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Learner autonomy has been described as the ultimate objective in many language teaching programs since the third quarter of the twentieth century and educators have highlighted the significant role of promoting learner autonomy in the process of language learning and teaching. However, only limited number of studies has been awarded to what leaner autonomy mean to teachers. This study addressed the gap and investigated novice and experienced teachers’ beliefs regarding learner autonomy. Forty teachers participated in two groups who were grouped based on their teaching experiences as novice and experienced teachers. A questionnaire which was adapted from British Council was administered to elicit the teachers’ beliefs regarding learner autonomy. The independent samples t-test analysis of the data revealed a significant difference between novice and experienced teachers beliefs. The findings of the present study may have some implications for teachers in promoting learner autonomy in their classes, in general, and involving learners in the process of teaching and learning, in particular.

In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of literature on genre-based approaches to writing instruction. However, scant attention has been paid to the use of genre-based scaffolding in the realm of academic writing. Hence, in an attempt to tackle the problems prevalent in academic writing, this study set out to investigate the effect of genre-based scaffolding through sentence starters and writing frames on MA candidates’ research paper writing. To this end, twenty MA candidates majoring in ELT were randomly assigned to two homogenous groups, one control and one experimental group, each including 10 participants. Both groups were exposed to a five-session genre-based instruction while the experimental group benefitted from the additional provision of sentence starters and writing frames relevant to different sections of a research paper. The analysis of the results, using independent sample of t-test, reveals that genre-based instruction can be a useful tool in improving academic writing. Moreover, the outperformance of the participants of the experimental group is indicative of the beneficial effect of scaffolding through starters and frames.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of context on learning idioms among 60 Iranian female advanced English learners. To this end, the researcher assigned the participants to two experimental groups and one control group: Group 1 (first experimental group, the extended-context group), Group 2 (second experimental group, the limited-context group) and Group 3 (control group or the decontextualized group). First a 50-item idiom test was constructed using Vocabulary Knowledge scale (adopted from Wesche and Paribakht, 1993) and answered by the participants. The results of this test revealed that thirty idioms were not at all familiar to the participants. So these 30 idioms were selected as the target idioms. Then, the researchers applied two types of treatment to the participants in groups 1 and 2. Group 1 was taught idioms in extended-context through listening to short stories including the target idioms, Group 2 in the limited-context through listening to single sentences including the target idioms, and Control group (Group 3) was taught idioms through their decontextualized definitions of the target idioms. The analysis of the results of immediate and delayed post-test showed that extended contexts had significant influence on the participants’ idiom learning and retention. Pedagogical implications are provided.

The current study was intended to investigate the impact of Dynamic Assessment (DA) on promoting reading comprehension ability of Iranian male and female EFL learners, focusing on Guthke's Lerntest approach. In this study, the researcher used DA which unifies instruction with assessment to provide learners with mediation to promote their hidden potential during assessment. In this action research project, Guthke's Lerntest approach was used to develop the reading comprehension skill classes that integrated mediation with assessment to support 60 Iranian EFL learners' reading skill. The Guthke's lerntest approach and the mediation design are presented in detail in this article. The participants' reading scores are presented to show the effect of Guthke's Lerntest approach on promoting Iranian EFL learners' reading performance. In addition, the participants' pre and post-test scores were compared to determine whether the participants revealed significant progress after receiving Guthke's Lerntest approach in reading comprehension setting. The findings showed that participants of experimental group significantly outperformed the one in the static way. In conclusion, the results of the study revealed that employing the Guthke's Lerntest approach can offer a new condition to enhance the EFL learners' reading comprehension ability and that doing research in this field can be beneficial for EFL learners, English instructors and other researchers in other fields. 

This study tried to examine EFL translators’ uncertainty and uncertainty management strategies through employing think aloud procedures. The participants of this study were some MA andBA translators selected from several universities in Iran. To this aim, a proficiency test was firstly administered among the volunteers. Then, think aloud protocol and retrospective interview were used to collect data. Meanwhile, Angelone coding system was used to categorize the data. To identify the significance of differences, chi-square nonparametric test was utilized. The findings indicated that MA translators had greater tendency to show uncertainty at larger chunks of language such as collocation and sentence, while BA ones were more inclined to show uncertainty in textual level. At the same time, behavioral and locus options were compared and contrasted between MA andBA translators. It was also found out that look-up and rereading strategies were frequently used to manage uncertainty. The findings of this study can be helpful for translators to improve their translation ability by being more aware of what is happening inside their minds. Awareness of a stockpile of strategies helps them have fewer difficulties while translating a text.

This study aims to compare the effects of four types of FFI on second language vocabulary learning. To do so, the study adopted a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design, including five groups, each receiving a distinct treatment. The participants were 80 fourth-grade male students ranging in age from 17 to 19. Before the treatment phase, the participants took a researcher-made test of vocabulary as a pretest which was meant to measure the participants’ prior knowledge about the target words. After the treatment phase, the participants took a researcher-made test of vocabulary as posttest to measure the students' achievement of the target words. Independent samples t-test and one-way ANOVA were run to analyze the scores from the pretest and the posttest. The results indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between proactive and reactive FonF in the comprehension mode in terms of promoting vocabulary learning. There was also no statistically significant difference between these two forms of FonF in the production mode in terms of promoting vocabulary learning. However, there was a statistically significant difference between the comprehension-based and production-based FonF in enhancing vocabulary learning. These results extend the positive effect of FFI to L2 vocabulary teaching/learning.