learning (PPBL) in comparison to a traditional lecture-based method, on Iranian EFL university learners’ speaking skill and their self-confidence, by implementing these two methods in the EFL classroom using eight teacher-made real-world problems. To this purpose, 56 undergraduate participants of Payam Noor university (PNU) in Abadan, Iran, were randomly selected, divided into a control group and two treatment HPBL and PPBL groups. The statistical analysis of the obtained results of the participants’ pretest-posttest scores, through one-way ANCOVA and Man-Whitney U test, revealed that the treatment groups outperformed the control group in speaking skill and self-confidence The findings of the study might bear implications for teachers and university curriculum designers to take more proper approaches towards the instructing university participants.

The main purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between EFL teachers’ self-regulatory trait and effective teaching. Furthermore, the study aimed to find out the relationship between EFL teachers’ self-regulatory trait with some demographics such as gender and years of teaching experience. The participants were 85 EFL male and female teachers between the age ranges of 27 to 52. In addition, 200 male and female high school students between the age ranges of 15 to 17 participated in this study. Self-regulatory trait of the teachers was explored through Teacher Self-regulation Scale (TSR) questionnaire and the qualities of successful Iranian EFL teachers were explored through Qualities of Successful Iranian EFL Teachers’ Questionnaire (QSIET). Empirical analysis revealed that no significant relationship existed between teachers' gender and their self-regulatory trait. However, a significant relationship was found between teachers' self-regulatory trait and years of teaching. The implications of this study can be practical and useful for EFL teachers, who eagerly try to improve their teaching qualifications as well as teacher-training courses. The findings can be also helpful for language teaching designers to design proper syllabuses and materials for language teaching.