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Foreign language (FL) teacher agency, as a significant part of teachers’ professional development, encompasses self-organized efforts to augment professional growth. This study aimed to develop an ecological FL teacher agency model through a sequential exploratory mixed methods design based on which an assessment scale measuring FL teachers' agency value was developed. In the qualitative phase, developing and validating the FL teacher agency model, firstly, an interview guide was developed and piloted in a group of 10 TEFL teacher educators from Farhangian Teacher Education University in Tehran. Then, 30 in-service EFL teachers were interviewed. The data were analyzed through MAXQDA to find the components of the tentative conceptual model of teacher agency.  Based on the interview analysis, the preliminary draft of the EFL teacher agency scale was developed.  The refined EFL teacher agency questionnaire encompassing the three components of Autonomy, Freedom, and Choice was administered to 354 randomly selected EFL teachers. The scale's reliability was gained through Cronbach's alpha, and its construct validity through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). The study findings could be used by foreign language teachers, teacher educators, and TEFL teacher agency researchers. 

Although instructional strategies, obstacles, solutions, and technologies designed to assist students with special educational needs (SEN) learning a foreign language were much discussed both in special and inclusive schools, little evidence addresses how English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers construct their identities as legitimate inclusive school practitioners as they witnessed and encountered a range of disabilities. To fill this void, this study reports on a narrative inquiry scrutinizing how Indonesian inclusive EFL teachers construct their identity in teaching 15 students with SEN. Drawing upon Johnston's framework of teacher identity, this study showcases how inclusive EFL teachers cultivated a positive rapport with students with SEN through the utilization of a personal approach and the incorporation of humor in teacher-student relation. Regarding professionalism, they perceived it as service-oriented by consistently motivating all of their students, particularly those with SEN, exhibited tolerance for the regular ones, and implemented co-education or peer-mediated instruction strategies. In light of teachers’ religious beliefs in English language teaching (ELT), they accomplished well by embedding numerous character values, referred to as profile pelajar pancasila, in English classrooms. The implications of this study are to bring potential implementations of specialized teaching strategies training of professional development for inclusive EFL teachers and differentiated assessment for students with SEN.

This study strived to specify and particularize Iranian medical field specialists and EFL teachers’ predominant and overriding textual interventions, which fall within the ambit of convenience editing. To this end, we required 20 field specialists and 20 EFL instructors to edit the unedited versions of 80 published medical research articles in a way that rendered them apt for publication in quality medical journals. We categorized the obtained data of the edited articles using an editing strategy framework that distinguished four editing micro-strategies and five macro-strategies. The findings revealed that medical specialists and EFL teachers’ micro-editing strategies outnumbered their macro-editing ones. Furthermore, there were significant differences between the editing micro-strategy uses of the above-mentioned groups of the participants. The results highlighted the need for a synergic collaboration between the medical field specialists and the EFL teachers to ameliorate medical articles’ formal, stylistic, and genre-related features and to expedite their publication process. 

L’analyse des mécanismes résultant de l'expérience abstraite ou de la rencontre sensorielle du sujet actif avec l'univers a été négligée du point de vue de la sémiotique classique et celui-ci résiste à des concepts tels que : « présence », « expérience », « corps » et « le sensible ». Landowski défend l’idée du sens constituée d’une condition à la présence et il introduit les quatre régimes d’espace dans lesquels le sens de discours dépend de l'interaction sensorielle-perceptive entre le sujet et le monde extérieur. Dans ses régimes, l’espace-tissu est en interaction avec la programmation, l’espace-volute se présente par l’ajustement, l’espace-abîme est manifesté par l’assentiment et l’espace-réseau est en rapport avec la manipulation. La question principale de cette recherche consiste aux régimes du sens de Landowski se présentant dans le texte littéraire. Pour trouver la réponse, cette recherche applique les régimes d’espace de Landowski à savoir l’espace-volute et l’espace-abîme sur La montagne du dieu vivant de J.M.G Le Clézio dont les récits mettent en scène de beaux passages sur l’interaction entre les personnages et les espaces différents. Cet article aurait pour objectif d’examiner l’interaction entre le sujet et l’espace dans un texte littéraire à partir de la théorie des régimes du sens de Landowski pour effectuer le pouvoir de l’espace sur la perception humaine. Par une analyse sémiotique, cet article montrera enfin la relation entre le sujet et l’espace tout en se basant sur les phrases du sujet parlant et l’espace qui l’a entouré. Cette relation produit un sens profond. 

The current paper intends to exploit the Many Facet Rasch Model to investigate and compare the impact of situations (items) and raters on test takers' performance on the Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) and Discourse Self-Assessment Tests (DSAT). In this study, the participants were 110 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students at Vali-e-Asr University of Rafsanjan in Iran. The students were asked to complete the WDCT and rate themselves on that test. Four raters scored the WDCT tests. According to the FACETS results, there were significant differences in students' performance between the two methods. The stable fit statistics and differing levels of difficulty measures for each test method indicated that each test had a unique way of differentiating the test taker's pragmatic ability. Based on the results, both DSAT and WDCT are acceptable measures for pragmatic ability; however, there are some fitness problems in DSAT. This shows the unpredictable pattern of ratings in the DSAT. It is recommended to have rater training to obtain more accurate results from the DSAT. Finally, the implications were discussed.

The increasing advancement of technology in the field of teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) has turned blended learning—a combination of online and in-person learning—into an innovative educational approach. Given the significance of investigating students' attitudes toward learning environments in different EFL contexts, this mixed-methods study was set to examine Iraqi university EFL students' attitudes toward blended EFL courses and investigate gender differences in this regard. Thus, 250 EFL students were selected from five public Iraqi universities via convenience sampling method and completed the questionnaire of the study. Of these participants, a random sample of 25 students was also selected for interview sessions. The questionnaire results suggested that due to serious technological and instructional drawbacks, such as lack of appropriate infrastructure and insufficient technology knowledge, Iraqi EFL students had generally negative attitudes toward EFL blended courses. Gender also played no significant role in students' attitudes. In interviews, they emphasized the importance of technology training programs to pave the way for effective blended EFL courses, mentioning some important benefits for this hybrid approach. The pedagogical implications of the findings are also discussed.

Evaluating research designs plays a pivotal role in promoting principled Mixed Methods Research (MMR). Although the quality of mixed methods designs has been among the most debated topics, scant attention has been drawn to the investigation of Applied Linguistics (AL) Islamic World Science Citation Center (ISC) journals. Informed by this gap, the present exploratory sequential mixed methods study aimed at analyzing the research designs, tools of data collection, and purposes of 303 MMR articles published in 12 leading ISC journals. This involved a qualitative content analysis using a code sheet based on established MMR typologies, followed by a quantitative frequency analysis to determine the prevalence of these coded categories. The findings indicated that sequential designs were more frequently used in the corpus. Moreover, as regards the tools of data collection, questionnaires and interviews were the most commonly utilized ones. Finally, exploration purpose was the prime purpose opted for by the researchers in the study corpus. The study highlights the importance of conducting principled MMR through the reconceptualization of designs from method to methodology level. It further argues for a systemic view of MMR in which there is a cyclic interaction among fully integrated stages of an MMR design. The implications of the findings are discussed throughout the paper.

Compared to non-academic contexts, the use of address forms in academic settings is insufficiently researched. To fill this gap, the present study investigated the address forms commonly used by students and lecturers in Iranian universities in their oral and written communication. The analytical framework of this study is semio-cultural conceptualization. A qualitative descriptive research design was adopted, which included six open-ended questions. Thirty Iranian EFL lecturers participated in this study, 20 males and 10 females, representing 14 different universities. The average age of the participants was 50. The thematic analysis of the data revealed that in addition to the conventional polite forms, some innovations have emerged in the academic address practice in Iran. While students always addressed their lecturers using respectful forms and honorifics, the lecturers’ address choices varied according to sociolinguistic factors such as the students’ age, gender, degree of intimacy and distance, and educational status. In the majority of cases, the lecturers employed title plus last name; nevertheless, some of them opted for more intimate forms. However, such forms were never reciprocated by students owing to the perceived power dynamics and elevated respect for teachers, which is deeply entrenched in the culturally-constructed conceptualization of the unique teacher-student relationship in Iran. The findings also suggest that the scope of address studies can be expanded to include semio-cultural conceptualizations, such as emotion schema, and symbolism.   

Sociocultural Theory (SCT) of second language learning puts the emphasis on social interaction and regards it as a pre-requisite for cognitive development (Vygotsky, 1978). Drawing on the SCT, the present study aimed to delve into the possible effect of ZPD-based teacher and peer feedback on reading comprehension and reading strategy use of EFL learners. In so doing, 75 Iranian EFL learners, who were randomly assigned into two experimental and one comparison groups, participated in a quasi-experimental study. The data were collected through Oxford Placement Test (OPT), reading comprehension test and reading strategy questionnaire. One of the experimental groups received teacher feedback based on Aljaafreh and Lantolf's (1994) regulatory scale while the other experimental group accomplished the reading task using the feedback provided by the peers. Results obtained from the one–way ANOVA and Tukey test demonstrated that both experimental groups, teacher and peer, gained significantly more and performed better than the comparison group in reading comprehension while there was no significant difference between teacher and peer feedback groups in reading comprehension. The findings of the strategy questionnaire indicated no statistically significant difference between experimental and control groups, leading to the conclusion that students’ grouping did not influence their use of reading strategy. Therefore, it is concluded that peer feedback can be as effective as teacher feedback, aiding teachers to have a learner–centered classroom by implementing peer feedback rather than teacher feedback.

Extensive research has been conducted on the intersection of digital games and AI, exploring how it impacts the diverse variables of education, such as proficiency, vocabulary, and motivation. However, there is a lack of studies that have comprehensively assessed the combined impact of digital games and AI applications on enhancing six aspects of vocabulary. This study focused on finding the possible effect of using the combination of digital games and the Artificial Intelligence Chat GPT application technique (AIGames) on developing the 7th-grade EFL learners’ vocabulary acquisition and their attitude toward such a technique. Based on an experimental and descriptive design, a quantitative approach was used. The participants were assigned to two groups randomly: the experimental group, which studied using this technique, and the control group, which was taught using the regular instruction method. The study used two instruments: a pre-posttest and an attitude scale (questionnaire). The findings revealed statistically significant differences between the experimental and control groups in vocabulary learning due to using the AIGames technique in favor of the experimental group. The post-test results (Table 2) revealed significant improvements across all six vocabulary aspects, with the largest gains in denotation (experimental group: M=7.82 vs. control: M=4.56) and spelling (M=7.59 vs. 5.38). Pronunciation showed the slightest improvement (M=5.41 vs. 3.69), suggesting that the AIGames technique was less effective for this aspect. The study also showed that most participants in the experimental group had a positive attitude towards using the new technique in learning vocabulary. Moreover, the study revealed no correlation between the experimental students’ achievement in vocabulary and their perception of using the AIGames technique.

To identify the effectiveness of online observation for teaching, this study explored teachers’ conceptions of online classroom observation, focusing on the key components, instructional design considerations, and delivery strategies in virtual teaching environments. More particularly, in this multi-method qualitative research design study, the researchers did document analysis of a number of available classroom observation sheets to derive some themes and sub-themes regarding the components of online classroom observation. Subsequently, based on the derived themes, semi-structured interview items were composed. Through purposive sampling, eight Iranian experienced online classroom observers were selected to be interviewed. Using MAXQDA to do content and thematic analysis, the researchers found the eight components of instructional design and delivery, technology integration, student engagement and interaction, professional development and support, feedback provision, assessment of students’ learning and achievement, inclusive practices, and instructor presence and support in the data. Moreover, it was found that the integration of technology was highlighted to optimize observation experiences, student engagement, and instructional support. These findings have implications for professional development programs, re-evaluation of assessment practices, instructor presence, and technology integration in online learning contexts, all of which are crucial for equipping EFL instructors with the skills and knowledge necessary for effective online teaching.

Language learning is a multifaceted process influenced by various factors, including learners’ individual preferences and cognitive strengths. This mixed-methods study investigates how dominant intelligences influence the instructional preferences and perceptions of 30 male Turkish-speaking EFL learners, aged 13-17, using a structured questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The research explores the relationship between learners’ intelligences and specific teaching approaches, with data analyzed through both quantitative and qualitative methods. Participants were categorized into two groups based on their dominant intelligences: Group A (interpersonal and intrapersonal) and Group B (linguistic and visual/spatial). Analysis of the data reveals that learners gravitate towards learning styles that align with their dominant intelligences, with Group A favoring interactive and self-directed approaches, while Group B leans towards visual and experiential methods. Despite a limited awareness of MI theory, the participants express satisfaction with MI-based instruction, viewing it as more engaging and effective compared to traditional methods. This study underscores the significance of incorporating learner preferences into language instruction and highlights the potential of MI-based approaches to enhance learner engagement and motivation.

This article delved into the realm of EFL assessment in Iraq by investigating the beliefs of Iraqi EFL teachers about assessment practices they employed in their classroom and determining whether there was any congruency between their beliefs and actual assessment practices. For this purpose, 140 experienced Iraqi EFL teachers were selected by convenience sampling and the data were collected by the Teachers’ Assessment Practices Belief Questionnaire and the Teachers’ Assessment Practices Questionnaire. The findings of Pearson correlation and descriptive analysis revealed that the cognitive level of assessments (e.g., reasoning and application), types of assessments (e.g., portfolios and concept mapping), and evaluation criteria (e.g., improvement and student effort) were highly valued by the teachers. Regarding assessment practices in the classroom, the participants reported obtaining, elucidating, and responding to learning evidence and assisting students to acquire a positive orientation of learning (making learning explicit). Promoting learning autonomy (an expanded opportunity to assume increased autonomy in defining their learning goals and evaluating both their work and that of their peers) was also found in the teachers’ reports. Besides, an interest in assisting students adhere to performance goals stipulated by the curriculum using careful questioning and assessed by scores and grades (performance orientation). Implications and suggestions of the study are discussed in the article.

This article examines the evolution of teacher education in Iran, with a specific focus on English language teacher training. Utilizing a qualitative analysis of historical documents, the study identifies six distinct periods in this evolution. The first period marks the foundation of teacher education with the establishment of the Dar al-Fonun School. The second period saw the formalization of teacher education through the Central and Higher Teacher Training Colleges. In the third period, teacher training expanded with the creation of Preliminary and Higher Colleges, focusing on multidisciplinary fields, including the French language. The fourth period introduced specialized programs, such as English language teaching, which replaced French. During the fifth period, teacher training centers reached their peak and then declined. Finally, the sixth period marks a shift in the educational system’s approach to teacher education, highlighted by the establishment of Farhangian University. Throughout these periods, English language teacher curricula evolved from classical and structural approaches to communicative and interactive methods. This shift not only highlights the changing pedagogical landscape in Iran but also underscores the need for curricula that better prepare teachers for contemporary classroom dynamics. The findings showcase the developmental trajectory of teacher education in Iran, emphasizing the need to address future challenges.