درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

In the dynamic landscape of English Language Teaching (ELT), the widespread reliance on commercially-produced textbooks has spurred a critical examination of their relevance to the diverse needs and interests of learners in global contexts. Typically originating from English-speaking countries, these textbooks predominantly feature neutral and non-controversial topics such as food, shopping, ceremonies, and travel, which may not align with the varied experiences of learners. This article, through a descriptive analytical approach, contends that the malleability of English language textbooks provides an opportunity for the application of Critical Pedagogy (CP) which can turn the classroom into a place where learners stop thinking about such topics. In such a situation, by integrating ‘Environmental Education’ (EE) - as a transformative process that allows individuals to explore environmental issues, engage in problem solving, and take action to improve the environment - it is believed that learners can develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills along with enhancing language proficiency. Showing the possibility of implementing the proposed framework, a sample lesson about ‘water crisis’ is provided and elaborated on. To highlight the broader educational backdrop, it is argued that this shift not only broadens the limited scope of language learning but also, by establishing clear personal relevance for learners in both their present and future lives, it can foster a critical and creative environment within English language teaching programs, contributing to the development of sustainable futures for the learners.

The goal of this study was to explore English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ and learners’ beliefs and classroom practices in relation to task rehearsal as an operationalization of repeating a task, which entails learners’ awareness of the repeated performance before they do a task for the first time. Five intact EFL classes with five teachers and 32 learners were recruited. The teachers asked the learners to perform a task that was included in the textbook twice with an interval of one week, while they made the learners aware of the second iteration prior to their first performance. Data were collected through observing the two sessions of each class and interviewing both the teachers and the learners immediately after the second task occasion. Results indicated that the participants (both teachers and learners) believed that task rehearsal was beneficial for facilitating task implementation and task performance. Findings also showed that task rehearsal led the participants to show changes in their classroom behaviors related to this practice from the first to the second session, which clearly reflected their beliefs. Implications of these results for L2 task implementation and teacher education are discussed.

Critical Pedagogy (CP) is a prerequisite for a democratic society where pedagogy empowers teachers and learners to be both socially reasonable and knowledgeable. It is a novel and rather minimally investigated motif, being rarely noticed in the Iranian educational system. Recognizing the importance of fostering critical thinking and active engagement within educational settings, the current study intended to investigate perspectives on critical pedagogy among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers with different academic degrees and language backgrounds. Following a qualitative research design, a semi-structured interview was conducted with 18 EFL teachers to provide information on their perspective of CP to identify the challenges against CP awareness and solutions towards a balanced CP. Grounded Theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) as a thematic analysis approach was followed for the purpose of qualitative data analysis. The results showed that although teachers were aware of the importance of critical pedagogy, they did not have the freedom to put it into practice. The findings yield implications for teachers, students, and educational systems, highlighting the need for greater emphasis on CP in the Iranian context.

The increasing availability of scientific knowledge through digital platforms has transformed how scientific discourse reaches the general public. This study examined the use of interactional metadiscourse markers across four leading popular science subgenres: books, TV documentaries, magazine articles, and newspaper articles. The aim was to investigate the language features of these markers, focusing on how they engage readers and highlight writer presence in different subgenres. A corpus of 987,625 words was analyzed using AntConc software (Anthony, 2019) and 80,260 instances of interactional markers were identified according to Hyland’s (2019) Interpersonal Model of Metadiscourse. The study revealed how hedges, boosters, attitude markers, self-mentions, and engagement markers function to create persuasive and accessible content. Interestingly, interactional markers appeared most frequently in TV documentaries, suggesting a heightened effort to engage audiences through this medium. Chi-square tests revealed significant differences in marker usage across subgenres; however, the small effect sizes (Cramér’s V) indicated that these differences are of only modest practical significance. These results provided insight into how popular science writers adapt their rhetorical strategies to suit different communicative contexts and audience expectations. The findings also have pedagogical implications. Incorporating features of popular science into ESP/EAP materials, such as authentic texts and structured practice with interactional metadiscourse markers, can make scientific content more engaging and accessible for learners. Raising learners’ awareness of interactional metadiscourse markers can improve writing skills, especially for novice writers in non-English academic settings, helping them better engage readers and communicate more effectively.

Dissatisfaction with product-oriented and static forms of assessment led to the emergence of process-oriented testing or dynamic assessment. Learners’ involvement in the assessment process can enhance their learning autonomy and help them process linguistic features more deeply. Accordingly, using a quantitative quasi-experimental research design, the researchers sought to explore whether utilizing DA principles would have any differential impact, believed to be statistically significant, on the Iranian male and female intermediate EFL learners’ learning and retention of English grammar. To this end, 30 EFL learners from two intact classes who were taking a general English course at Shayestegan English Language Institute, in Rasht, Iran were selected as a homoscedastic group of participants based on the scores they obtained on a sample copy of Oxford Solutions Placement Test (OSPT). The intact classes, each comprising 15 students, were then assigned to one experimental and one control group who then received treatment on their L2 grammar under different conditions: The experimental group received instruction on English grammar as per the principles of dynamic assessment in an eight-session intervention program. The control group likewise received treatment on L2 grammar over the course of the study, but they were trained using teacher-fronted instruction. Finally, the groups sat for an immediate and a delayed posttest of grammar to demonstrate their degree of learning and amount of retention of English grammar. Capitalizing on a 2 by 2 factorial design, which allowed for examination of both main and interaction effects of instructional modality and participants’ gender, the researchers employed a two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to examine the participants’ performance scores. The results revealed that, regardless of participants’ gender, instruction as delivered through dynamic assessment privileged the participants in the experimental group much better than that of the conventional method in terms of their learning an

During the first decades of the 20th century, Iran underwent a transformative phase spurred by the emergence of local periodicals. Intellectuals and modernists in the country, drawing inspiration from the social and cultural developments in Europe, actively engaged in defining and supervising cultural and artistic modernism in Iran. One such influential journal was Irânšahr, which, much like its foreign counterparts, sought to mirror the progress and advances in the European world. Irânšahr set itself apart by initiating a literary competition to deepen its engagement with European literature. This competition invited Iranian authors to create new literary works based on extracts from Western literary pieces. This article specifically analyzes a publication resulting from this initiative, namely “Qalb-e mâdar”, a poem by Iraj Mirza, recognized as one of his best creations. Our analysis commences with a detailed examination of Iraj’s poem and the foreign sources that inspired it. Subsequently, we conduct a comparative study between the two texts. The objective is to uncover how the Iranian poet, Iraj Mirza, not only drew inspiration from Western literature but also managed to recreate the text in a way that seamlessly aligned with the poetic and cultural conventions of the Iranian language. This exploration aims to shed light on the processes through which the Iranian poet skillfully adapted the text to cater to the preferences of his Iranian readers. However, it is essential to approach this assessment with caution. While acknowledging the prowess of the Iranian poet in adapting foreign influences, deeming his work a universal model for literary modernization may pose challenges.

This study aims to explore the strategies Indonesian students employ in writing comparative Indonesian-English literary criticism within the context of EFL students. A qualitative approach was utilized, and data collection techniques included questionnaires and interviews. The data analysis technique used the identification, classification, reduction, and exposure stages. This study used four phases, namely the screening phase, the reading process phase, the interpretation phase, and the reflection phase. The results showed that in the screening phase, 14.1% of participants expressed a liking for English, while 85.9% remained neutral; the mean score of English obtained by the participants was 45.1% very good, 45.1% good, 8.5% sufficient, 1.3% insufficient; and regarding the English courses attended by participants, 62% never attended, and 38% had taken English courses. In the reading process phase, 74% of the participants searched for translated novels on Google, 7% translated English novels using Google Translate, 3.5% engaged in skimmed reading, 2.5% translated English novels using translators, and other reading strategies were below 3%. Participants who responded with ‘loved’ were 71%, participants who responded with ‘liked’ were 19%, participants who responded with ‘neutral’ were 7%, and those who responded with ‘disliked’ were 3%.  

The present study attempted to look deeply into how Iranian English teachers defined morality and if there was any significant difference with respect to gender and years of teaching experience. The study followed a mixed-methods design including a semi-structured interview and a multiple choice single-item questionnaire. The results revealed that while the main concern for the participants in different decades of teaching was choosing right over wrong, the prevailing theme for male and female teachers differed in that the male teachers moved towards less personalized and more agentic conceptions, whereas female teachers were more concerned with the context and society as their experience increased. The analysis of the quantitative data also illustrated there was a significant difference between female and male teachers in the 2nd and 3rd decades of teaching. Moreover, the differences between participants based on their level of experience were statistically significant