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This study aimed to investigate collaborative reading in reading sessions among young Iranian EFL learners. It actually was an attempt to examine the process and components of collaborative reading which are expected to improve young learners’ reading ability in the English language. To this purpose, a group of second year Iranian EFL young learners at a primary school in Tehran together with their teachers participated in the study. The young learners were around eight years old. The duration of the study was 12 weeks. Since the study was qualitative in nature, teachers’ reflective journals, a number of observations and face-to-face interviews with teachers were used as instruments to collect the needed data. The analysis of the qualitatively-elicited data presented a in so far as reading processes and reading comprehension enhancement through collaborative deeper understanding of the importance of the process and components of collaborative reading. In fact, the findings revealed that collaborative reading promote young EFL learners’ reading performance. Thus, the study has practical implications for both teachers and young EFL learners reading in terms of reading performance enhancement.

Simultaneous with the emergence of numerous new concerns and techniques in carrying out research in English language teaching (ELT) contexts, conducting ELT research has turned into a multi-dimensional process, and ELT researchers seem to require advanced research skills in order to address different pedagogical issues. Focusing on quantitative research, the present study was undertaken to develop and validate a quantitative research literacy (QRL) instrument for English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher training context. To this objective, a four-component model of QRL, encompassing developing research topic knowledge, research design knowledge, procedural knowledge, and data analysis knowledge was developed based on experts’ opinion and an extensive review of the related literature. Testing of the tentative model through exploratory and confirmatory data analyses on a sample of 1180 EFL teachers across three education levels indicated that a 4-factor model of QRL with 9 sub-factors and 50 items could best explain QRL.

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.

Using evaluative language has been considered as the significant predictor of academic writing success in second and foreign language research. Such an importance paved the way for the current study to investigate the use of the APPRAISAL tool, namely ATTITUDE resources, in the research articles (RAs) written by native (N) and non-native (NN) writers, focusing on the discussion sections. A qualitative corpus selection resulted in choosing 30 RAs written by American writers and 30 authored by Iranian writers. Two coding schemes were used: one for discussion boundaries based on Kanoksilapatham’s (2005) discussion move structure, and the modified version of APPRAISAL theory (Xu, 2017) for identifying attitudinal resources. The corpus analysis revealed that academic writers preferred to use a great number of inscribed ATTITUDE resources, that is, APPRECIATION tools compared to JUDGMENT. There was also a significant difference between N and NN sub-corpora in using attitudinal resources, highlighting that the language of N RAs contained more authorial stance of ATTITUDE compared to NN sub-corpus. However, the use of idioms as evoked ATTITUDE was found to be frequently applied by NN authors. The findings of the study contributed to the significance of using evaluative language in academic writing through which the writers can make a dialogic interaction with readers and enhance their critical stance by involving them in the argument.

Although Diagnostic Classification Models (DCMs) were introduced to education system decades ago, it seems that these models were not employed for the original aims upon which they had been designed. Using DCMs has been mostly common in analyzing large-scale non-diagnostic tests and these models have been rarely used in developing Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment (CDA) from scratch. Despite the prevalence of retrofitting CDA studies, true applications of CDA are believed to be rare since, firstly, a coherent framework to conduct such studies had not been available and, secondly, researchers were not able to analyze various DCMs according to the same model fit indices and criteria. This paper presents a summary of different types of DCMs and reviews true and retrofitting CDA studies. Having examined the limitations of previous CDA studies, the present study argues for the implication and application of Ravand and Baghaei’s (2019) framework to conduct true CDA studies. This framework is of importance since not only does it fit into prominent frameworks in education assessment such as Cognitive Design System and Assessment Triangle, but also it can provide test-developers with practical steps in conducting valid cognitive diagnostic tests.

The present study is part of a Ph.D. program that explores the possible effect of critical thinking-oriented dynamic assessment (CT-DA) on learners' learning potential in reading comprehension skills. 21 Iranian language learners who were homogenized in terms of their language proficiency, reading comprehension, and critical thinking abilities participated in this study. Learners were divided into three groups of CT-DA, dynamic assessment (DA), and Control group. While learners in CT-DA received mediation loaded with critical thinking techniques, learners in DA group received dynamic assessment mediation, and learners in the Control group did not receive any mediation. The analysis of the results revealed that DA and CT-DA significantly improve learners' reading potential scores. Moreover, significant differences between the Learning Potential Score (LPS) of DA and CT-DA groups were found, denoting the better performance of participants who received a critical thinking-oriented dynamic assessment. Finally, the qualitative analyses led to the detection of eleven mediational strategies which nurtured the development of the reading comprehension ability of L2 learners during CT-DA. The article concludes with suggestions for further research on dynamic assessment and critical thinking in second/foreign language development.

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.

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.   

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.

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.