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The current study investigated the relationship between teachers’ creativity, motivation and job satisfaction. In so doing, the role of demographic factors, i.e. gender, teaching experience and teaching context was also taken into account. To conduct the study, a total of 103 EFL teachers at both institute and school contexts were selected. The teachers were recruited on a voluntary basis, and the sample included teachers from a variety of backgrounds and experiences, coming from both genders and either of the teaching contexts. Three questionnaires (Teacher Creativity Questionnaire, Teacher Motivation Questionnaire, and Job Satisfaction Scale) were employed to gather the data, which were then analyzed through a number of analyses, including Spearman’s Rank Order Correlation, Multiple Regression Analysis, Mann Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis test. Findings revealed the existence of a significant correlation between teachers’ motivation and their job satisfaction. Furthermore, teachers’ motivation in comparison with their creativity had a greater predictive power with regard to job satisfaction. However, demographic factors did not have a significant role in job satisfaction. The findings can offer insightful implications for educational authorities, teachers, school leaderships and academicians to help promote job satisfaction in different instructional contexts.

Teachers usually teach according to how brains naturally learn. In this way, not only do their learners learn, retain, and recall quickly, but also the teaching becomes more joyful. Increased attention to the worthwhile role of the mind in learning/teaching in recent times Due to the lack of a valid scale for estimating teachers' awareness of brain-friendly teaching, the current study intended to construct and validate a 54-item brain-friendly teaching inventory by the implementation of the Rasch model. The test was administered to 200 Iranian EFL teachers from different educational contexts. The results revealed that all the 54 items of the scale had a good fit to the Rasch model. Infit and outfit values were within the acceptable range which indicates unidimensionality of the scale. Furthermore, it is asserted that the inventory enjoyed suitable reliability. This demonstrates that the Brain-Friendly Teaching Inventory is valid and can be applied as a scale for assessing the teachers' awareness of brain-friendly teaching.

T The textbook analysis is a vigorous research approach for evaluating the conformity between the content and the purpose of education. Accordingly, the relatively newly-published Iranian ELT textbooks for senior high school, known as the “Vision series” were analyzed for their prominent levels of learning objectives according to Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy. Activity sections of textbooks were codified according to the Taxonomy’s coding scheme, and the inter/intra-rater reliability which were measured and approved. Results revealed that the lower-order categories of cognitive domain are more frequently represented in Vision series of 1 and 2, and chi-square statistics indicate that Vision 3 is significantly different from the other two. The inclusion of higher-order categories in Vision 3 creates hope for increasing students’ proficiency and activating students’ need to develop higher-order thinking skills which are prerequisites to critical thinking and autonomous learning. Findings also maintain that the cognitive domain and metacognitive knowledge domain were the least perceived in the three textbooks which call for inclusion of more reflective activities and supplementing higher-order cognitive activities or complementary tasks in Visions 1 and 2.

This study aims at exploring the developmental process from a novice writer to an expert academic contributor from a discursive viewpoint. Using a cross-sectional research design, the researcher was in contact with five graduate students (from M.A. to PhD) via semi-structured interviews and online communication. Based on the ideas of intertextuality and community of practice, the results obtained through text analysis showed two categories of intertextual references relevant for constructing genre knowledge, namely text-oriented practices (based on the discursive authority of texts) and expert-oriented practices (based on the discursive authority of experts). Moreover, novice writers were highly dependent on both text-oriented and expert-oriented practices but they favoured the former in their writing practices. Furthermore, since professional identity is an important aspect of genre knowledge, two identities of outsider and contributor were identified regarding this discourse community and its audience. The study concludes with implications for improving the discursive practices of the local academic community for developing professional identity of its novices.

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.

The main purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between EFL teachers’ self-regulatory trait and effective teaching. Furthermore, the study aimed to find out the relationship between EFL teachers’ self-regulatory trait with some demographics such as gender and years of teaching experience. The participants were 85 EFL male and female teachers between the age ranges of 27 to 52. In addition, 200 male and female high school students between the age ranges of 15 to 17 participated in this study. Self-regulatory trait of the teachers was explored through Teacher Self-regulation Scale (TSR) questionnaire and the qualities of successful Iranian EFL teachers were explored through Qualities of Successful Iranian EFL Teachers’ Questionnaire (QSIET). Empirical analysis revealed that no significant relationship existed between teachers' gender and their self-regulatory trait. However, a significant relationship was found between teachers' self-regulatory trait and years of teaching. The implications of this study can be practical and useful for EFL teachers, who eagerly try to improve their teaching qualifications as well as teacher-training courses. The findings can be also helpful for language teaching designers to design proper syllabuses and materials for language teaching.

This study sought to evaluate the usefulness and desirability of the English textbooks for Iranian second grade students in senior high school, Vision 2. To this end, the extent to which the textbooks materials satisfy the prescribed curriculum was explored based on Littlejohn’s (2011) evaluative framework. Employing stratified random sampling, a total of 12 private and public senior high schools (six girl students and six boy students) were selected randomly among all the schools located in the six education districts in Isfahan. To select the teacher participants, a convenience sampling method was employed and those who agreed to be surveyed took part in the study. The 20 teachers who participated in this study have been teaching Vision 2 since the beginning of 2017 fall. The process of the content analysis deals with a deeply analytical content evaluation based on a framework containing different parts (objective description analysis, subjective analysis, subjective inference) done by a teacher committee. The results revealed that there is a need to adapt the materials to the target situation of use. Such adaptation needs to cover both design- and publication-oriented aspects of the materials. As a practical implication, the findings may urge the developers of the textbooks to launch a modification project relying upon the results of the systematic phase, therefore, it may enrich English teaching and learning material in Iranian high schools.

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.

Based on multifarious levels of social status, education, and occupation, people have certain values which construct and reconstruct their identity. In the Iranian culture, “Devaluation” means blemishing these values that make people ignore individuals’ val ues and virtues through certain linguistic expressions. Studying these expressions, one can achieve its dominant culture in Iranian society. Therefore, the current research is an attempt to study Devaluation Cultuling (culture+language) in light of the conceptual model of cultuling analysis. By integrating the components of Hymes’s (1967) SPEAKING model, emotioncy model and cultural models, the conceptual model of cultuling analysis is the most comprehensive model for studying cultulings of the Persian language. Studying 712 linguistic structures and expressions containing devaluation cultuling and interviewing 140 individuals, the authors found that devaluation cultuling is commonly used in Iranian culture with high frequency, and individuals have negative feelings toward this cultuling. Iranians employ devaluation cultuling for various purposes such as destructing and belittling others’ achievements, insulting, questioning the culture of community members, flattering and hiding their weaknesses. Findings demonstrated that this cultuling could represent cultural models of indirectness, high context, low trust, and holistic thinking of Iranians. Informing people about devaluation cultuling enables us to modify and change this defective cultural gene.

This study aimed to investigate the effect of oral and written contextualization of collocation teaching on the learning and long-term retention of semantically semitransparent collocations by Iranian EFL learners. To this end, 65 students were selected from a cohort of students who were studying English at an English language institute in Sanandaj, Iran. They were randomly divided into two groups based on whether they would receive oral and written contextualization. Then, each group was further subdivided into two groups based on whether they would receive instruction on the concept of semantic transparency, yielding two experimental groups each including 16 learners as the Written Practice Group plus and minus instruction on the concept of semantic transparency, two experimental groups as the Oral Practice Group plus and minus instruction on the concept of semantic transparency, including 16 and 17 learners, respectively. Their initial general English proficiency was measured through the Preliminary English Test (PET), and they were pretested on semitransparent collocations through a researcher-made collocation test. Finally, two equivalent researcher-made collocation tests were used to measure the participants’ learning and retention on the immediate and delayed posttests. The results of two-way ANOVAs revealed that the oral group outperformed the written group on the immediate and delayed posttests and the plus transparency instruction groups in each modality (oral and written) group outperformed the minus transparency instruction groups. The interpretations of the findings and their pedagogical implications have been discussed.

This study attempted to investigate the effect of using focused vs. unfocused metalinguistic feedback on Iranian EFL learners’ use of dependent clauses in writing. On the basis of an Oxford Quick Placement Test, 60 learners out of 90 intermediate female EFL learners with the age range of 17 to 27 from Melal language institute in Karaj were chosen to participate in the study. They were assigned to two experimental groups. The homogeneity of the two groups in terms of writing ability was determined by comparing their means in a writing pretest. The treatment was done through using focused feedback for the first experimental group and unfocused feedback in the second experimental group during 14 session. At the end of the treatment, a writing test was conducted as the posttest. The results of Paired Samples t-test showed that the participants in both experimental groups performed better in writing posttest. However, the results of one-way ANCOVA showed that there was no significant difference between the two groups’ means on the posttest scores of achievements in accurate use of dependent clauses between two groups. The results were discussed in relation to some implications and recommendations for further research.

Driven by the concept of mediation, this study is set out to use sociocultrual theory as the theoretical framework to explore the mediation role of textbooks, specifically, the series Northstar in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) university classes in Vietnam. Learning journals with guided questions are employed to collect data on how different aspects of English textbooks assist students’ learning in the classroom. Besides, transcripts of recorded classroom obervations are analysed to interpret how the textbooks formulate and faciliate students’ ideas related to the given tasks and generate their interaction in both the target language and the mother tongue. It is found from the students’ journals that the textbooks assist them in understanding the lesson contents and the images help them with visualizing the lessons. Besides, the students make use of the tasks/activities when practising language skills, especially the listening skill. The transcripts reveal the process in which students refer to their previous knowledge related to the topics/tasks provided in the textbooks to interact with one other. More speficially, the tasks and the ideas of other group members mediate more thoughts of the students, leading to collective knowledge construction and task completion. From the findings, recommendations for the use of textbooks in the framework of sociocultrual theory are put forward.