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The present study aimed to investigate the interaction among grade dropping and reflective thinking abilities of the participants and to also check if action research enhances learners’ reflective thinking. A cyclic action research was run for 8 sessions. Kember et al.’s (2010) reflective thinking questionnaire and three in-term quizzes were administered. Students also made questions based on their course book passages and develop reflective thinking journals. Although the results suggested no linear relation between grade dropping and reflective thinking, students strategically decided to drop their lowest score and receive a replacement exam. Furthermore, analyses of students’ questions based on Bloom’s (1956) Taxonomy and their reflections revealed that learners’ reflective thinking level was enhanced. Such results might be conducive to highlighting students’ role in assessment policies.

Being expert in establishing cohesion and coherence in writing is not an easy task. The EFL learners are to pass through very long, uneven paths such as précis exercise to achieve this skill. The present study was launched to explore the effect of précis writing on the creation of a compact text. To this end, a true-experimental method of research with the pretest-posttest control design was employed. Via double-stage sampling, 40 female students were selected at Fatemeh-al-Zahra High School in Kabutarahang, Hamedan, Iran. The control group was taught some grammatical structures such as active and passive voices, reduced adjective clauses, and different tenses in English during twelve sessions; while the experimental group received a lesson plan consisting of twelve sessions of précis writing. To analyze the data collected via pretest and posttest, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was run. The findings of the study indicated that the participants in the experimental group performed better in producing cohesive and qualified texts than those in the control group. The conclusion drawn was that teaching précis, as a basic skill, can improve the writing ability and provide the students with more opportunities to utilize the cohesive devices and consequently produce more cohesive pieces of text.

The profession of second language teaching has experienced fundamental fluctuations in both theory and practice. With its own proponents and opponents, the postmethod was considered as the practical and reasonable solution to the limitations of the confining concept of the method. The purpose of this qualitative study was to elicit nonnative EFL teachers’ viewpoints and perceptions regarding postmethod pedagogy. In fact, the researchers were interested to know about nonnative EFL teachers’ perceptions of postmethod condition regarding their own context and needs. Selected based on purposive sampling procedure, the participants of this study were 10 nonnative EFL teachers categorized into three groups based on their teaching experience. The participants took part in semi-structured interviews and they were asked a series of questions to elicit their perceptions and interpretations of postmethod. The results of the study revealed some rays of hope in some cases, though not promising in a full manner. In other words, although nonnative EFL teachers could not mention the postmethod principles explicitly, they showed a logical understanding of postmethod pedagogy tenets and its applications in their teaching practices and procedures. The results of this study can help teacher educators design more effective teacher education courses and in-service programs to enhance nonnative EFL teachers’ viewpoints and perceptions regarding postmethod pedagogy and its implications in language teaching and learning processes.

The present study aimed to examine the effect of three vocabulary techniques (dictionary use, etymological analysis, and glossing) on the Iranian ESP learners' vocabulary production. Forty-five university students majoring in architecture at Azad University, Anzali branch,  participated in this study. They were divided into three groups, and each group was randomly assigned to one kind of treatment condition (dictionary use group, etymology group, and glossing group). The Michigan proficiency test was used to ensure the homogeneity of the  ESP learners. The three experimental groups received instruction for three weeks. ESP learners took a vocabulary production test (VPT). A one-way between groups ANOVA was conducted to analyse the data. The results showed that dictionary use improved ESP learners' vocabulary production, and dictioary use group outperformed the other two groups. The study concludes that dictionary use faciliates vocabulary production.

The present study examines the role of gender in reading comprehension of short stories taught through awareness-raising among Iranian EFL learners. In so doing, twelve male and eighteen female learners with lower intermediate English proficiency were selected as the research sample. Next, they were randomly divided into two fifteen-member groups (i.e., a control group and an experimental group). The control group followed the conventional methods and the experimental group was taught the same short stories using awareness-raising activities. Consequently, an independent sample t-test was run. The obtained results indicate the experimental group demonstrates a better performance than the control one. According to the means, the female learners in both groups outperformed the male ones. 

This study investigated learning style preferences among professional translators. The purposes of the study were to (a) find the prevailing learning style among the Iranian professional translators; (b) reveal any significant difference in the translators’ learning style preferences in terms of gender; and (c) find any significant difference between individual learning style and translation competence of the male and female translators. To this end, 110 professional translators from 35 translation centers in three Southern Provinces of Iran (Fars, Hormozgan, and Bushehr) were selected through non-probability sampling. The data pertaining to learning style were collected through an adaptation of Honey and Mumford’s learning style questionnaire, and translation competence was examined through a text that the participants translated. Findings revealed that the translators’ predominant learning style was Reflector, followed by Pragmatist, Activist, and Theorist, although those preferring the Theorist style showed better performance. Furthermore, the findings did not show any significant difference between translators’ gender and learning style preferences. Finally, results of one-way ANOVA revealed that there was a statistically significant difference across the groups in terms of learning style preferences and translators’ translation competence. Some pedagogical implications were also discussed.

Many studies have examined the effect of different approaches to teaching grammar including explicit and implicit instruction. However, research in this area is limited in a number of respects. One such limitation pertains to the issue of construct validity of the measures, i.e. the knowledge developed through implicit instruction has been measured through instruments which favor the recipients of explicit instruction. The present study expands on the previous studies by exploring the effectiveness of explicit and implicit instructions through administering a timed GJT and an untimed GJT. Data were collected from three different groups: (a) the explicit group was presented with rules of verb complementation, (b) the implicit group received visually enhanced texts, and (c) the control group received no instruction of the target feature. The results of the mixed between-within subjects ANOVA test revealed that the learners in explicit group outperformed the learners in implicit and control groups in post-tests and delayed post-tests even in the case of the implicit measure. Furthermore, the results indicated the more durable effects of explicit instruction compared with implicit instruction. Taken together, the study provided evidence for the efficiency of explicit teaching compared to implicit teaching in the context of L2 development.

Critical cultural awareness as a component of intercultural competence (Byram, 1997, 2012) has received the extensive attention of scholars in the fields of language teaching, cultural studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, communication studies, etc. in the recent decades. However, no instrument has ever been developed to assess this construct among Iranian EFL teachers. To fill this gap, in the first phase of the present study a theoretical framework for critical cultural awareness and its components was developed through reviewing the literature and conducting interviews with ELT experts. In the second phase, a questionnaire was developed and piloted with 370 participants who were available and willing to participate in the study. More specifically, the 37 items of the newly-developed ‘CCA' scale were subjected to principal component analysis which revealed the presence of three components. These phases led to the development of a questionnaire with three components and 37 items: (1) ‘CCA in ELT Programs' including 20 items, (2) ‘CCA in ELT Textbooks and Materials' including 13 items, and (3) ‘CCA in General Terms' including four items. The findings of this study may shed some light on this fuzzy subject and help researchers assess Iranian EFL teachers' critical cultural awareness.

This study aimed to compare the effect of teaching metacognitive listening strategies through shadowing activity on the listening comprehension of field-dependent (FD) and field-independent (FI) EFL learners. Since the researcher had access only to female participants,85 female EFL learners from a language institute in Tehran, at the pre-intermediate level of proficiency with the age range of 18-35 were selected out of the initial 120 participants based on their performance on a piloted PET. The Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) was administered to the selected participants in order to categorize them into the two experimental groups (49 FD and 36 FI). The participants including both FD and FI sat in several classes. During a five-week instruction period (twice a week), both groups practiced listening comprehension for 45 minutes through a combination of shadowing activity, and metacognitive strategy instruction with no difference in treatment. The results of the independent samples t-test demonstrated that there was no significant difference between listening posttest scores of FI and FD groups. Therefore, it was concluded that metacognitive strategy training coupled with shadowing activity could be equally beneficial in terms of listening proficiency for all students regardless of their perceptual tendency (FD/FI). The findings of the present study have implications for language teachers regarding metacognitive strategy training and listening comprehension enhancement.

Technology mediated learning brings together the users with shared interests. This method makes learners informally engaged in language learning. This study intended to investigate the effect of technology mediated instruction on cognitive scaffolding, academic performance and motivation. Employing a quasi-experimental research, 80 learners from two intact classes at Islamic Azad University, Osku Branch were selected as the experimental and control groups. Telegram as a tool was used in the experimental group, while the control group received traditional way of instruction. Critical ethnography approach was implemented to consider the amount of cognitive scaffolding. To measure the students’ motivational level in both groups, Course Interest Survey (CIS) was administered at the end of the semester. The total average score for each group was calculated. To compare students’ academic achievement, their average scores in the final academic test were considered. An Independent samples t-test in was used to compare the mean scores. The results indicated that technology mediated learning brought about cognitive scaffolding and the students in the experimental group outperformed the control group in terms of motivation and academic achievement. The results of the study suggest that to bring about academically successful students, practitioners should use technology mediated instruction.