درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Considering the paucity of self-studies exploring English as Foreign Language (EFL) teachers' journeys into becoming a creative teacher, in this qualitative action research, a mainstream Iranian teacher-researcher narrates the changes and challenges she observed while planning her creative classroom practices, implementing, and reflecting on them. While she experienced changes like going beyond the textbook, becoming a caring observer, and becoming a moment catcher, she faced constraining challenges like overcoming inner fears, showing (non)-compliance with institutional rules, and coping with situations when things did not turn out as expected. Such an insider view of teacher creativity reiterates that creativity needs to be considered not just as a set of techniques and procedures to be mastered but as an ongoing passion for renovation which should be cultivated over time despite existing constraints.

The present study aimed to examine and validate a rubric for translation quality assessment using Rasch analysis. To this end, the researchers interviewed 20 expert translation instructors to identify the factors they consider important for assessing the quality of students’ translation. Based on the specific commonalities found throughout the interviews, a 23-item assessment rubric was constructed on a four-point Likert scale. More specifically, this study used the Rasch rating scale model for polytomous data to investigate the psychometric properties of the rating scale in terms of dimensionality, reliability, use of response category, and sample appropriateness. Then, a translation exam was administered to 60 translation students at the BA level in Iranian universities. Following this, the rubric was employed to assess the quality of students’ translation. The results revealed that the Rasch model fits the data well. Thus, the findings of the study indicated that the rubric is potentially valid and useful, and can be used as a measure of translation quality assessment in the Iranian context.

Among the latest efficient approaches in language teaching, Task-based Language Teaching has turned up to be the main approach in a way that it is currently recognized as the leading teaching approach in language instruction (Ji & Pham, 2017). Using the proper tasks based on the proficiency level of the learners can facilitate the process of language learning. The present study aimed at investigating the effect of open and closed tasks on improving Iranian EFL learners’ oral performance at intermediate and advanced levels. This study is a quasi-experimental research with pretest and posttest design. The participants of the study included 55 female EFL learners at Jahadeh Daneshgahi language institute in Tabriz city, who were selected through cluster random sampling method. The data were collected through 10 open tasks and 10 closed tasks along with an oral pretest and an oral posttest checklist that examined grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, breakdown-response, interaction, and speech flow of learners’ oral performance. The tasks were selected from the Four Corner series (Richards & Bohlke, 2012). The data were analyzed by a two-way MANCOVA test and ANCOVA. The obtained results indicated that open and closed tasks can improve EFL learners’ oral performance and there is no significant difference between open and closed tasks in developing learners’ oral performance in both levels. Besides, at the advanced level, the amount of oral performance development is greater than the intermediate level. The outcomes of this study can be useful for EFL teachers and learners regarding using the optimal kind of tasks in improving oral performance.

The current study investigated the distribution of animal terms in the Persian book of Marzbannameh and their metaphoric repetition in the users’ opinions, thoughts, and worthiness. By investigating the Persian book of Marzbannameh as one of the famous literary books which is rich of animal conceptual metaphors, a corpus of 376 animal terms in content has been chosen and analyzed. Four raters who were the Persian Literature teachers analyzed accurately the pertinent book for evaluating the available animal metaphors. And, two other raters who were the Persian Literature professors were asked to study the decisions and present the final propositions if they had different ideas about a concept. Moreover, as a supporting research method, focus groups were engaged by the Persian Literature teachers and professors to give their ideas and thoughts about the positive and negative qualities of the contained animals in the selected book. The results offered that animals are not distributed alike in this book, are used with diverse conceptualizations and stood for both positive and negative connotations. Also, it was found that the domestic animals generally have positive characteristics; however, some of them violate this rule, connoting just negative characteristics. After all, the wild animals, except for hawk, generally have negative characteristics.

The current study aimed to explore the nature of discursive strategies academics would use to share their specialist knowledge to both specialists and non-specialists. To this end, a corpus of 40 academic research articles and 40 popular science articles were randomly selected from the archive of four English international peer-reviewed journals and four English popular magazines and newspapers in the field of Nutrition. Appraisal Theory (Martin & White, 2005), a discourse framework to examine evaluative and/or persuasive language, was used to analyze the data. The results revealed significant areas of similarity and difference in terms of certain discursive elements leading to discernible degrees of persuasion. The findings imply that in order to develop a scientifically literate society, scientists should appeal to diverse discourse resources to provide the public with their findings in an informative and entertaining way. The results of the study carry some pedagogical implications for EAP courses held in EFL settings since being able to both comprehend and produce scientific texts of different professional levels at international scale seems to be a requirement for the future scientists.

Although Task-Based Instruction (TBI) has received large attention on the part of English practitioners throughout the world, it seems that there is yet a huge gap between the Iranian EFL teachers’ perceptions and practices in implementing it in real classes. Hence, this study set out to unearth the possible sources of difficulties in using TBI in EFL classes. To meet the goals, a total of 120 male and female EFL teachers were selected through stratified random sampling from Iran language institute (ILI) branches in Tehran, Iran. After critically reviewing the literature and using a flow chart technique, a questionnaire including 20 items was developed, piloted, and distributed among the participants. Then, the collected data were analyzed through the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). Results indicated that three main factors, namely lack of appropriate assessment methods , cultural difference , and efficacy of the method received the utmost significance from the EFL teachers’ perspectives that have led to not using TBI. In the end, the implications of the findings were discussed for different stakeholders.

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.

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.