درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Drawing on Norton Peirce's (1995) theory of investment and Darvin and Norton's (2015) expanded the model of investment, the present study aims to research investment in second language (L2) learning among Iranian English language learners. The participants included 852 male and female English language learners belonging to different age groups and English language proficiency levels. A 42-item questionnaire, developed and validated by the present authors (forthcoming), was administered online and by hand. The results showed that Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners moderately invested to learn English language and that there were significant differences in the extent of investment between male and female participants and different language proficiency levels (low- and high-proficiency learners). Moreover, the results of the study demonstrated that there was no significant difference in the extent of investment between different age groups (teenage and adult ones). The study concludes with suggestions for future research on investment in L2 learning and a discussion of how such research can impact language education policy in EFL contexts.

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.

The power of praise in changing student behavior is that it both indicates teacher approval and informs the student about how the praised academic performance or behavior conforms to teacher expectations. Notably, praise plays a significant role in the rate and success of learning process in general, and in language learning classroom in particular. Accordingly, the present study sought to investigate the significant influence of praise on the growing trend of university students with different majors, namely, TEFL and linguistics. To this end, from the population of students majoring in English, at the Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran, two classes of sophomore students were selected, each containing thirty participants. Subsequently, the experimental group was exposed to a wide variety of distinguishing instructor praise expressions throughout the entire term while the students in the control group were not praised and encouraged. The results of the t- test revealed that the group which was praised by the instructor during the term progressed substantially in comparison with the other group. Moreover, there appeared to be a positive correlation between instructor praise and learner progress. Evidently, the results of the present study may have practical implications for EFL teachers, materials developers, and syllable designers.

In any education context, teachers are mainly responsible for enacting the core values of classroom justice and equality. To address this notion, this qualitative study went through the exploration of the perceptions that Iranian EFL teachers had of classroom justice and its main dimensions. To this end, 31 EFL teachers, chosen through purposive sampling, filled out an open-ended questionnaire, and a sub-group of them participated in a semi-structured interview. The major findings, resulting from the content and thematic analyses of the data done both manually and through the MAXQDA software (Version 2020), revealed that first, all the participants, except one, regarded classroom justice as a crucial element of their instructional practice; second, interactional, procedural, and distributive dimensions of justice were reflected in the definitions that the teachers provided for classroom justice; and third, in line with the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of the study, the teachers conceptualized the classroom justice dimensions through their unique principles in relation to the various domains of classroom learning, teaching, assessment, and interactions. A pedagogical implication based on the findings is that by becoming aware of how they perceive justice in their instructional practice, teachers may take the initial strides toward enhancing their just treatment of students, and consequently, increase their professional effectiveness.

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 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.

Given the vital role that vocabulary plays in learning a language along with the fact that sense-induced emotions are noteworthy due to their influence on cognition, this study examined the impact of emotioncy-based language instruction on the long-term memory (LTM) vocabulary retention of Iranian EFL learners. To this end, 32 participants were selected based on their level of trait/state anxiety, working memory span, language proficiency, neophobia, and emotioncy towards the selected words to be instructed. Two weeks after the instruction session, the participants were given a retention test. To compare the mean scores of each participant exposed to the three emotioncy-based language instruction conditions (i.e., avolvement, exvolvement, and involvement), a one-way repeated measures ANOVA was employed. The results showed that the participants outperformed in recalling the words that were taught through the involvement level of the hierarchy of the emotioncy model in comparison to those taught through the exvolvement level as what is currently practiced in language classrooms. Finally, drawing on the concepts of emotioncy, emo-sensory quotient, embodied cognition, and multisensory learning, the study elaborates on the value of senses in evoking emotions conducive to cognition and memory enhancement. After all, the study suggests that senses act as the main gears that stimulate the evocation of certain emotions, and the resultant emotions shape cognition, resulting in better LTM retention of vocabulary items.