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In every field of teaching and learning, there are some factors that have an important role in both teachers’ and students’ performance. Two of these effective psychological factors in the context of education include self-efficacy and burnout. This research was conducted to examine the statistical relationship between English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ self-efficacy and burnout levels in the universities and schools of Iran. The data collection instruments were two questionnaires, ‘Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale’ and ‘Maslach Burnout Inventory’. The participants included 152 randomly selected teachers working in universities and schools. After data collection, the SPSS software was applied to convert the obtained data into numerical and interpretable data. To quantify the statistical relationship between teachers’ self-efficacy and burnout levels, correlational analysis was used. Results indicated, there was negative correlation between teachers’ self efficacy and burnout levels. Furthermore, multiple regression analysis was conducted to estimate the relationship between self-efficacy and burnout better, which indicated that teachers’ self efficacy was a negative predictor of their burnout.

This study was an attempt to examine the effects of direct (DCF), indirect (ICF) and metalinguistic (MCF) written corrective feedback and the types of responses (i.e. + /– revision) on the perception of present/past perfect tenses by Iranian intermediate EFL learners. A pretest-posttest design was utilized to conduct the study with 210 intermediate EFL learners who were randomly selected based on their scores on Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT). They were assigned to 7 groups, each including 30 participants: DCF+ Revision, DCF – Revision, ICF + Revision, and ICF – Revision, MCF + Revision, and MCF – Revision, and a control group. All students were asked to take a multiple-choice test (i.e. perception test) as a pretest and a posttest. After administering the pretest and imparting the relevant treatment, the posttest was administered. Results indicated that all experimental groups improved their knowledge of past/present perfect tenses from the pretest to the posttest, the ‘DCF + Revision’ group outperformed all other groups, all of the groups doing revision (i.e. DCF / ICF / MCF + Revision) outperformed their counterparts without revision (i.e. DCF / ICF/ MCF – Revision), and the only groups whose scores were not significantly different were the ‘ICF + Revision’, ‘DCF – Revision’, and ‘MCF – Revision’ groups. The findings provide insights into new ways of helping students to improve their L2 writing skills in general and specifically teaching grammatical structures through effective combinations of written corrective feedback and follow-up revision.

The present article dedicates to studying the syllable-internal structure in three Iranian Balochi dialects (IBDs) namely Mirjaveh Sarhaddi, Sarawani and Lashari dialects. The data analysis will be based on the onset-rhyme theory (e.g., Kurylowicz, 1948; Fudge, 1969; Vergnaud & Halle, 1979; Selkirk, 1982). Moreover, the syllable weight in IBDs will be discussed in the framework of mora theory (Hayes, 1985, 1989). The data have been collected during the research fieldwork in Sistan and Baluchestan province, Iran. The research findings demonstrate that the Balochi language is an example of a nucleus-weight language in which heavy syllables depend on the number of elements in the nucleus. Thus, CV and CVC are light syllables and CVV(C) syllable is counted as heavy syllable. Besides, the context-dependent weight of CVC syllables occurs in IBDs stress pattern system. Studying the syllable contact (word-medial consonant clusters) in IBDs shows that Balochi is among languages that admit all types of heterosyllablic clusters.

The teachers' competencies in the process of internationalization of higher education (IHE) are of vital importance (Brandenburg & Federkeil, 2007; van der Werf, 2012). The extent of IHE in a university is in a close relationship with the teachers' competencies (Harari, 1981). However, the required competencies of teachers in IHE are not a well-studied topic. Similarly, the "dearth of literature on EAP professional development" (Blaj-Ward, 2014, p. 113) has complicated exploring the EAP teachers' competencies. The absence of a competency model addressing the needs of EAP teachers to effectively engage in the education fitting the IHE objectives and policies gave impetus to this study. In line with this objective, an instrument measuring EAP teachers' competencies was designed and validated. The following steps were taken to develop the instrument: the theme extraction and item generation phase, the piloting phase, and the validation phase. The extensive review of the literature and interviews with IHE experts and EAP teachers yielded 8 competencies. This initial framework led to the development of the preliminary version of a 22-item questionnaire. The piloting phase resulted in 23 items. 74 EAP teachers from both camps (language and content) participated in the final administration. Various factor analyses, internal consistency, and correlation of all of the items were performed. The data obtained confirmed a sufficiently reliable and valid scale, consisting of 6 components (with the same underlying themes of 8 competencies extracted earlier) and 23 items for measuring the EAP teachers' competencies.

Reading passages act as the locus of comprehensible input in the English language teaching materials and are mostly followed by a host of activities to ensure the learners’ comprehension. The current study aimed to carry out a comparative evaluation of Vision 3 and Learning to Read (i.e., English for Pre-university Students) in terms of the reading sections. To this end, Freeman’s taxonomy of reading comprehension questions was used. To enrich the quantitative data, thirty-two English teachers were also interviewed. The results revealed the prevalence of Language questions in both textbooks. However, the least common types of questions were Affect and Content in the old and new textbook, respectively. The results of Chi-square tests unfolded a significant difference between the two textbooks in terms of three categories of questions. The analysis of the teachers’ responses corroborated the findings of the quantitative phase. The teachers seemed satisfied with the inclusion of more Affect questions in Vision 3; nevertheless, they believed that the new English textbook needed to be revised in terms of the quantity and quality of reading texts and tasks in order to shape and expand the students’ reading comprehension skills. The findings carry pedagogical implications for the materials developers and English teachers.

This study sought to investigate translation strategies in translation of culture-specific items (CSIs) in Persian translation of ‘The Egyptian’ novel by Mika Waltari. To this end, it benefited from corpus-based comparative content analysis design within a qualitative approach. The corpus of this study consisted of 150 pages of the novel ‘The Egyptian’ by Mika Waltari along with their Persian translations by Zabihollah Mansouri, which were selected through simple random sampling. Data analysis included parallel comparison of the source text and its translation in terms of the occurrence of different types of translation strategies used in the translations. Furthermore, statistical procedures which were conducted consisted of calculation of frequency and percentage of different translation strategies (to identify the most and least frequent strategies) and chi-square test (to see if there is a significant difference between the frequencies of different strategies used by the translator). The results of data analysis showed that the translator has used the following translation strategies: Calque, equivalence, adaptation, literal translation, modulation and omission. Moreover, it was found that the most frequent strategy was calque. Furthermore, the lowest frequency belonged to modulation and omission. In addition, a significant difference was revealed between the frequencies of different translation strategies. The findings have some implications for translation students, translation teachers, and translators.

Problem-based Learning (PBL) as one of the newest teaching methods in the area of language teaching in second and foreign contexts, has been used by teachers in the last two decades in different institutes. In the current study, attempts were made to find out the effect of the two PBL subcategories, i.e. Hybrid Problem-based Learning (H-PBL) and Pure Problem-based Learning (PPBL) in comparison to a traditional lecture-based method, on Iranian EFL university learners’ speaking skill and their self-confidence, by implementing these two methods in the EFL classroom using eight teacher-made real-world problems. To this purpose, 56 undergraduate participants of Payam Noor university (PNU) in Abadan, Iran, were randomly selected, divided into a control group and two treatment HPBL and PPBL groups. The statistical analysis of the obtained results of the participants’ pretest-posttest scores, through one-way ANCOVA and Man-Whitney U test, revealed that the treatment groups outperformed the control group in speaking skill and self-confidence The findings of the study might bear implications for teachers and university curriculum designers to take more proper approaches towards the instructing university participants.

This study explored the impact of task complexity on task performance of Iranian lower-intermediate and advanced language learners. It also investigated how working memory was related to task performance and mediated the influence of complexity conditions on language performance. Task complexity was operationalized by designing differing tasks along the +/- reasoning and the +/- few elements dimensions. Eighty Iranian EFL learners (40 lower-intermediate and 40 advanced) carried out argumentative tasks which differed in complexity level. Working memory capacity was measured by applying the Persian translation of Wechsler's (1987) working memory test, and task performance was measured in terms of accuracy and fluency. The results revealed that for lower-intermediate learners, task complexity led to decrease in accuracy in the complex tasks, while fluency was boosted in simple task condition. For advanced learners, task complexity resulted in improved accuracy, while fluency decreased in complex condition. The results of multivariate analyses revealed that learners' language performance in the complex group significantly differed from that of the simple group on the combined dependent variables for both lower-intermediate and advanced learners. There was no significant correlation between working memory and any performance measures.

Research findings reported to date indicate that carefully planning speech while performing a task increases second language (L2) learners’ attention to formal aspects of their discourse. The evidence, however, is mostly based on performance analysis with respect to the linguistic measures of complexity, accuracy, and fluency. To enhance the psycholinguistic validity of current findings, the present research adopted a process-product approach to analyze L2 learners’ performance and attention shift as indicated by the occurrence of pauses in their speech. The study involved thirty Iranian learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) who were divided into two groups of fifteen. Whereas participants in the first group were given unlimited time to carefully plan while performing a narrative task, their counterparts in the other group completed the same task under time constraint. Following participants’ performance, both performance analysis and retrospective interviews were conducted to collect their protocol data. The results revealed that carefully planned speech is characterized by increased complexity and accuracy and reduced fluency stemming from attention being primarily focused on syntactic encoding, lexical choice, and phonology instead of conceptualizing the message. The outcomes are discussed in light of their theoretical and pedagogical implications.