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EFL teachers’ conceptions of Alternative Assessment (AA) strategies in English language classrooms are of significance since they can affect the teachers’ overall performance in the classroom. This study aimed to explore Iranian EFL teachers’ conceptions of AA strategies. In so doing, a sequential mixed methods design was used. The participants of the study consisted of 30 (15 males and 15 females) Iranian EFL teachers with MA and Ph.D. degrees in English language teaching (ELT) who were selected through convenience sampling. To collect the required data, the Teachers’ Perceptions of Alternative Assessment Questionnaire (Elharrar) was used as an open-ended questionnaire. Data analysis was conducted through qualitative thematic analysis and presenting the extracted themes in frequency and percentage formats. It was found that most of the teachers perceived the positive influences of AA. Additionally, it was revealed that the teachers attached some advantages to AA that help them provide a more quality teaching environment. The findings of this study may render implications for EFL teachers, teacher trainers, and administrators.        

The present study aims to study "Alienation" in “The Comfort of Strangers” a novel by Ian Mc-Ewan. It attempts to work out the negative and destructive aftermath of alienation in the protagonists of the novel. The research on the mentioned term is fulfilled as per the theories of Melvin Seaman. Ian Russell Mc-Ewan is one of the many examples, who depicted the mentioned element masterfully in his works, specifically in this novel. He goes beyond man’s expectations to show his readers the smashing consequences of human estrangement from the self and society in intelligence and function. Alienation is a venerable concept, with its roots going back to Roman law, where it was a legal term used to denote the act of transferring property. After World War II, when societal complexity started its increasingly accelerated rate of change, and the first signals of post-modernity were perceived by the intellectual elite, alienation slowly became part of the intellectual scene. Melvin Seaman (1918), a theorist which made a momentous modern and post-modern points of the view regarding "Alienation" after Marx and Hegel, was one of the first in the 1960s to develop an alienation scale to measure degrees and varieties of alienation

The present study aims at providing an account of the translational features of a pseudotranslational work. The case for the study is The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan by James Justinian Morier, a book presented as the translation of a manuscript presumably written by a Persian narrator, Hajji Baba. Morier’s book has ever since won a wide readership among the English as a translated text although many critics have attested to its authorial status. Following library research, this study gauged the pseudotranslationality of the book using its paratextual elements and then analyzed the text regarding its textual-linguistic makeup to highlight the elements which helped the fictitious translator to disguise the book as a translation in the English culture. The inquiry shows how Morier benefited some of the common paratextual and textual ploys in pseudotranslating, noticeable in such processes in other literary contexts as well, to manipulate his own authored book and cover it with a veil of translation. The study can help gain a broader picture of techniques used in pseudotranslating and accordingly prevalent norms of translation.

Despite a strong background in education and human resources, teachers’ Individual Development Planning (IDP), as a reflective tool for further learning, has remained untouched in the domain of ELT. Therefore, the current study is an attempt to investigate EFL teachers’ IDP in light of the grounded theory approach in an Iranian context. To do so, a semi-structured interview was conducted with 17 expert participants selected through purposive sampling in the field of IDP from all over Iran. Interviews were transcribed and labeled as open, axial, and selective codes. The results led to 9 main categories of EFL teachers’ IDP: identifying EFL teachers’ current status, identifying EFL teachers’ duties, tasks, and educational needs, school and teachers’ mutual agreement, setting goals, providing resources, planning for an IDP, implementing an IDP, self-evaluation, and reformative acts. Data also unveiled the causal, contextual, and intervening conditions in the way of developing and implementing an IDP. The findings of the study can have theoretical and practical implications for EFL teachers, school principals, and educational policymakers.

This study was an endeavor to explore the main sources of EFL learners' writing problems through dialogic interactions. It also investigated the effect of metaphor and metonymy on EFL learners' writing achievement. To achieve this end, the researcher adopted mixed-method research with a sample of intermediate language students from both genders. In the qualitative section, 20 EFL learners were selected through purposive sampling, and in the quantitative section, 120 language students were selected through convenience sampling from a university in Gorgan. Data were gathered through Quick Oxford Placement Test (OPT), writing tests, and a semi-structured interview. After recording and transcribing the interviews, the transcripts of the interviews were formatted using the software NVIVO 11 Pro®. With the help of this software, the textual data were reduced into some statements which could reflect the main ideas of the participants’ lived experiences without any intervention from the researcher. However, the data of the tests were inserted into SPSS software and the ANCOVA test was run to indicate differences between the three groups in terms of their writing improvement. The main results suggested that metaphor and metonymy through dialogic interactions had significant effects on the participations’ writing achievement. As well as that, findings from the analysis of data revealed the four main sources of writing problems as linguistic, personal, epistemological, and ecological.       

In spite of the resurgence of interest in teachers' language assessment literacy (LAL), teachers' critical language assessment literacy (CLAL) has not garnered satisfactory prominence. This constitutes a substantial void in the extant corpus of literature that this study will address. To this illumination, a cross-sectional survey research approach utilizing the Critical Language Assessment Literacy (CLAL) scale (Tajeddin et al., 2022) was employed to accomplish the stated purpose of the study. The current study conveniently selected 120 Iranian EFL teachers in different language institutes and universities in Tehran and Kermanshah province. To analyze data, descriptive (e.g., mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (e.g., one sample t-test) were employed to illustrate a comprehensive answer to the study's primary research question. The results of the one-sample t-test and the mean value for all CLAL items showed that teachers have moderate or low knowledge of CLAL factors. In addition, the findings signposted that effective teachers must retain high linguistic competence, teaching/learning cognition, and knowledge of critical language assessment literacy factors; this could be accomplished by including these factors in teacher training programs. These findings displaying shortcomings and gaps in the critical language assessment literacy (CLAL) level of Iranian EFL teachers hold many theoretical and pedagogical implications for teacher development in the realm of assessment and testing at the practice, policy, and professional development levels.

Testing organizations are faced with increasing demand to provide subscores in addition to the total test score. However, psychometricians argue that most subscores do not have added value to be worth reporting. To have added value, subscores need to meet a number of criteria: they should be reliable, distinctive, and distinct from each other and from the total score. In this study, the quality of subscores from two subscore augmentation models (Wainer and Yen) were compared in terms of distinctness and variability. The reliabilities of the Wainer-augmented subscores were also examined. The models were applied to a high-stakes English language proficiency test in Iran. The results of the study showed that Yen better satisfied subscore distinctness while Wainer best preserved variability and had high-reliability subscores. In other words, Yen-augmented subscores had lower correlations while Wainer-augmented subscores better discriminated examinees with different ability levels. Thus, none of the examined models of subscoring satisfied all criteria. The results of the study are discussed and suggestions for future research are provided.

This study investigates the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) of Iraqi English teachers in public and private high schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also examines the potential impact of gender and school type on participants’ TPACK perceptions. The results, derived from a TPACK survey (Baser et al., 2015), indicate significant differences between public and private school Iraqi English teachers in terms of overall TPACK scores and perceptions of individual TPACK constructs of technological knowledge, technological content knowledge, technological pedagogical knowledge, and technological pedagogical content knowledge. However, no significant differences were observed in the constructs of content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge. Additionally, the study found no significant disparities between male and female Iraqi EFL teachers in overall TPACK scores or perceptions of individual TPACK constructs. These findings offer insights into TPACK in Iraqi public and private high schools and shed light on how male and female Iraqi EFL teachers perceive their competencies when utilizing information and communication technology in English language instruction. Considering these findings, it is recommended to implement training and professional development programs to support teachers in effectively integrating technology into language education, especially within their classrooms.

Among four language skills, writing is a complex and demandingcognitive process.Writing is an important tool in evaluationwhere English proficiency needs to be assessed. The present study aimed to explore the impact of feedback provided by Grammarly Software compared to teachers’ feedback on the writing ability of Iranian EFL learners. Through the nonrandom sampling method, 60 intermediate male and female EFL learners were selected, then they were randomly assigned to two main groups: the experimental and control group. The participants were administered the Oxford Placement Test (OQPT), Pretest of Essay Writing, Grammarly software program, Posttest of Essay Writing, and an attitude questionnaire in ten sessions. The data gathered from the comparison of pretest and posttest revealed that the experimental group members outperformed those in the control group, meaning that the Grammarly software program positively affected the EFL learners' writing ability. The results might have implications for language teachers, learners, and materials developers.

The coronavirus pandemic affected education enormously, and despite numerous previous efforts to achieve digitalization, virtual teaching revealed deficiencies in both the EFL teachers’ digital competence and in the peripheral use of Information and communication technologies (ICTs). This study focused on a sample group to analyze the relationship between the implementation of this model and the pre-pandemic digital approach in order to identify deficiencies that need to be strengthened to achieve increasingly effective integration of blended learning. A questionnaire was used to collect data from participating teachers in the areas of school digital strategy, digital competence, and teaching practice in blended learning. The data were analyzed through structural equation models, verifying the relation between variables and also according to specific training on ICTs. An active but insufficient effort on the part of the participants’ schools to promote digitalization was revealed. The implementation of blended learning has been favored more by the responsiveness of participating EFL teachers than by the provision of specific training on the part of schools, which lacked common guidelines from the public administration. These EFL teachers can respond to changes, but the schools’ support is essential for the successful implementation of blended learning, updating the approach of the digital strategy adopted so far.

Children need to start learning English from a very young age in this fast globalizing world. The knowledge of the English language can assist in providing several opportunities for them in the future. It is also essential to know how very young children acquire a foreign language and which content and activities should be selected for their age. This study aimed to observe and describe the procedure of the language development of very young children. Researchers employed a descriptive case study design to portray and assess foreign language learning of two three-year-old twins’ grammar acquisition, vocabulary gains, and fluency in the early years of life (3-4/5). Besides the methods firmly associated with qualitative study and case studies, there were four sources of data collection: observation, audio-video recordings, and diary records. The central unit of the twins’ language development analysis was their utterances. The findings supported using a naturalistic environment where very young children could be exposed to the English language informally in everyday contexts and activities. This research can share its findings with education communities and very young children’s teachers to promote a new professional development model for fostering language development in very young learners’ classrooms, assessments, and curricula.