درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Language assessment literacy has been addressed in a wealth of research. However, many studies have attempted to measure teachers’ assessment literacy, there is still a gap that prompted us to investigate the area from the EFL teachers' assessment literacy needs perspective. To accomplish the purpose, in line with the changes in classroom assessment over the past decades, this study was an attempt to develop and validate an inventory on Teachers Assessment Literacy Needs (TALNs). As the first stage, a set of items was generated through an extensive review of the relevant studies. In the quantitative phase, the developed inventory was administered to 159 English as a foreign language teachers selected through convenience sampling. An inventory construction and validation framework consisting of exploratory analyses was used to examine the construct validity of the proposed inventory. The results indicated that the inventory can be best explained by four components which are knowledge of language assessment literacy, consequences of language assessment literacy, processes of language assessment literacy and teachers’ expectations of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programs. The TALNs inventory developed in this study aimed to help practitioners and researchers to investigate teachers’ needs in assessment literacy. Fulcher’s (2012) assessment literacy framework was drawn on as the analytic model guiding the study.

Therapeutic discourse is a special type of organizational discourse which is used by psychotherapists when treating their patients. The present study uses the conversation analysis approach to find the principles of turn taking in the therapeutic situation. This study specifically examines the therapeutic discourse of treatment sessions for patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) based on the Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) approach. The method used in this research is qualitative. The corpus used in this study included 2520 minutes of conversation in psychotherapy sessions. The participants in this study were 16 people of both sexes. ATLAS ti. computer software has been used to construct and present the verbal pattern. The results of this study show that most of turn taking were related to female clients and psychotherapists. This result is related to the relationship between clients and psychotherapists, women's verbal habits, excessive curiosity, and their challenging personality. The presence of overlap in the speech of female psychotherapists and clients and pause in other conversations have been the most widely used signs of turn taking in this type of conversation. The present study has faced some limitations. One of the most important limitations of this research was the prevalence of Covid 19 virus. Also, obtaining the consent of some psychologists and clients to record their videos and voices in psychotherapy sessions has been another limitation of this research. Given the importance of communication and linguistic studies in psychotherapy, it is suggested that future research be conducted on the following topics: “Comparison of GAD Patients’ Speech Pattern with Speech Pattern of Other Anxiety Disorders” and “The effect of direct and indirect expression on anxiety in patients with anxiety disorders”.

Learning-oriented assessment (LOA) seeks to support instruction by providing information about students ’ current learning conditions and their ultimate performance. This study scrutinizes the application of LOA in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing classes within Iranian language institutes. In addition, the current study examined the participants’ writing traits using the researchers-developed writing traits questionnaire during the implementation of LOA. Sixty upper-intermediate students (male & female) in two intact classes at a language institute in Tabriz, Iran, were taken as the participants. One of these classes was randomly picked as the control and the other one as the experimental group. During the treatment, learners of the experimental group carried out the relevant writing tasks based on the principles of LOA. On the other hand, the control group adopted the teacher-centered approach. 120 IELTS writing task 2 samples were collected and scored by using a scoring rubric (Wang & Liao, 2008) before and after the LOA treatment. To realize the differences in the mean scores of students in the control group and the experimental group, an independent sample t-test was used. The findings showed that the students of the experimental group benefited vastly from multiple drafting, self, and peer-evaluation, sharing learning goals with teachers and each other, and using feedforward techniques instead of feedback. The results might provide both theory and pedagogy implications for syllabus designers and language teachers with valuable guidelines on improving writing assessment in IELTS writing courses.

This mixed-methods study sought to examine any significant impact of Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers' collaboration in rating speaking tests and brainstorming theoretical concepts of language assessment (LA) on their literacy, perceptions, and practices of speaking assessment. Forty-one Iranian EFL teachers selected through purposeful sampling were asked to fill out a questionnaire, including 20 components of LA, so as to measure their knowledge and perceptions of LA components. Then, 21 of the teachers volunteered to score the video-projected speaking performance of 12 international students in the Key English Test (KET) using KET speaking rating scales. Having received six in-service speaking assessment training sessions based on their collaboration, the 21 participating teachers completed the same questionnaire and scored the same videos again. An ANCOVA was used to compare the quantitative data from the questionnaire and teachers’ scoring of KET speaking tests before and after the treatment and also to investigate any significant differences between the novice and experienced Iranian EFL teachers in terms of their knowledge and perception of LA, and the assessment of KET speaking tests. Moreover, the 21 volunteered teachers were interviewed to further discover their perceptions about the in-service speaking assessment training course they attended. The findings revealed that the collaboration of the Iranian EFL teachers in rating speaking tests and brainstorming theoretical concepts of LA significantly impacted their knowledge, perceptions, and practices of LA. However, the effects were unequal and different for novice and experienced EFL teachers.

Since language is an integral part of a culture, inspecting linguistic expressions can unveil the hidden cultural memes of a society, conceptualized as cultuling (culture in language) analysis. The present study examined the cultuling of ‘making accreditation with English’ used by Persian native speakers from the upper, middle, and lower social classes. To this end, 623 pieces of natural utterances, embracing this cultuling, were extracted from people's conversations in public and private places and from Iranian movies. Then, 279 utterances were analyzed from linguistic, cultural, and psychological perspectives based on the cultuling analysis (CLA) model. Additionally, more data were acquired through semi-structured interviews with 198 participants aged 19 to 54. The results of the study revealed that Iranians use English for various purposes in their conversations, including accreditation, power, education, superior identity, and higher social class in public/ private and formal/ informal contexts. Moreover, the analysis of Iranians’ different reactions to hearing English words in conversations manifested their hidden cultural patterns, including indirectness, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, high context, collectivism, low trust, and overstating

Error analysis is considered as an invaluable pedagogical tool in teaching English as a foreign/second language (EFL/ESL). Despite abundant research, there are still lacunae in studies investigating the written grammatical errors among monolingual and bilingual male and female Persian and Turkmen EFL learners. To fill the gap, 158 Persian and Turkmen EFL learners from Golestan Province wrote two descriptive scripts that were examined for their most recurrent written grammatical errors. The errors were then analyzed and compared based on the framework of the study. Statistical analyses indicated significant relationships between Persian and Turkmens’ written grammatical errors and their gender. The frequency of monolingual Persians’ errors was significantly lower than that of bilingual Turkmens. These findings might interest EFL teachers, syllabus designers, and materials developers. Moreover, they could be a prerequisite to corrective feedback research while opening doors to further pertinent studies.

This qualitative study aims to investigate the sources of burnout from Iranian EFL teachers’ perspectives. To this end, thirty-four Iranian male and female EFL teachers participated in the semi-structured interview to comment on the burnout sources and then rank them in terms of priority. Also, one hundred teachers responded to an online open-ended questionnaire. The coding scheme revealed two external and internal nodes, five themes, and fifteen subthemes. Under the external node lay financial, organizational, and teacher training problems. The internal node involved teachers’ psycho-affective traits and personal life affairs. The results showed that external sources outweighed the internal ones. Among the external sources, teachers’ low pay, the supervisor’s maltreatment, and workload, and among the internal ones, teachers’ low problem-solving abilities, low motivation and self-efficacy held high ranks. No one attributed burnout to teachers’ gender and age, and almost all participants unanimously criticized the educational administration system of Iran for not providing teachers with the necessary means of burnout recognition and prevention. The study has implications for educational policymakers and practitioners.