درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The demand for learning English as a foreign language has significantly heightened the need to recruit efficient teachers. Related literature confirms the lack of studies on teacher characteristics that can affect their job satisfaction. This study aimed to study the relationship between Iranian EFL teachers’ professional development, job satisfaction, and reflective thinking. One-hundred and fifty-nine teachers from different universities, language institutes, and schools wer e requested to answer the professional development questionnaire, the Minnesota satisfaction questionnaire, and reflective thinking scale as the main data collection instruments. These questionnaires were given in three different ways: in person, email, and social networks. Structural Equation Modeling was used to examine the hypothesized model of associations. This model was confirmed following the application of the modification indices proposed by the software (Normal chi-square = 3.4; RMSEA =.03; RMR =.02; GFI =.94; AGFI =.91; NFI =.94; CFI =.94; IFI =.94). The findings showed that there were significant internal correlations between all the latent variables and their sub-scales. Furthermore, findings of multiple regression analysis revealed that professional development and reflective thinking positively predicted job satisfaction, with professional development exerting more predictive power compared to reflective thinking. Pedagogical implications of the results have been discussed.

The advent of Web 2 tools and their features have allowed Internet users not only to seek information but also to generate and edit on-line information. However, excessive reliance of students, particularly EFL students, on the Internet has raised the issue of information credibility or quality of the information found online. This study sought to investigate the relationship between Iranian EFL university students’ credibility judgment and their learning styles and critical thinking. It also intended to examine the extent to which the learners employ credibility judgment strategies to verify web-based information. To this end, 212 Iranian EFL students, 165 female(s) and 47 male(s) (or add) students, received three questionnaires: Honey’s (2004) Critical Thinking questionnaire, Kolb's (1984) Learning Style inventory, and the adapted version of Credibility Judgment questionnaire originally developed by Metzger, Flanagin, and Zwarun (2003). The results of descriptive as well as bivariate and multivariate correlation analysis revealed that, first, Iranian EFL students employ credibility judgment strategies at a moderate level, and second, critical thinking is a better predictor for credibility judgment behavior of EFL students than learning style. Moreover, three learning styles were significantly related to the currency sub-scale of credibility judgment. The findings can assist curriculum planners, policymakers, and instructors to develop plans for empowering EFL students with the skills they need to evaluate on-line information for accuracy, objectivity, authority, and currency.

High-stakes tests exert impacts on teachers’ perceptions, methodology, practices, and materials used in the classroom. However, previous research studies have overlooked the role of teachers’ past experiences in the tests and their instructional planning prior to, during, and after the preparation courses. This study inspected the washback effect of IELTS examination on Iranian EFL teachers’ instructional planning considering their IELTS related experiences. Through a mixed-methods research design, two sets of questionnaires were distributed among 120 Iranian IELTS instructors to examine the IELTS washback effect on their perceptions of instructional planning. Afterward, a semi-structured interview was held with 15 instructors, selected from among 120 initial participants, to supplement the previously collected data. The results of one sample t-test and Wilcoxon signed-ranks test indicated that the current level of Instructional planning at item and total score level was beyond average. Likewise, the results of Spearman rho indicated a positive and significant relationship between instructors’ instructional planning and their past IELTS related experiences. It was also found that the IELTS examination made the instructors develop exam-oriented plans by focusing on the students’ test performance. The results are invaluable for IELTS instructors in that they can raise their knowledge and awareness about the nature and scope of IELTS washback effect and ways to develop exam-oriented plans.

This study aimed to investigate the impact of web-based cooperative teaching through strategy-based instruction on EFL learners’ speaking and listening skills. Moreover, the use of cooperative teaching was hypothesized to have impact on the EFL learners’ self-efficacy. To this purpose, the study followed a mixed-methods design by implementing both qualitative and quantitative data gathering procedures through tests, questionnaire and interviews. The population of the study was made up of 48 EFL learners in a language institute in Kerman, a city in the south east of Iran. In order to collect data, four instruments were used: Cambridge Placement Test to homogenize the participants, pre- and post-listening and speaking tests, a questionnaire to estimate EFL learners’ self-efficacy and finally an interview. Based on the obtained results, it was revealed that the learners in the online group improved much more satisfactorily than those taught through traditional teaching procedures. It was, therefore, concluded that collaborative teaching strategies were effective in the web environment. Besides, meaningful relationships were observed between the use of the applied strategies and the oral skills. Furthermore, the results of the questionnaire clearly indicated the learners’ self-efficacy improvement from pre- to post-administration. Finally, the resulted obtained from the interview showed the positive effect of web-based cooperative and strategy teaching in the oral language class. In fact, majority of the learners in the online group clearly maintained that using collaboration in the web-environment could enhance their learning level. The findings of the study are of much help to language teachers who observe learning problems among their students. They can also assist learners who suffer from communicative difficulties in the situations where they have to collaborate with other groups and exchange ideas.

Processability Theory (PT) is regarded as one of the prominent theory of second language acquisition (SLA) developed to illuminate the developmental sequences in SLA as well as some other linguistic phenomena (Pienemann, 1998a; 2011).Since 1990s, Processability has been at the center of attention in second language acquisition research. Within the framework of Processability theory and through analyzing the written performance of Iranian EFL learners, the present research focused on the acquisition of “Copula inversion” and “Negation” across five proficiency levels, from elementary to advanced and compared it with the stage-like development model of morpho-syntactic structures proposed by Pienemann (1998a, 2011). The study followed a descriptive method of research and the data was collected from 350 participants in five different proficiency levels from elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate, upper-intermediate and advanced. The participants were asked to provide samples of their written performance on different tasks such as introduction task, habitual action task, story retelling task, audio-video-retelling task, picture description task, composition, communication task. The data in this research was analyzed both qualitatively, in order to identify and classify the type and order of the morpho-syntactic structures; and quantitatively, by calculating means. The results of Kruskal-Wallis test revealed that “Negation” emerged at the elementary level of the language learners’ performance and “copula inversion” emerged at the intermediate level. Just the same, the competence of the learner grows stronger in concern with these variables through the higher proficiency levels. These findings imply that PT is valid for Iranian EFL learners, as well.   

The aim of this investigation has been to predict Viewing Comprehension through Aural and Picture Vocabulary Size among Iranian EFL Learners . To this end, 110 intermediate students were selected from two institutes of a city in Khorasan Razavi province, Iran. Pictorial vocabulary knowledge of learners was tested by Picture Vocabulary Size Test, Aural vocabulary knowledge was measured by Aural vocabulary size test and viewing comprehension was tested by a multiple-choice question test. All analyses were carried out using SPSS for Microsoft windows 22. Pearson product moment correlation analysis was run to analyze the relationship among viewing comprehension, picture vocabulary size and aural vocabulary . After the correlation analysis, we did step-wise multiple regression analysis to predict an outcome variable from two predictors . Interestingly, it was found that both picture and aural vocabulary size have a significant positive correlation with viewing comprehension. It was also proved that only aural vocabulary size can be considered as a significant predictor of EFL learners' viewing comprehension ability.

Allusions in literary texts are among the elements which can cause intercultural misunderstanding. In this study, the translation of the  allusions of two narrative poems selected from Nizami’s The seven Images (Haft Gonbad) were studied. To this end, the frequent types of implicit allusions were extracted from the poems: The Black Dome and The White Dome . Next, the original text was compared with its English translations to identify whether these allusive meanings were found and transferred in their translations. To achieve this goal, Leppihalm’s (1997) model of translation strategies for key-phrase (KP) allusions was employed. The findings indicated that the most frequent strategy selected by the translators is literal translation. Rendering the poems into English literally, the translators ignored the implicit meanings underlying the allusions. The findings can have implications for translating literary texts.