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Conducting qualitative research in applied linguistics seems to have some challenges. Hence, this study aimed to investigate the challenges of applied linguists across different research abilities to conduct qualitative studies. To that end, the biographical narratives, authored by 13 applied linguists, were collected. Then, the narratives were analyzed through qualitative data analysis principles, including organizing and familiarizing, coding and reducing, and interpreting and presenting (Ary et al., 2014). The findings showed that applied linguists face four challenges: methodological issues, technical issues, ethical issues, and qualitative research dissemination while doing qualitative research. The findings also indicated similarities and differences among applied linguists' challenges across different research abilities. It can be concluded that teaching qualitative research is more than mere lecturing about qualitative concepts. Thus, there should be practice-based instruction on qualitative research for applied linguistics students. Moreover, there should be a community for addressing pedagogical dialogs among applied linguists about doing qualitative research.

To explore the effectiveness of flipped instruction in influencing second language learning outcomes, the current research investigated the contribution of flipped classrooms of an English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) writing course to Iranian learners’ writing development and writing motivation. In so doing, two intact classes were chosen as the participants (N=43) of this research and they were randomly assigned to a Control Group (N = 18) and an Experimental Group (N = 25). During one semester, the Control Group underwent the traditional writing instruction, while the Experimental Group received a flipped writing instruction. Second Language Writing Motivation Scale (SLWMS) and two timed writing tasks were given to gather the required data. The results demonstrated that the flipped method of teaching was substantially effective in improving the L2 writing performance of the experimental group ( F = 22.20, p = 0.000, partial eta squared = 0.35) . Also, the results indicated that the flipped instruction had a statistically significant effect on learners’ writing motivation ( F = 51.67, p = 0.000, partial eta squared = 0.56) . The findings have remarkable implications for L2 writing methodology.  

The quality of students’ relationships with their peers plays an important role in developing their academic achievement. The present study aimed at constructing an accurate, reliable, and valid instrument that could assess the EFL students’ perceptions of peer support. The instrument includes different subscales, namely Informational Support, Emotional Support, Instrumental Support, Feedback, and Companionship Support. The Peer Support Questionnaire was administered to 212 Iranian undergraduate EFL students studying at two public universities in Iran. An exploratory and a confirmatory factor analysis were conducted, and the overall factor loading estimates indicated a quite satisfactory level of convergent validity for the developed Questionnaire. Both the degree of factor loadings and the construct validity test supported the convergent validity of peer support factors and their related items. The findings demonstrated that PSQ could be a valid and reliable instrument for measuring the concept of peer support in both academic and educational settings.

The United States with its presidents stepping into power from either the Democratic or Republican parties influences global affairs in one way or another. These two main political parties have long been struggling for power and the significance of tapping into the ideological inclinations of the two parties underscores scholars’ accountability toward raising the critical language awareness of the public which could be an initial step toward a change for the better. The presidential inaugural speeches, due to their programmatic and strategic nature, are of significance to researchers. This study employed van Dijk’s (2006b) socio-cognitive framework where he defined two levels of analyses for a political discourse including the micro-level and macro-level text analyses. The former included 25 discursive devices such as polarization, generalization, hyperbole, etc. The latter drew on the dichotomy of ‘positive self-representation’ and ‘negative other-representation’. In the present study, the linguistic features in 16 inaugural speeches delivered by American Democratic and Republican presidents from 1961 to 2017 were examined at both levels. The overall data analysis revealed that Democrats employed ‘norm expression’ and ‘presupposition’ significantly more than Republicans, while Republicans made more use of ‘categorization’, ‘lexicalization’, and ‘populism’. The macro-level comparison of the two parties indicated that both Democrats and Republicans resorted to using ‘positive self-representation’ significantly more than ‘negative other-representation’ while the deployment of ‘negative other-representation’ by Republicans was significantly more than that by Democrats. The findings of this study have some implications for English for political purposes, political studies, as well as attempts in discourse studies.

Despite growing interest in the studies on Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), its operation in the forms of individualized and group-wide has been controversial. To cast some empirical light on the issue, this study was designed to quantitatively and comparatively study the applicability of the two scenarios of ZPD-based instructions to the writing complexity of Iranian EFL learners in terms of learners' types (low vs. high scorers). To this end, 118 EFL learners identified as homogeneous based on the TOEFL ITP test were randomly assigned into two equal experimental groups (individualized ZPD- and group-wide ZPD-based groups) which respectively received compatible instructions utilizing conference writing (as an individual scaffolding technique) and low- and high-structured writing templates (as a whole-class scaffolding technique). The treatments were allocated to the groups in a random manner within homogeneous blocks. Prior to and after the treatments, three tests (two writing tests and one ZPD test) were administered to measure both groups’ writing complexity and their ZPD levels. A ZPD test was also administered in the mid of treatments. The non-parametric analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) revealed that the individualized-ZPD-based instruction is constructive to the writing complexity of the low scorers, while the group-wide ZPD-based instruction shows not much constructive to the writing complexity of the high scorers. The findings pointed to the use of ZPD-based instructions in TEFL writing in meaningful contexts and thereby showing impacts made on the writing complexity of learners. The study, indeed, yields support to the feasibility of group-wide ZPD measurement along with an individualized ZPD approach.

Dans la présente recherche, notre objectif est de savoir comment l’emploi de la langue maternelle en cours de FLE, peut simplifier et influencer l’apprentissage du français chez les apprenants iraniens, dans les universités et dans les instituts de langue. Selon les observations qui ont été faites dans les instituts de langues étrangères, l’utilisation de la langue maternelle dans l’enseignement du français, est considérée comme sévèrement nuisible et à bannir, tandis que les professeurs d’universités se montrent en général plus tolérants. La nouveauté de cette étude consiste à étudier les besoins pédagogiques des apprenants iraniens du FLE, en ce qui concerne l’emploi de la langue maternelle en classe de langue. À cet égard, nous avons élaboré un questionnaire contenant quinze questions, en tenant compte des éléments différents comme le sexe, la situation maritale, l’âge et le niveau d’études des apprenants, qui a été soumis à 61 étudiants en français. Après avoir analysé les réponses, à partir du test de Kolmogorov-Smirnov et du test T, l’importance de la langue maternelle en classe de FLE, a été validée, autrement dit, l’emploi de la langue maternelle en classe de FLE, a été reconnu comme un élément accélérateur et simplifiant pour les apprenants iraniens..

The present study was primarily aimed at investigating how Processing instruction would affect the Iranian EFL learners’ grammatical knowledge and how the effectiveness of this method would be modulated by the learners’ individual differences in grammatical sensitivity. To this end, three senior intact high school classes were selected and randomly assigned to two experimental and one control group. Each of the experimental groups was treated with one operationalization of Processing instruction, namely, full PI (n=24), and Structured input (n=24) while the control group (n=20) received traditional output-based instruction (TI) on the English passive structure over three weekly sessions. The results illustrated that Processing instruction was more effective than TI since it improved learners’ both interpretation and production while TI only could improve learners’ production. Additionally, the results demonstrated that the positive impact of Processing instruction was not affected by the learners’ differences in grammatical sensitivity. All in all, this suggests that as long as a grammatical structure is affected by an underlying processing problem, Processing instruction is possibly a more effective pedagogical option compared to traditional output-based instruction. Furthermore, Processing instruction seems to work for all learners irrespective of their differences in terms of grammatical sensitivity.

Mixed in method, the present study investigated whether there was any significant difference between students’and teachers’perceptions of Iranian medical English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students’ language needs. In so doing, 220 EAP students of medicine, 30 subject-matter teachers of EAP, and 20 teachers of English for General Purposes (EGP) teaching medical EAP completed a Likert-scale questionnaire. Fifty of the students and 20 of the teachers also attended a semi-structured interview. The results of both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics indicated that, overall, there was a significant mismatch between the students’and the teachers’perceptions of medical EAP students’ needs. However, both teachers and students perceived reading comprehension as the most important language skill. Moreover, the students, in general, were found not to be satisfied with the EAP program presented to them. The results might prove fruitful for curriculum designers, materials developers, and teachers in (medical) EAP contexts to hear students’voices and to incorporate them in their programs, syllabi, and teaching.

This study focused on the pedagogical application of priming in an EFL context. Structural priming refers to the speakers’ tendency to produce the structure they encountered in recent discourse in subsequent production compared to an alternative form. Given the limited number of studies in the literature with a focus on the application of priming in L2 teaching and the problems that L2 learners face during speech production, the present study aimed at investigating whether the implication of priming leads to a more frequent oral and written production of the relative clause (RC) structure compared to adjectival modification of nouns (AN) in long- and short-terms as an instance of implicit learning. Participants consisted of 60 EFL female L2 learners, aged between 18-25 years old. Two experimental and 1 control groups were defined and 20 participants were allocated to each group. By applying a pretest, a treatment, an immediate posttest, a delayed posttest design, a picture description task, and a grammaticality judgment test (GJT), the data were gathered. Results of the descriptive and inferential analyses revealed that the implication of priming led to an improvement in the rate of the RC construction when the participants were involved in the written production of the L2, as compared to oral modality. Results are discussed based on structural complexity and procedures involved in L2 production. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are considered, too.

The present study aimed to review the instruction of the L2 speech acts in English pragmatics in the Iranian context during the last two decades from 2000 to 2020. To this end, upon the completion of the study search, the retrieved articles were selected and analyzed based on the research domain.  The results of our synthesis from 54 studies carried out on the instruction of the speech act not only reveal that pragmatics is amenable to instruction but also unfold that the most frequently instructed speech act is the speech act of request which has been conducted in 29 studies, while the least instructed speech act is  invitation, used in only one study. Moreover, analyzing the data collection methods documented that Multiple-choice Discourse Completion Test (MDCT) is the most predominant method utilized in 36 papers during the last decades in English pragmatic instruction. With respect to the treatment types, it is illuminated that the most recurrent treatment type is explicit, implicit vs. control, followed by explicit vs. implicit, although other treatment types have been embarked on. As a final point, it is worth noting that 53 of the conducted studies utilized the quantitative method in their data analyses, whereas only one study implemented the qualitative method. The paper concludes with some avenues for further research.

This study investigated the comparative effects of audio-visually prompted collaborative dialogue on the listening comprehension development of symmetrical, asymmetrical, and asymmetrical teacher-fronted EFL learner groups. Besides, it explored the attitude of the participants of the groups concerning the effectiveness of collaborative dialogue for their listening comprehension improvement. The participants of the study were 120 Iranian female EFL learners who were conveniently chosen from several English language institutes and put into three experimental and one control groups, each with 30 learners. In the first experimental group, coequal learners engaged in collaborative dialogue. In the second experimental group, the expert peer(s) and less knowledgeable peers applied collaborative dialogue, and in the third experimental group, in addition to the peers, the teacher was involved in collaborative dialogue with the group members. As for the control group, the collaborative dialogue was abandoned and the participants worked individually. Quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed that collaborative dialogue in asymmetrical teacher-fronted, asymmetrical peer and symmetrical peer groups were respectively the most effective procedures for listening comprehension development of the EFL learners. Also, it was found that the participants of the asymmetrical teacher fronted group had a more positive attitude towards the efficacy of audio-visually prompted collaborative dialogue compared with asymmetrical and symmetrical peer groups. The findings underscore the cognitive and affective efficiency of a more knowledgeable source, either a teacher or a peer, in asymmetrical dyadic interactions for the less knowledgeable partners' ZPD sensitive development.