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Nowadays computers are increasingly being incorporated into school curriculums and serious games are occupying the educational games markets. This article addressed the integration of serious games as tools for learning and teaching English in Iranian schools to zero-beginner students. An experiment was concluded using Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) to investigate the effectiveness of using serious games; namely, Mingoville English as an educational aid and also to examine parents, students and instructors’ attitudes towards using serious games. To this end, 60 female students were chosen and divided into two groups. The control group was taught in the conventional way and the experimental group received the educational aiding material Mingoville, a web-based serious game program, as the treatment. The results of the analyses revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group as the method of teaching was changed. The study also showed the willingness of children, their parents, and teachers toward using such games. It can be concluded that using serious games such as Mingoville can be regarded as an effective tool in teaching English to Iranian EFL children at schools and language institutes. The study can benefit teachers and heads of institutes to add serious games as aiding instructional materials to their English classes.

The study investigated EFL teachers’ current level of critical consciousness as well as their beliefs about the educational context where they taught. The study also explored how gender, teaching experience, workplace, and academic degree differentiated the participants with regard to their critical consciousness. Drawing upon the related literature and the existing questionnaires in the field, we designed and validated a questionnaire applying technical statistical procedures (e.g., confirmatory factor analysis). The questionnaire was then completed by 310 English teachers teaching in different language institutions across the country. The findings revealed that, in general, EFL teachers’ current level of critical consciousness was above average. However, they believed that the educational context did not encourage and cultivate in them critical consciousness. It was also found that, contrary to expectations, the academic degree did not differentiate teachers in this regard. Moreover, male and female teachers were found not to be significantly different in their critical consciousness. The theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed in the paper.

The present study assessed the construct validity and reliability of a researcher-constructed psycho-motor mechanism scale based on the communicative theory of translation proposed by PACTE (2003). In doing so, the necessary criteria for designing the scale were obtained by a thorough review of related literature on previously constructed scales in error analysis or holistic ones. Moreover, in the first part of the research, a qualitative data analysis according to the translation tasks done by eleven participants and their feedback through a semi-structured translation problems interview was done for finding the descriptors in designing the psycho-motor mechanism scale. Next, by designing the scale, two translation tasks were given to 90 M.A. students majoring in Translation Studies at four different branches of Islamic Azad University. Based on the rating done by two experienced raters, construct validity and reliability of the scale was revealed by the use of factor analysis and correlation statistics. The findings approved by the construct validity and reliability of the researcher-constructed scale could contribute to the field of Translation Studies since having a more objective scale for translation tasks in line with anchored theories of translation quality assessment like those of PACTE (2003) is a felt need.

Iran's National curriculum standards represent the guiding blueprints which provide direction for instruction and assessment nationwide. Iran's official university curriculum standards were designed by Iran's Ministry of Sciences, Research and Technologyto provide a frame of reference and guidance for the instructional materials used and decisions made by university instructors. Using a widely accepted measure of describing cognitive processes, that is,Bloom's revised taxonomy of educational objectives, thispaper aims at comparatively investigatingIran's B.A. official curriculum standards of TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) and ET (English translation). Thestandardspertaining to TEFL and ET fieldswerecontent analyzed in terms of Bloom's revised taxonomyby using a detailed checklist developedbased on the respective classification of cognitive objectives.The findings showed slight differences between both fields in terms of critical thinking skills and that lower-order cognitive skills were more prevalent than higher-order ones. Furthermore, the English translation standards pertained to critical cognitive skills in general and evaluation and creation in particular to a larger extent. Results of this study have implications for policy makers, curriculum designers, materials developers and instructors involved in language education.

Many factors may be involved in determining why some students are more and some are less proficient in language. This study tried to explore the factors affecting Iranian EFL learners’ proficiency. 221 students at second, third and fourth year of university, including 50 male and 171 female were selected randomly to participate in the study. A researcher-made questionnaire and a proficiency test comprised the data collection instruments. The researchers were able to identify three factors affecting language proficiency. They were classified as social factors, cultural factors and linguistic factors, Then a model was developed to represent the relationship among these factors and language proficiency. In line with Bourdieu’s (1986), the results of data analysis indicated that social factors are among the most dominant factors affecting the learners’ language proficincy.

یادگیری بسیاری از نکات گرامری انگلیسی در یک محیط خارجی مشکل می باشد. افعال وجهی یکی از این ساختارهایی است که معمولا یادگیری آن برای دانش آموزان دشواراست. افعال وجهی نه تنها ازنظر معنایی سخت وپیچیده هستند بلکه در بعضی موارد که کلمه های معادل آن ها در زبان مادری وجود ندارد مشکلات بزرگتری را برای دانش آموختگان زبان انگلیسی بوجود می آورند. یکی از این زبان ها زبان مالایی است که در کشور مالزی صحبت می شود و به همین دلیل دانش آموزان مالزیایی در استفاده از افعال وجهی در زبان انگلیسی مشکل دارند و یادگیری آنها به میزان زیادی بستگی به نوع آموزشی دارد که این دانش آموزان دریافت می کنند. این مقاله ابتدا افعال وجهی موجود در یک مجموعه ساخته شده از کتابهایی که در مالزی تدریس می شود را با مجموعه مرجع مقایسه کرده و به این نتیجه رسید که این افعال از نظر کثرت وقوع با مجموعه مرجع متفاوت بوده است. سپس مجموعه ساخته شده از کتاب های تدریس شده در مالزی با مجموعه ساخته شده از انشاء های نوشته شده دانش آموزان سال چهارم متوسطه مقایسه شد و محققین به این نتیجه رسیدند که نه تنها کثرت وقوع افعال وجهی در دو مجموعه بسیار با هم تفاوت دارند بلکه دانش آموزان مالزیایی غلط های بسیاری در ساختار این افعال دارند. دلایل احتمالی این عدم تطبیق و همچنین چگونگی مفید واقع شدن این اطلاعات برای معلمین و نویسندگان کتاب در این مقاله بحث شده است.

Teacher supervision plays a pivotal role in the improvement of education system and the way in which teachers and student teachers perceive it. Consequently language teacher supervisors can utilize appropriate supervisory models to keep teachers update and promote them professionally. The present study investigated the role of language teacher supervisors in student teachers and in-service teachers’ professional development in Iran. To have a representative sample, some 210 EFL teachers practicing in the secondary schools and a total of 215EFL student teachers studying English at some Iranian state and Azad universities participated in the study. A 43-item questionnaire regarding EFL teachers’ attitudes about the impact of supervisory practice on their professional development with a format of a 5-point Likert-type was distributed among them. Also, ten percent of the participants were interviewed. Then the frequencies related to each item were calculated and a Chi-Square was used. Subsequently, qualitative data were transcribed. The results indicated that in-service and pre-service teachers have the same perceptions towards the role of their supervisors in their professional development. However, according to the findings it was concluded that the models of language teacher supervision in language teacher education are different from the models practiced in in-service classes where mostly traditional models are common.

The primary aim of this study was to open up new ways with which teachers could help learners improve their knowledge of vocabulary via collocation activities. This study investigated the effect of collocation activities on Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ vocabulary knowledge in order to solve their vocabulary problems. To this end, 60 female students from Pardis Institute in Lahijan, Iran participated in this study. They were divided into two groups of 30, one as an experimental group that received collocation activities as the treatment and a control group which received traditional method of vocabulary instruction. The researchers used a quasi-experimental, pre-test/post-test control group design. The data were analyzed using an Independent Samples T-test and a series of paired Samples T-tests. The findings of this study showed that collocation activities improved significantly participant learners’ vocabulary knowledge. The findings from paired-sample t-test indicated that the learners in the experimental group outperformed the control group in vocabulary knowledge.

The main concern of this study was to identify Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ problems in cohesion and coherence of writing performance as well as the extent to which they utilized cohesion and coherence in their writing. It is important for EFL and ESL learners the ability to compose a piece of descriptive text. Despite its significance, there is a gap in the literature about how Iranian EFL learners write essays in this genre that this study intends to fill. The research design involved the utilization of mixed research method in addressing the research questions. The study addressed a corpus of 40 intermediate language learners’ descriptive essays, 10 experienced teachers that they were themselves at intermediate level as the questionnaire respondents and four interviewees’ answers from those volunteer experienced teachers. The results of the study revealed lack of cohesion and coherence in the participants’ essays and their writing performance in terms of these two variables was not acceptable. Therefore, the obtained findings, by implication, indicated that they had neither some aspects of cohesive and coherent writing, nor had enough support, practice and feedback on their written text in terms of cohesion and coherence. Some pedagogical implications of this study would be applicable to the language learners’ writing in terms of these two aforementioned variables as well as the results were expected to aid in setting the writing sections of classes for improvement of language learners’ written texts particularly in terms of cohesion and coherence.