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EAP courses for various disciplines are designed as a conduit between academic research and practical applications (Paltridge & Starfield, 2013, p. 175). On the other hand, one of the main missions of ESP practitioners is to prepare learners for realities of English on the job (Paltridge & Starfield, 2013, p. 185). This study aimed to provide a profile of target professional English needs of Iranian BA students of Business and Economics and to explore what real requirements are expected from them at work in future. To this end, perceptions of two groups of stakeholders, namely, human resource managers (N = 30) and employed graduated students (hereafter called “staff”, N = 600) chosen through stratified sampling from various established business sectors were asked through triangulation of instruments using questionnaire, interview, and self and peer-assessment. The results suggested that while all four main English skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) have been considered important in profession, the employers favored ‘productive’ English skills noticeably more. Moreover, the present professional English level of the staff, as evaluated by their managers, was turned out to have a long distance from the voiced expectations by themselves and the managers. The findings suggested the need for serious reconsideration of EAP courses in Business and Economics regarding the teaching methodology, content and practices in light of future occupational demands of the students and tying different dimensions of such courses to the requirements of corresponding workplaces. Implications of the study for improving the aforementioned EAP courses are also presented.

The unprecedented growth of English and arrival of English as an International Language (EIL) has generated a new fledged argument about English language teachers’ role and status around the world. To date, much of the debate on the native/non-native distinction in EIL settings and factors contributing to sharpen distinctions has remained unsettled. This gap motivated this study on the English teachers’ grasp of their role and their stance in the EIL setting of Iran. For this purpose, this study adopted both quantitative and qualitative approaches to explore the nature of the English teachers’ attitudes through an EIL scale and teachers’ narrative accounts through Telegram groups. The three-level positioning analysis (Bamberg, 1997) of English teachers’ narrative accounts contradicted their perceptive evaluations of their status, as non-native English teachers. The results proved that, despite highlights of blurred distinctions, English teachers in Iran still believe that English belongs to the native speakers and position native speaker teachers as better models for pedagogical practices. The results have implications for teachers’ beliefs and the role of teacher education programs

Capitalism benefits from the uniformed society by suppressing individuals ’consciousness through commodifying them. Being deceived by the system, individuals get stuck in the culture industry (the mass production of cultural things in a supply-driven economy turning to a set of standardized and predictable reaction of individuals). Assuming translation of poetry as an artistic creation, that is against uniformity by nature by not following a set of prescriptive principles, this study aimed to analyze the translator’s use of plurality to overcome culture industry. To this end, creating plurality in Bijan Elahi’s translation of T.S. Eliot’s Ash-Wednesday on the basis of six features of Hassan’s catena was analyzed and traced in Elahi’s translation. Findings show that Elahi’s translation satisfied all the six items in Hassan’s list which resulted in overcoming the culture industry. The findings of this study has implications for teaching poetry translation.

The present study set out to investigate if informed Peer Dynamic Assessment (P-DA), as an alternative to Dynamic Assessment (DA), can cultivate grammar learning of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. To accomplish the objectives, two intact classes including 15 female students, aged from 16 to 20, were selected and randomly assigned into two groups, namely, experimental and control at Iran Language Institute in Khorram Abad City, Lorestan Province. The experimental group was trained on principles and procedures of P-DA during two sessions to make sure that the participants know how to provide their peers with graduated feedback appropriately. Next, they were teamed up in groups of three in order to work on a number of grammatical structures embedded in their course book for ten sessions. In contrast, the control group worked on the same grammatical structures according to traditional approaches wherein feedback was given unsystematically by the teacher. Furthermore, three parallel grammar tests, designed and developed by a panel of well-experienced EFL teachers, were administered as pre-test, post-test, and delayed post-test to measure the participants’ grammar knowledge prior and after the instructions. The collected data were analyzed using ANCOVA test. Results revealed that there was a statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of gain scores on the post-test. In addition, the findings indicated that the experimental group outperformed the control group on the delayed post-test. In light with the findings, some pedagogical implications were presented for EFL teachers and learners.

Despite widespread interest and research among applied linguists to explore metadiscourse use, very little is known of how metadiscourse resources have evolved over time in response to the historically developing practices of academic communities. Motivated by such an ambition, the current research drew on a corpus of 874315 words taken from three leading journals of applied linguistics in order to trace the diachronic evolution of stance markers in methodology section of research articles from 1996 to 2016. Hyland’s (2005b) model of metadiscourse was adopted for the analysis of the selected corpus. The data were explored using concordance software AntConc (Anthony, 2011). Moreover, a Chi-Square statistical measure was run to determine statistical significances. The analysis revealed a significant decline in the overall frequency of stance markers in methodology section of RAs. Interestingly, this decrease was entirely due to the overall decline in the use of self-mentions. Approaching interactional dimension of academic writing from such a diachronic perspective, it might be argued that the very selective use of stance markers by academic writers over time means metadiscourse does not operate in vacuum and is sensitive to changes within disciplines and their academic practices.

Dogme Language Teaching (Dogme ELT) is an innovative learner-centered methodology and a movement for teaching English (or any other L2) that primarily focuses on face-to-face interaction between teacher and learners and among the learners themselves (Thornbury, 2009) without using any preplanned and established instructional materials, syllabuses, or preset activities. Despite many claims by the proponents, research evidence for Dogme ELT is very limited; accordingly, this sequential explanatory mixed-method study sought to examine the effect of Dogme ELT on L2 speaking andwillingness to communicate (WTC)across different proficiency levels among Iranian EFL learners at a private language institute. Participants included 14 intermediate, 12 upper-intermediate, and 12 advanced level learners from both genders in three intact classes as the experimental groups. Three other intact classes comprising 13 intermediate, 13 upper-intermediate, and 11 advanced level learners, respectively were selected as control groups who received the mainstream communicative language teaching (CLT) for their L2 instruction. The treatments continued for two subsequent semesters including thirty 1.5-hour sessions. Quantitative data analysis using two-way ANCOVA revealed that Dogme ELT was more effective than CLT only for the advanced but not for the intermediate and upper-intermediate learners’ speaking and WTC. Qualitative data analysis revealed that most advanced and only some upper-intermediate learners had positive attitudes about Dogme ELT. The findings of the current investigation suggest that Dogme ELT should be used for advanced EFL levels and its application should be done with more caution.

To succeed in tests does not require only content knowledge. Test-taking strategies are other factors which help students to achieve high scores in tests. The present mixed-method study set out to examine the relationship between test-taking strategies and reading test performance. To achieve the objectives of the study, a reading comprehension test, and a 35-item Likert type strategy questionnaire were given to 214 male and female university students. Analysis of the gathered data revealed that there was a positive relationship between test-taking strategies and reading test performance and that successful, moderately, successful, and unsuccessful test-takers differed in their use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies. To gain an in depth view on strategy use pattern of the test-takers, retrospective interviews along with think-aloud protocols were applied which revealed the use of metacognitive test-taking strategies more than cognitive ones. These findings can have beneficial implications for language testers, teachers, learners, and course developers.