درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

English language teachers’ assessment ability to assess all areas of pupils’ learning is important for comprehending how learners advance across the curriculum and guiding them in their development (Livingston & Hutchinson, 2016). The educational system of Iran decided to shift from traditional teaching methodologies toward communicative approaches. This conversion would not turn into reality unless teachers could apply it in practice. However, teachers have certain needs such as expanding and broadening contextual-related knowledge, cooperating with their colleagues, and developing their assessment literacy (Coombe, Vafadar, & Mohebbi, 2020). To identify the teachers’ understandings of, practices in, and challenges of assessment, 15 English language headteachers (English language teachers who are responsible for moderating the group of the teachers’ activities) participated in the interviews of this study, followed by questionnaires for exploring teachers’ needs. The interviews were coded and content analyzed independently by the researcher and an expert in assessment. The main themes and needs were derived from the interview analyses and are presented in eight pivots. The findings of the questionnaires manifested the priorities that teachers felt concerning assessment literacy and classroom-based assessment needs. The paper will discuss the findings concerning assisting teachers’ professional development in assessment literacy. Implications are also provided.

Medical practitioners’ ethnocentric orientations and English language skills contribute to the success or failure of intercultural communication in the context of health care. The present study aims to investigate the relationship between ethnocentrism and investment in learning English in the multicultural setting of English classrooms at an Iranian medical university. To this end, 200 Iranian medical students’ levels of ethnocentrism and investment in learning English were measured. The findings of this study revealed that the participants had relatively moderate levels of ethnocentrism and investment, and there was a strong negative relationship between the two constructs. Female medical students were found to be significantly less ethnocentric than male students, but were not significantly different from them in terms of investment. These findings were explained considering several contextual factors such as the participants’ linguistic loyalty, intercultural contact, and social comfort in English classrooms. Practical implications, direction, and limitations are discussed.

Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL) is prevalent in English instruction to enhance students' learning interest and motivation. However, its effectiveness and practicality have rarely been well confirmed. The present study intended to investigate the effectiveness and practicality of utilizing a developed Mobile Learning Application (MLA) in listening instruction. A quasi-experimental design was applied in the study with a test and a questionnaire as research instruments. The pre-test and post-test were administered to examine the effects of administering MLA on 86 undergraduate students’ listening comprehension, and the questionnaire was employed to investigate 184 students’ perceptions of the practicality of MLA in mastering listening comprehension as data triangulation. Descriptive and inferential statistics were utilized to analyze the collected data. The results showed that a teacher-developed MLA is feasible for effective learning media to enhance students’ listening comprehension with the significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores. Moreover, it also accentuated that students' perception obtained a positive perception of the practicality of a developed MLA in mastering their listening comprehension. This finding encourages EFL teachers to use a mobile learning application in listening instruction to promote students’ independence in mastering listening skills.

Learning to teach is conceptualized as a complex process of identity development. To address this process, this study explored Prospective Teachers’ (PTs) professional identity development at different stages of learning to teach within a four-year Second Language (L2) initial teacher education program. Participating in a sequential explanatory mixed-methods approach, 140 PTs filled out the English language teacher professional identity questionnaire three times: at the end of the second year, third year, and fourth year. Then, after each round of the questionnaire administration, 12 PTs were asked to participate in the interview phase to gain further insight into the participants’ professional identity development. Three separate sets of Freidman test and grounded theory were employed to evaluate the questionnaire and interview data, respectively. The results of both quantitative and qualitative data analyses revealed that the second-year PTs’ language awareness had a major contribution to the enactment of collective identity of language analyst and language user roles as part of their professional identity. Teaching practicum experiences also helped the third-year PTs develop a sense of belonging to the school community by aligning themselves with its rules and policies, which helped them develop their professional identity in a prescribed manner, informing institutionally situated identity of formal teachers. The fourth-year PTs’ identification of themselves with regard to their prospective learners’ needs was also the identity development observed in the form of learner-oriented attitude toward learners as whole persons, all conducive to imagined future identity of needs analysts. The results and implications are further discussed.

The study is a part of a larger study on the impact of Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL) on English grammar acquisition and retention of adolescent English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. More specifically, the primary aim of the paper at hand was to examine the impact of RALL on adolescent EFL learners’ anxiety levels. In this regard, three intact classes (N=45) in a private language institute in Tehran were evenly divided into two experimental groups of RALL and Game-based Language Learning (GBLL) and one control group. The participants were adolescent male EFL learners between 11 to 15 years old with a mean age of 13. While the teacher, the textbook, and the teaching materials were identical in all groups, a kid-sized humanoid social robot was exclusively used in the RALL group. The data were collected through questionnaires in the final session for each group, and the results of descriptive statistics and ANOVA indicated that lower anxiety rates were observed in the RALL group. Our findings could clearly be proof of the efficiency of socially assistive robots in the instruction of language skills in a more favorable teaching context.

Instagram is considered one of the most famous virtual social networks among all ages of human beings. Nowadays, the extensive popularity of social networking websites such as Instagram has made new chances for Iranian English teachers and learners. Accordingly, the present study tries to investigate whether Instagram would be a useful learning instrument of vocabulary for Iranian male EFL learners at the pre-intermediate at Shokouh Enghelab English Academy in Babol, Mazandaran, Iran. The participants in this study were 50 male EFL learners, ranging from 8-15 years old, selected randomly from 100 cases. After checking the homogeneity of the participants, they were divided into two groups. The participants in the experimental group were learning English vocabulary through ten Instagram pages for four weeks (12 sessions and 25 minutes per session). But the participants in the control group were only taught by the teacher. Pretest and posttest were applied to evaluate learners' knowledge about vocabulary during the session. Based on the research data, Instagram learning brings valuable technological and pedagogical advantages for Iranian EFL learners despite the popularity of social networks. It has a significantly positive effect on the development of  vocabulary learning. The findings of this paper can be helpful in the English methodology issue.

This study was conducted to examine the effect of asynchronous computer-mediated condition on L2 learners' speaking ability, speaking apprehension, L2 self-confidence, and willingness to communicate. The participants of this study included 40 intermediate undergraduate students of English language teaching at an Iranian university. The participants were assigned to two experimental (asynchronous computer-mediated) and control (face-to-face) conditions randomly. In the experimental group, the participants practiced speaking in an asynchronous online environment, and in the control group, the students spent a part of their class time accomplishing monologue tasks. Using questionnaires, the participants' speaking ability, speaking apprehension, L2 self-confidence, and willingness to communicate were measured at the beginning and at the end of the term. The findings showed that the monologue speaking ability mean score of those in the computer-mediated group improved significantly more than that of the face-to-face group. Another finding of this study was the superiority of the computer-mediated condition with regard to the participants' speaking self-confidence, speaking apprehension, and willingness to communicate. Overall, the results suggest that asynchronous computer-mediated condition can provide learners with a less-threatening condition that can improve the chances of their L2 monologue speaking ability.