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Grammatical competence constitutes an important component of communicative ability, the acquisition of which takes sustained effort, resilience, and planning, otherwise known as the capacity for self-regulated learning. It follows that assessing the self-regulatory capacity in grammar learning (SRCgram) is of prime importance. This paper reports on the development and validation of a scale for measuring SRCgram. Focus group interviews were conducted with 26 participants and a pool of 52 items was created and piloted. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were then conducted to examine the psychometric properties of the instrument. Preliminary fit indices, internal structure fit of the model, and overall model fit provided evidence for the validity of the scale.  In addition, the SRCgram scale appeared to be unidimensional and of satisfactory reliability. Thus, SRCgram scale can be proposed as a diagnostic and self-assessment tool to be used by EFL teachers and learners to diagnose, assess, and foster self-regulation in grammar learning.

هدف این تحقیق مقایسه موردی و مقابله ای تاثیر فعایتهای نوشتاری مشترک بر کیفیت نوشتار فردی دانشجویان ایرانی و مالزیایی می باشد. برای این منظور هشت نفر دانشجوی سال اولی (چهار نفر دانشجوی ایرانی و چهار نفر دانشجوی مالزیایی چینی تبار در یک دانشگاه غیردولتی در شهر کوالالامپور) که بر اساس مولفه های سن، جنس، سطح دانش انگلیسی مشابه و رشته دانشگاهی مشترک انتخاب شده بودند در قالب چهار گروه دو نفری تقسیم بندی شدند (دو گروه ایرانی و دو گروه مالزیایی). در مدت زمان تقریبی دو ماه و درطی پانزده جلسه هرکدام از گروها تعداد پانزده متن مربوط به قسمت 1 نوشتار آکادمیک آزمون آیلتس را بصورت مشترک (دو نفره) با هم انجام دادند. پانزده جلسه مزبور در واقع شامل پنج سیکل متوالی و مجزا بودند به طوری که در هر سیکل متعاقب هر سه جلسه نوشتار مشترک یک جلسه نوشتار انفرادی وجود داشت. پر واضح است که در پایان جلسه پانزده (یا سیکل 5) هر کدام از شرکت کنندگان تحقیق پنج نوشتار انفرادی تولید کرده بود. تمامی نوشته های انفرادی هشت نفر شرکت کننده به تبعیت و با استفاده از باروم نمره دهی استاندارد آزمون آیلتس بر اساس چهار مولفه ""میزان کفایت توضیحی متن"" (Task Achievement) ""میزان انسجام و پیوستگی متن"" (Cohesion and Coherence) ""میزان غنای دستوری و صحت گرامری متن ""(Grammatical Rang and Accuracy) و"" میزان غنای واژگانی متن ""(Lexical Resources) مورد ارزیابی و سنجش کیفی قرار گرفتند. نتایج حاصله نشان دادند که بیشترین تاثیرکیفی مثبت که در طول مدت مطالعه در نوشته های انفرادی همه دانشجویان مشهود بود به ترتیب مربوط به پارامترهای ""کفایت توضیحی متن"" و ""انسجام و پیوستگی متن"" بودند در حالیکه بهبود واژگانی خیلی جزیی و صرفا محدود به نوشته های سه نفر از دانشجویان مالزیایی می شد و نوشته های هیچکدام از دانشجویان در بعد دستوری پیشرفت قابل اعتنایی نداشتند. شایان توجه اینکه پیشرفت ها و پسرفتهای متناوبی در کیفیت نوشته های انفرادی در طول مدت تجقیق قابل مشاهده بودند. نتایج متنوع حاصله در این مطالعه را می توان در ارتباط با اصول پارادایم فرهنگی-اجتماعی ،نظریه آشوب ، تیپولوژی متن های مورد تمرین و همچنین سطح دانش زبانی دانشجویان شرکت کننده در تحقیق توضیح داد.

Teacher efficacy is an essential psychological variable which is linked to student achievement, motivation, and even student self-efficacy. Moreover, teachers' self-efficacy beliefs play an essential role in the context of reform initiatives by mediating any behavioral change. The relevant literature reports conflicting findings on the sources, however. Such being the case, the present study aimed at speculating on the sources of self-efficacy among Iranian EFL teachers who participated in this study. To this aim, individual interviews were conducted with 18 English language teachers teaching in middle schools up to the point when data saturation was achieved. Moreover, the participating teachers were asked to keep journals in order to keep a record of the significant experiences that captured their attention concerning their self-efficacy beliefs during one semester. The data were analyzed using grounded theory procedures in which open, axial, and selective coding were applied to extract the themes (Corbin & Strauss, 1990). The results of the study indicated that Bandura's (1997) four sources of self-efficacy information including mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion, and physiological/emotional states played a crucial role in forming Iranian EFL teachers' efficacy beliefs. In addition to these sources, "teacher competence" and “contextual factors” appeared as two other influential factors affecting Iranian EFL teachers’ efficacy beliefs.

This study explored both teachers’ and learners’ perceptions of teachers’ pedagogic strategies which may engender willingness to communicate (WTC) in an English as a foreign language class and the difference between their perceptions to detect how convergent or possibly how divergent these are. The project used a convenience sample of 300 students taking an intermediate English course and their teachers (N=60) in several English Language Institutes in Tabriz, Iran. The instruments included a Likert scale questionnaire on teachers’ pedagogic strategies and learners’ WTC completed by both teachers and learners. Based on the data collected from the questionnaires, it was revealed that the teachers and learners agreed on the role of teachers’ wait time in learners’ WTC but not on the other strategies such as motivating strategies, error correction strategies, and teachers’ congruence. The findings of the study have important implications for teachers in terms of reconsidering their pedagogic strategies to play their facilitating roles in engendering students’ WTC in the class. The results also have the implications for EFL teacher education in the new era of communication.

Employing an explanatory sequential design, the present study investigated the effect of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) blog-mediated writing instruction on the students’ learner autonomy. A number of 46 learners who were the students of two intact classes were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. Over a 16-week semester, the control group students (n=21) were taught based on regular in-class writing instruction and the students in the experimental group (n=25) made use of blogs in addition to the traditional in-class writing instruction. The data were collected through administering a learner autonomy instrument, consisting of metacognitive, cognitive, social, and affective components, and conducting semi-structured interviews. The results of both quantitative and qualitative data revealed that the blog-mediated writing instruction contributed to enhancing learner autonomy of the participants. More specifically, the students who experienced blog-mediated writing activities showed improvement in metacognitive and cognitive components of learner autonomy. The findings offer significant implications for EFL teachers.

The advent of postmethod pedagogy has completely changed today's conceptualization of language teachers, and the importance of powerful teaching has increasingly gained momentum in the field of TESOL. However, contemporary English language teaching contexts suffer a dearth of a workable package to educate the much-needed autonomous postmethod language teachers who are able to have their own contextualized praxis. As such, the present research aims to nurture the required self-growth and self-development in language teachers through forming collaborative professional and critical discussion circles. Enjoying a mixed method research design whose quantitative section included a quasi-experimental design consisting of three phases--a pretest, an educational 12-week long treatment phase, and a posttest--the results of the study gained by two instruments, namely, the reflective teaching questionnaire developed by Akbari et al. (2010) and two similar language teaching episodes, bore witness to the significant changes in the level of reflectiveness of all 13 language teachers who partook in these discussion circles. Developmentally speaking, participating language teachers were found to initiate the whole process, direct it, and finally evaluate the new experiences further along the road. Hence the ideals of teacher development, self-growth and personal development, were accomplished through the study.

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.