درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Willingness to communicate is subject to the moment-by-moment fluctuations in the classroom. Therefore, teachers’ decisive role comes to the foreground as they can increase learners’ desire to communicate at a particular moment by their interventions. Online instruction, despite furnishing learners with authentic material, has failed to culminate in communication thanks to connection problems or lack of non-verbal clues. Thus, the present study aimed to explore Iranian EFL teachers’ perceptions of strategies to promote willingness to communicate of learners in online classes. The mixed-methods design was employed to answer the research questions. To this end, a self-designed questionnaire was first piloted and then administered to the main sample which included thirty-seven teachers. The questionnaire subsumed five effective factors garnered from extant literature. Five teachers were interviewed as to their perceptions of pros and cons of promoting WTC in online classrooms. The results indicated that teachers’ motivational strategies were perceived to promote WTC best in online classes followed by teacher immediacy. Qualitative reports also corroborated the numerical data. Lack of non-verbal clues i.e. body language was perceived to decrease learners’ motivation and participation; however, technological resources like games were reported to increase WTC in online classes. Teachers should pay heed to their crucial role in inciting positive atmosphere and get better equipped to capitalize on online affordances to increase participation in online classes.

There is growing agreement among researchers on the advantages of using automated feedback programs (AFPs), but most of the previous studies have evaluated more well-known AFPs like Grammarly, Ginger, etc. in English writing classes. None of the previous studies on AFPs evaluated the effectiveness of and users' perception of InstaText. Thus, this study was aimed at examining the effects of InstaText on improving the language quality (i.e., grammar, spelling, and style) of Persian-English freelance translators using InstaText for editing their English translations of Persian academic papers, which are considered technical translations. In addition, it was conducted to investigate how the said users perceived this InstaText. This quantitative study was conducted in two phases: a one-group pretest-posttest phase, where the effect of using InstaText on improving the language quality of translated technical texts was examined with 75 participants; and a survey phase, where the participants' perception toward InstaText was measured using Usefulness, Satisfaction, and Ease of Use (USE) questionnaire. InstaText did not help the participants make significant progress in grammar and spelling, but its effect on improving their style was significant. Further, the participants perceived the tool as intuitive, user-friendly, efficient, time-saving, and satisfactory.

While the main focus of the studies in the literature is centered around EFL teachers’ identity construction in face-to-face classes regarding certain cliche factors, the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the potential of investigating EFL teachers' professional identity reflection in the developing contexts of distance education. Thus, this study examined the possible association between Iranian EFL instructors' Professional Identity Reflection (PIR) and their use of Achievement Orientation Strategies (AOSs) in the dynamic setting of E-teaching. Besides, this study evaluated the prediction power of the AOSs in determining the PIR of Iranian EFL instructors. One hundred four male and female Iranian EFL instructors were selected based on convenience sampling to participate in this quantitative correlational research. Two instruments, including Measure of Teachers Achievement (MoTA) and Questionnaire of Professional Identity (QPI), were used to collect the required data on the online platform of Type form. The R software's correlation and multiple regression packages were utilized to analyze the gathered data. The results indicated a robust direct association between the PIR of Iranian EFL instructors in E-teaching and their use of AOSs. Moreover, three out of four AOSs significantly predicted the PIR of Iranian EFL instructors in E-Teaching. Furthermore, the mastery-approach strategy had the most predicting power among the other AOSs. This study provides practical interdisciplinary benefits for EFL teachers, EFL teacher trainers, and educational psychologists in training EFL teachers who are aware of how their views toward achieving specific academic goals in E-teaching influence their professional identity in E-teaching.    

Recent second or foreign language (L2) research has shown that integration of form-focused instruction into collaborative, communicative activity is highly influential. Sociocultural theory (SCT) provides a praxis-oriented educational ecosystem wherein L2 grammatical knowledge and practical use can be effectively linked. This SCT-inspired study examined the effects of praxis-oriented grammar instruction and mediational feedback within the social media networking (SMN) platform (i.e., Telegram) on L2 learners’ microgenetic development of grammatical knowledge. Participants were 30 EFL learners that were assigned to three different instructional conditions: (i) conventional teacher-fronted instruction as the comparison group, (ii) collaborative instruction attuned to learners’ Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) in an actual classroom as the first experimental group, and (iii) ZPD-based instruction in virtual Telegram space as the second. The groups were pre- and posttested on a grammar test targeting subject-verb non-inversion in embedded WH-questions, which poses cross-linguistic challenges to Persian L2 learners of English. Collaborative whole-class, dyadic, or triadic talk-in-interactional activities were employed to engage learners in co-constructing educational praxis and providing contingent, ZPD-sensitive graduated mediation in both virtual and face-to-face settings. The results indicated that the two ZPD groups outperformed the comparison group. No significant difference was, however, found between the ZPD groups despite witnessing a developmental trend in favor of the virtual SMN setting. Post-intervention interviews revealed learners’ positive attitudes towards using Telegram affordances for praxis-oriented grammar instruction. Further theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed.

The purpose of this cross-cultural CMC-based study is to investigate how the speech act of criticism is realized in the Instagram comments by Persian and English-speaking users in response to an announcement in Fall 2020 about school reopening during COVID-19. To this end, 400 Persian and English comments were collected in Fall 2020 from the Instagram pages of Iran and the U.S Secretaries of Education where they posted about the students’ return to school during the pandemic. The data were then analyzed based on Nguyen’s (2013) model of speech act of criticism. The findings show that both Persian and English-speaking users tended to use direct criticism over indirect criticism with an explicit expression of dislike and an explicit expression of disapproval as the most frequently used direct criticism strategies. Moreover, with regard to indirect strategies, Persian speaking users employed more request for change strategies while English speaking users outperformed hint strategies. Also, the uses of supportive moves and internal modifiers were similar in the two corpora. The findings of this naturally occurring observational study partially confirm the results obtained by elicited-based research method. The results showed that despite the similarities between the corpora, teaching criticism strategies and mitigating devices can help language learners perform the act of criticism more appropriately and avoid non-native like language use.