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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.

The present investigation aimed at studying the impacts of Iranian EFL learners’ gender, age, field and degree of study on their perceptions of mobile affordances. To this end, 159 Iranian EFL students studying at university were asked to fill Mobile Affordance Inventory (Rostami, 2021). To analyze the data, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, independent sample t-test, one way ANOVA, and Pearson’s correlation were run. The findings of the study indicated that no differences were found among EFL learners in using mobile learning affordances regarding their gender, degree, and field of study. Additionally, no significant relationship was found between the arcticians’ age and their mobile affordances. The results also showed that different affordances of mobile devices can provide new and important information for educators. They become more familiar with different mobile phones capabilities to use, and it makes their teaching more effective. Becoming familiar with affordances provides a situation for improving students’ learning as well as their self-control.

Communicative and natural processing of language in the world of translation is substantiated through simultaneous decoding and encoding of information in the source and target languages. The researchers analy zed pragmatic strategies and approaches undertaken by the Persian and Kurdish translators of the Quranic discourse marker thumma. The source text corpus was selected randomly and the target text parallel corpora were selected based on purposive sampling. Theoretical perspectives in pragmatics and translation were employed in the analysis of parallel corpora in this investigation. The results revealed that various types and combinations of the Kurdish and Persian temporal discourse markers were utilized by these translators. Moreover, other Kurdish and Persian elaborative, contrastive, and inferential discourse markers were also used in rendering the discourse marker thumma in the Quran. This dynamic approach to the construction of discourse was substantiated based on the realization of different conventions in the construction of discourse in different languages and cultures. This dynamic system in the construction of a proper discourse for the readers is verified based on the application of different theories in discourse analysis and pragmatics and the application of context and text-sensitive strategies in the process of translation. The characteristics, bases, and resources of these dynamic translation strategies are discussed based on pragmatic awareness rising in various aspects of translation education and some suggestions were offered in the application of the findings in syllabus design, translation evaluation, and rethinking of approaches in lexicography.  

The present work is a contribution to the debate around attitude towards English as a foreign language in Cameroon. By case-studying an under-searched area through a multi-component tool: the Attitude and Motivation Test Battery, it proposes a different reflection to the question. The test was administered to 211 Grade 11, 12, and 13 Francophone students from various urban and semi-urban schools in the city and its suburbs. It was based on the postulates that attitude is a dynamic characteristic that varies according to place and time on the one hand, and that it is far too complex to be examined from the prism of a single variable. The results revealed that of the six parameters that made up the three components of the tool, three were negative and three were positive, with the integrative orientation slightly outpacing the instrumental one. This underscores the need to envisage attitude as a multi-component variable, as well as the need to reckon with evolving social variables. In general, the results reveal that attitude towards EFL is not as desperate as usually thought. It can be intimated that recent socio-political initiatives aiming at reinforcing French-English bilingualism are gradually bearing fruits. Thus, socio-political ideologies appear to have significant effects on overall attitude towards EFL.

As an integral dimension of instruction, assessment determines whether or not the educational goals are being fulfilled. The present study was an attempt to investigate Iranian ESP instructors’ common classroom assessment practices. To this end, based on convenience sampling, eight different ESP teachers teaching BA students from a variety of departments at Rasht Islamic Azad University, Iran were selected. An observation checklist containing 31 items was used as the only data-gathering instrument of this study. The results of the descriptive statistics revealed that some assessment practices including using portfolio to assess student progress, assessing group class participation, conducting item analysis for teacher-made tests, and writing matching questions were applied less frequently in the ESP classes. However, some assessment practices such as incorporating attendance in the calculation of grades and recognizing unethical, illegal, or inappropriate uses of assessment information were more likely to be used in the observed ESP classes. The instructors were also more likely to incorporate classroom behavior in the calculation of grades, incorporate extra credit activities in the calculation of grades, recognize unethical, illegal, or inappropriate assessment methods, and inform students how grades are to be assigned. It is concluded that ESP teachers utilize both traditional testing and alternative assessment for achieving a complementary process of assessment, and they call for an integration of them due to their importance in assessing both the process and product of learning. The results of this study may hopefully be beneficial for curriculum developers, materials developers, course and syllabus designers, teachers and teacher trainers, and the other stakeholders in the fields of language teaching and learning as well.