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As there have been few studies on the comparative effects of mind-mapping (MM) and concept-mapping (CM) techniques on learning English language skills and sub-skills, this survey pursued to scrutinize the impacts of these techniques on reading motivation, reading comprehension, and willingness to communicate (WTC) of Iranian EFL students. To fulfill these objectives, 78 intermediate EFL students were selected based on non-random sampling and accidentally assigned to two experimental groups (EGs) and one control group (CG). They were then pre-tested using a reading motivation test, a reading comprehension test, and a WTC test. Next, the intervention was conducted on the three groups. The MM technique was employed to teach 16 English reading texts to one EG and the CM technique was applied to teach the same texts to the other EG. None of these techniques were used to teach the texts to the CG. When the intervention ended, the post-tests of reading comprehension, reading motivation test, and WTC were given to the three groups. The outcomes of the One-Way ANOVA tests and the post-hoc Scheffe tests revealed that there was a substantial difference between the scores of the EGs and the CG on the three post-tests, with the results being in favor of the EGs. In effect, the findings indicated that the MM and CM techniques enhanced reading motivation, reading comprehension, and WTC of the experimental participants equally. Finally, the implications and conclusions of the research were explained.

Résumé Une partie considérable de la littérature est née du voyage. L’interaction constante de la littérature avec le voyage et le déplacement entraîne la critique littéraire à évoquer de plus en plus la question de l’espace et de l’altérité dans la littérature. Le parcours littéraire et personnel de Zoya Pirzad, romancière iranienne contemporaine, est toujours marqué par le déplacement. Ses textes entretenant un rapport mobile à l’espace, nous permettent d’interroger les identités par le biais de l’espace. D'ailleurs, les notions de "l'autrui" et de "l’altérité" constituent les éléments inséparables des écritures de Pirzad plus présentes dans C’est moi qui éteint les lumières et On s'y fera. L’altérité, ce concept d’origine philosophique a été redéfinie et élaborée récemment par les nombreux critiques et théoriciens. Selon Emanuel Levinas, dans une relation d'altérité, il y a un engagement réciproque, une responsabilité de l'un envers l'autre (Levinas, 1998 : 65). C’est pour cette raison qu’après avoir découvert autrui, on prend conscience de notre responsabilité. Dans ces deux œuvres, Pirzad raconte les expériences de la vie des personnages féminins, Clarisse et Arezou. Dans cette présente recherche nous étudierons quel rapport les personnages féminins entretient avec l’espace et l'altérité et comment ce dernier entraine chez elles la responsabilité.

This study focused on the importance of Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLSs) in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and how Iranian EAP students learn academic vocabulary. The study used a predominantly quantitative approach by gathering data from 238 participants through online self-report VLS questionnaires, which were analyzed using SPSS-26. A triangulation approach was used to ensure accuracy and consistency, with qualitative data gathered through semi-structured interviews with 20 students. The analysis revealed that participants frequently used strategies for incorporating new vocabulary into their repertoire. Additionally, teacher-related, student-related, and material-related themes emerged through coding the participants’ beliefs. The results indicated that raising learners’ consciousness of VLSs, training teachers, providing tasks for all language skills, using technology, materials revision, and developing autonomous and independent learning can help with vocabulary acquisition and the satisfaction of EAP students. Overall, this study highlights the importance of VLSs in EAP and provides insights into effective strategies for acquiring academic vocabulary.

Dynamic assessment offers a holistic approach to evaluation by embedding assessment within instruction. Despite evidence suggesting the effectiveness of DA in language classrooms, there remains a reluctance among teachers to adopt DA practices. This reluctance stems from a lack of understanding of how DA models impact specific learning outcomes, particularly in speaking skills. One main contributing factor is the dominance of quantitative DA studies, which do not contextualize the differences between DA models. With an inductive thematic analysis design, this study explored the perceived effects of interactionist and interventionist DA models on speaking accuracy, fluency, and complexity among Iranian EFL students. Thirty undergraduate intermediate EFL learners from Islamic Azad University, North Tehran Branch, were recruited through purposive sampling. Each participant had received one hundred hours of speaking lessons with one of the DA models embedded before participating in a semi-structured interview. The analysis of participants' perceptions and reflections revealed that both DA models were well-received for improving speaking skills but had different effects on subskills. Learners perceived the interactionist model as an effective teaching method that improved their speaking accuracy and complexity but reduced fluency, while the interventionist model favored fluency at the expense of grammatical accuracy and complexity.

The global outbreak of COVID-19 necessitated a swift transition from conventional face-to-face (F2F) teaching to Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) in educational institutions worldwide. This sudden shift posed significant challenges for both teachers and students, particularly those in low-resource rural schools. This study sought to probe into this experience in the context of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instruction, focusing on the perspectives of teachers and students in rural high schools within Iran. The study participants were 13 female EFL teachers and 15 female EFL students teaching and studying in rural high schools in different cities in Iran. Employing a qualitative approach, data were gathered through semi-structured interviews, online observation, and one of the researcher’s reflective journals. Thematic analysis was utilized to analyze the data, identifying several categories encompassing the hurdles encountered by the participants and the achievements they attained. The identified categories pertaining to hurdles encompassed technological, financial, educational, personal, professional, and well-being problems. Similarly, the categories pertaining to achievements comprised technological, educational, and professional progress, as well as enhanced convenience. Exploring the dilemmas and aspirations expressed by these participants can inform and better equip the educational system of Iran to effectively respond to similar crises in the future. Furthermore, this study offers insights to education authorities, aiding in the resolution of barriers to distance online education and facilitating enhanced preparedness for potential future emergencies.

Numerous academics in the domains of language instruction, cultural studies, communication studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, etc. have focused on critical cultural awareness (CCA) as a crucial element of intercultural competency. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate whether the cultural elements in Iranian high school coursebooks (Vision Series) have been (un)touched by the ministry of education. To this end, the conversation contents of the Vision Series (levels 1-3) were examined by the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to evaluate possible intercultural competence used in Vision Series. It was found that the content was biased toward the source culture in general. Finally, some ideal ways of presenting culture in the coursebooks were put forward in the form of a cultural rubric. The pedagogical implications of this study are discussed.       

There is ample research evidence indicating that task implementation options and design features differentially affect the linguistic quality of second language (L2) oral output. The overarching aim of the current research was to add to the available body of research findings by investigating what effects the combination of two task implementation options, namely pre-task planning and post-task transcription, exerts on L2 learners’ focus on form. The study involved sixty Iranian L2 learners who were presented with a picture story to be narrated under one of the following four conditions: pre-task planning (PTP), post-task transcription (PTT), both pre-task planning and post-task transcription (PTP/PTT), and control. Findings showed that while pre-task planning increased fluency and complexity, the anticipation of post-task transcription enhanced focus on form as indicated by more accurate performance. More importantly, pre-task planning along with the foreknowledge of post-task transcription of performance made for an exponential increase in accuracy, a gain which was achieved to the detriment of complexity. The outcomes are of pedagogical significance in that they lend support to the efficacy of using pre-task planning opportunity along with the anticipation of post-task transcription to elicit the highest accuracy level while learners are primarily concerned with conveying meaning.

Pinpointing the role of language, emotion, and culture in intercultural interactions as the three basic needs of intercultural interactions is one of the most important problems in the intercultural field. Therefore, this paper probed the role of language, emotion, and culture simultaneously in intercultural communication in Iran. By using convenience sampling, one hundred Iranian language teachers were chosen and their language proficiency and ICC levels were specified by using Oxford Placement Test (OPT) and intercultural communicative competence (ICC) questionnaire. Then, the researchers used exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to classify ICC questions under language, emotion, and culture categories.  After classifying the questions, the researchers used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), standard solution coefficient, standard path coefficient, T value, and Sobel formula to analyze the collected data from the ICC questionnaire based on participants' answers. The results revealed that language, culture, and emotion were the main macro-elements of intercultural communication. Also, it was shown that language was the most important need and macro-element in intercultural communication and then the second and third place went to culture and emotion respectively.  It was found that emotion acted as a mediator variable between language and culture and there was a relationship among language, culture, and emotion, too. This study was of high importance for language teachers, curriculum designers, textbook writers, intercultural experts, and cultural psychologists

Teachers may come across a point in their career at which they would ponder upon choosing to stay or withdraw from their job. Several conditions in their organization would lead them to the ultimate decision. This study aims at providing enhanced awareness of one of the components that might lead instructors to their determination with respect to withdraw from or stay at their teaching position at an institution. Consequently, the link between collective instructor efficacy and withdrawal intention was scrutinized. Data was gathered through an online survey to collect information from Iranian EFL teachers using two questionnaires. The findings of this analysis noted that there exists a negative association between instructors’ collective efficacy and withdrawal intention. As collaborative competence perceptions elevate in teachers, their withdrawal intent is likely to drop. Furthermore, another research question was whether it was possible for collective efficacy subscales to predict withdrawal intention or not. Instructional strategies and student discipline are subsets of collective efficacy. Student discipline was reported to predict to some extent variability in withdrawal intention. It was also concluded that headmasters and educational leaders need to focus on collective efficacy as an asset to diminish the unfavorable attrition of staff members.

The purpose of this study was twofold: to determine pre-university talented students’ perceptions, strategy use, and challenges of reading comprehension section of the university entrance exam and to investigate the difference between low and high-achieving talented readers in strategy use and attitudes to reading. The participants were 121 EFL students at pre-university centers for talented students in Borujen, Iran. The instruments were three questionnaires on reading strategy, reading attitude, and reading difficulty followed by five open-ended questions. The results revealed that talented students used metacognitive strategies more than affective and cognitive strategies; most talented readers had positive attitude to reading; and their most frequent challenges were insufficient vocabulary knowledge, inability to adapt their speed to allotted time, decentralization, and ineffective study. The results of backward stepwise binary logistic regression also indicated that high and low achieving talented readers were different in retrieval and anxiety-coping strategy use and reading self-efficacy. The findings have implications for teachers of talented students to consider their diversities and orient their teaching toward individual characteristics through providing instructional varieties.

Due to inconclusive evidence for the differential impacts of portfolio assessment (PA) on genre-based writing improvement and learner engagement, this study cross-examined 46 EFL undergraduates’ descriptive and narrative writing performances in a 12-week PA design. Teacher feedback points were collected from consecutive formative assessments of the students’ descriptive and narrative writing according to the genre-specific indicators in the West Virginia Department of Education descriptive writing rubric and Smarter Balanced narrative writing rubric, respectively. Statistical results reported the significant impact of PA on improving accurate word choice and grammar, development, and organization of ideas in session-wise students’ descriptive writing, with no sign of improvement in their performance on post-test descriptive writing. Further, the positive impact of PA was supported by improving the components of elaboration of narrative, language and vocabulary, organization, and convention in session-wise students’ narrative writing, as well as their performance on post-test narrative writing. Qualitative data on students’ engagement in PA was collected from inductive content analysis of their reflective journals. Students’ self-reports were schematized, and their level of engagement was rendered in terms of their approval of the usefulness and novelty of PA, the frequent mismatch between student self-assessment and teacher feedback both in quality and quantity, the sensitivity of teacher feedback to some writing features over others, the applicability of teacher feedback to the revision process, and overall positive perception of writing improvement.

This study posits that an important key component of political discourse derives from its heavy reliance on persuasion strategies to support the ideological bases. Throughout the argument, the study positions an emphasis on the US Democratic Party’s (DP) success in receiving the public consent and acceptance. Their victory is more likely the result of the power of their democratic ideologies that are constructed through the strategic use of rhetorical devices and linguistic structures. In an attempt to investigate which particular discursive strategies and rhetorical devices are instrumental in constructing a particular type of ideology, we adopted a CDA approach and analyzed Barak Obama’s public speeches to the US nation. The analytic categories found in his speech are: rhythmic paralleled structures and repetition; nominalization; and metaphorical framing. Moreover, in our macro-analysis of Obama’s discourse, special attention is paid to the effective role of devices such as topoi, or fallacies in his political argumentations and positive representation of DP.

Within the last few decades the conception of research engagement has been widely considered vital in teachers’ professional development. The literature is replete with numerous arguments both about the benefits of doing and reading research and the reasons for doing so. Within these discussions, however, the opinions of teachers are mostly ignored or reflected only circumstantially. The present study was conducted to investigate the reasons for which Iranian English teachers engage in research. First, a provisional survey questionnaire was designed, using experts’ opinion and a comprehensive review of the related literature. The instrument was then validated through conducting exploratory factor analysis on teachers’ responses to the survey instrument. Analysis of the results showed that teachers’ reasons and motivations for research engagement can best be categorized in four groups: benefits for professional development, instrumental and personal motivations, organizational expectations, and pedagogical benefits. Subsequent analyses also revealed that research engagement among Iranian English teachers is mainly shaped for personal and professional reasons. The findings point to the importance of developing a holistic perspective toward educational research in order to promote research engagement, making it a sustainable path to professional excellence for language teachers.