درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Research on teacher cognition concerning listening instruction has not been sufficiently touched upon. The present case study aimed to investigate Iranian EFL teachers' stated practices, their perceptions of how effective those practices are, and their actual classroom practices of two casual process-oriented listening instructional approaches namely, strategy-based instruction (SBI) and metacognitive instruction (MCI). To this end, a mixed methods design was utilized. Five experienced EFL teachers were required to be observed and to fill a self-report questionnaire. The findings from the questionnaire revealed teachers' relative but insufficient use of the two process-oriented approaches. Regarding the effectiveness of the process-oriented approaches, the majority of the techniques were perceived by the teachers as effective. Also, the result of the observation showed that process-oriented approaches were conspicuously absent in the teachers' actual classroom practices. Finally, pedagogical implications for EFL teachers, teacher educators, and material developers concerning how best to teach listening are discussed.

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.

While some researchers have questioned the efficacy of corrective feedback (CF), other researchers believe that CF can be effective if implemented through new technology types, including e-portfolio (EP). However, whether EP can be used as a medium of providing CF for language learners at different levels of language proficiency is still unknown. The purpose of the present study, therefore, was twofold: (a) to examine the writing performance of EFL learners across three levels of language proficiency receiving direct corrective feedback (DCF) via EP, and (b) to investigate which language proficiency group benefits more from DCF provided via EP. For the purposes of the present study, sixty (60) Iranian EFL learners who were divided into three levels of language proficiency at Sharif language center in Tehran, Iran participated in this study. The results of data analysis showed statistically significant differences for two components of writing—content, and mechanics—between beginning and intermediate, and beginning and advanced language learners. The results also showed that the higher the language proficiency level of language learners, the more they benefit from the provision of DCF through EP. These findings suggest that EP may be a viable option to supply Iranian EFL learners across levels of language proficiency with DCF. The article concludes with a call for testing the threshold-level hypothesis that may exist for language learners to use EP.

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.

This study aimed to compare the underlying measures of male and female high- school students’ social capital in terms of regional variations and gender and investigate the relationship between those measures and the students' foreign language (FL) achievement. To this end, a number of 904 third-grader high school students (278 male and 626 female) from two educational districts (privileged district (PD) and less-privileged district (LD)) participated in the study. They filled out the Student Social Capital Questionnaire and took an English language achievement test. The results showed that the students in the PD outperformed their counterparts in the LD. Furthermore, group statistics and t-test results suggested variations among the groups of students in terms of such factors as mothers’ involvement, institutional trust, intergenerational closure, and parents’ educational aspiration. Pearson product-moment correlation indicated that there was a significant negative correlation between male and female students' participation in social networks and religious activities on the one hand, and their foreign language achievement on the other hand. However, there was a significant positive correlation between intergenerational closure and parents’ educational aspiration and female students' English scores on the S-test. The findings have implications for families and school members to provide students with hopeful and positive aspirations and intimate family environments and learning environments, which can enhance their FL achievement.

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 investigated the university practitioners’ attitudes towards using computer assisted language learning (CALL) in teaching English language at Islamic Azad universities of Khuzestan Province. This study was also to examine the English as foreign language (EFL) MA and PhD teachers’ computer literacy and its effects on using CALL facilities in English classrooms. The participants of this study were 135 university teachers at the Islamic Azad Universities (i.e., 12 Branches). The research instrument was a questionnaire extracted from Shin and Son (2007) in 5-point Likert scale. Findings showed that that there was lack of technological equipment for using CALL. 

This study compares metadiscourse markers in result and discussion sections of literature and engineering research papers. To this end, 40 research articles (20 literature and 20 engineering) are selected from two major international journals. Based on Hyland’s (2005) model of metadiscourse, the articles are codified in terms of frequency, percentage, and density of interactive and interactional markers found. The two corpora are compared to see to what extent the genre of lectures are different. Data are analyzed through Chi-square and the results of the quantitative analysis reveal significant cross-linguistic differences for overall frequency of metadiscourse except for frame markers and boosters. 

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.

This study aimed at investigating the effect of using smart board technology on the EFL learners' achievement motivation and willingness to communicate (WTC). The participants were 65 second grade female students from Shahid Nazari girls’ high school in Andimeshk, Iran, who were selected randomly. An OPT was administrated to the the participants to homogenize them. Other instruments were Hermans’ achievement motivation questionnaire and McCroskey & Baer’s WTC questionnaire to estimate the participants’ achievement motivation and willingness to communicate, respectively. For data analysis, Levenetest, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, independent samples T test, paired sample T test, MANCOVA and ANCOVA were used. The findings indicated the experimental group outperformed the control group. Overall, the findings provided empirical support for the significant effect of using smart board technology on the EFL learners’ achievement motivation and WTC.