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Given its key role in enhancing learners’ communicative competence, willingness to communicate (WTC) has received much research attention in the field of second language (L2) teaching and learning. Numerous studies have explored the antecedents of WTC in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. As an attempt to shed more light on this line of research, this study was set to investigate the effects of grit and foreign language anxiety as predictors of L2 WTC among Iranian EFL learners. For this purpose, a number of 163 undergraduate English major students from several universities participated in this survey. The required data were collected by distributing valid and reliable instruments measuring the three target variables (i.e., WTC, grit, and anxiety). A structural equation modeling (SEM) approach was utilized to test the hypothesized structural models for the relations between these variables. The SEM results indicated that grit accounted for 10.6 % of the variance and FL anxiety explained 20% of the variance in the participants’ L2 WTC. Furthermore, the unique impact of foreign language anxiety on WTC was greater than that of grit. The implications of these findings for language teaching and learning are discussed at the end of the paper.

Enabling learners to communicate both in an inter-personal level and with people of other nations is greatly emphasized in language learning programs. The present study seeks to analyze the conceptions of Iranian teachers after they implemented the new communicative language teaching (CLT) curriculum. To do so, two teachers were asked to record one session of their classes and subsequently participate in semi-structured interviews to elaborate on their rationale of what they did in the classroom. One of the teachers was a male with over 20 years of teaching experience, and the other was a female with almost the same years of teaching experience as the male. The analysis of the data showed wide discrepancies between teachers’ actual activities and the curriculum recommendations. The teachers highlighted their previous schooling as a student as well as contextual realities as factors influencing their teaching. The study highlighted the point that if teachers’ beliefs and the contextual realities are not in tune, teachers filter the curriculum in their own preferred ways leading to divergences from the proposed curriculum. Therefore, the study has clear implications for curriculum developers to consider contextual realities when proposing any innovations. It can also be of use for teachers to be aware of the need to be more cautious when implementing a new curriculum.

Resistance literature deals with concepts such as subjugation and deliverance. Translation of this type of literature has played an important role in transferring such concepts to other countries. The purpose of this study is to present a quantitative-analytical study of the novels of resistance literature translated from English to Persian during the four administrations which were in power in Iran between 1978 and 2005. To this end, historiography approach proposed by Pym (2014) was applied. Primarily, the themes of the novels were classified based on Harlow (1987) and DeShazer’s (1994) model of classification of resistance literature. The themes include race discrimination, class conflict, war, colonialism, post-colonialism, and totalitarianism. Then, the translated novels of each administration were examined to see which ones covered the above themes. The results indicated that only 6% of the published translations of the period under study was allocated to resistance novels. It can be concluded that translation of resistance novels was marginalized, and Iranians were basically reading novels covering themes other than resistance literature.

Academic Confidence, Grit and WTC of students play important roles in their second language achievement. This paper examined the role of academic confidence and grit in willingness to communicate of Iranian EFL students in different communicative and educational contexts. To this end, 385 EFL students responded to the relevant questionnaires. The analysis of the data revealed that the students with higher levels of academic confidence and grit had a higher L2 WTC in in-class, out-of-class, and online classrooms. The results also revealed that the students’ grit was a predictor of their L2 WTC in all communicative contexts, and the university students scored the highest, followed by language institute and senior secondary school students. Moreover, academic confidence and grit had significant relationship with L2 WTC of students in senior secondary schools, language institutes and universities. Another finding was that grit was a predictor of all groups’ L2 WTC, while academic confidence predicted L2 WTC of students in language institutes and universities. The results of this study have implications for EFL teachers.

Practicum as a component of the English language teacher education program has been welcomed by pre-service teacher education institutes. Despite the great emphasis laid on practicum by Farhangian University, it has not been evaluated comprehensively by the student teachers and graduated student teachers up to now.  The main objective of the study was to explore the benefits and problems of the practicum program. To do so, a qualitative case study was employed. 25 informants were recruited using a purposive sampling procedure. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with student teachers and graduated student teachers. The interpretational and reflective analysis techniques were employed to analyze the data. The findings were content analyzed in terms of benefits/advantages and challenges of the practicum. They indicate that practicum courses make the student teachers ready for real teaching, help them learn about the realities of real teaching and overcome the negative attitudes and feelings about the teaching profession. It has been also found that the practicum program needs revision in terms of evaluation, quality of placement schools, and cooperation between mentors, university educators and student teachers. Findings can be used by teacher training institutes, practicum educators, school mentors, and EFL student teachers.

The literature on second/foreign language (L2/FL) discourse is replete with corpus-based studies into the use of various features representing lexical proficiency. Nonetheless, the lexical construct of English for academic purposes (EAP) texts developed by postgraduates majoring in teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) still sounds like a relatively unexplored domain that merits further multi-dimensional investigation. To narrow the gap, the authors in the current study set out to evaluate the lexical richness of a corpus containing doctoral dissertations written by Iranian TEFL students in terms of lexical density, diversity, and sophistication. Taking advantage of the computational tool Coh-Metrix to analyze the lexical features, the corpus was analyzed in comparison with a first language (L1) baseline containing doctoral dissertations written by English native speakers. The comparative analysis of the L1 and L2 corpora revealed that the texts written by Iranian TEFL learners were lexically less diverse but more sophisticated. Additionally, the lexical density of the L2 corpus exceeded that of the L1 one in terms of nouns and adjectives. Based on the results drawn from a discriminant function analysis (DFA), the features representing lexical sophistication and density were found to be the best predictors of lexical richness since they could significantly discriminate between the two sub-corpora. The findings may provide new insights into the ways of evaluating and enhancing the lexical richness of FL/L2 written discourse.

This study investigates the effect of Pot-luck Flipped Classroom (PFC), meaning the implementation of pot-luck, as an innovative technique, in a flipped classroom (FC), on the development of translation competence (TC). The advances and developments in science and technology and the need to exchange the newly-developed information, knowledge, and technology highlights the demand to train professional translators, and thus, the development of TC becomes an essential skill of 21st. century. FC learning model and pot-luck innovative teaching technique have proven the enhancement of the effective learning. Therefore, in this study, we combined them as PFC to develop TC via collaboration and active involvement in a learner-centered environment. A total of 57 Translation Studies students, including 27 boys and 30 girls took part in this study. We used a quasi-experimental design with an experimental (PFC) and control group. Data were collected via Translation Competence Acquisition Questionnaire before and after the intervention of PFC. Findings showed a statistically significant difference (significant at 0.05) in all TC components in experimental group after the intervention of PFC. Thus, PFC proved to be efficient. Finally, pedagogical implications are discussed and suggestions for further studies are also provided.

The present study sought to cast light on differences in strategies of compliment responses used across Persian and American English. For this purpose, 110 participants, under three groups of Persian native speakers, American native speakers, and Persian learners of English, answered a Discourse Completion Test (DCT), followed by a semi-structured interview with the Persian learners of English to cross-check the findings of the DCTs. The collected responses from the DCTs were coded at macro and micro-levels. Moreover, a macro-level of Persian cultural schemas was used for the Persian groups. The chi-square test revealed the independent performance of the three groups. Judged by the written DCTs while performing in English, the learners’ responses displayed cases of utilizing the native Persian cultural schemas. More specifically, the English learner respondents employed different instances of ta’arof and shekaste-nafsi . Confirmed by the interview, such failures resulted from insufficient exposure to the American English culture and more importantly from their lack of instruction and awareness of cross-cultural pragmatic differences.