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T his study attempts to examine the amounts, purposes, and reasons for using L1 by teachers as well as the amounts and purposes of its use by students in English as foreign language classrooms through investigating two pre-intermediate classes of an English language institute in Iran. Among students with an age range of 16-25 years, eight male and female students were in one class and 16 were in the other class (N = 24). Two native Persian teachers with master's degrees in Teaching English as a Foreign Language participated in this study: One was 40 years old with 14 years of experience and the other one was 32 years old with nine years of experience. Eight 90-minute sessions of each teacher’s class were audio-recorded. Following that, the two teachers were interviewed to report on the reasons for which they used their first language. The findings obtained from the classroom audio transcriptions were analyzed using a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches through the lens of Activity Theory. Moreover, the teachers’ interviews were thematically analyzed and the results of these analyses indicated that the teachers and their students resorted to the first language as an important cognitive and pedagogical tool on different occasions wherever needed during their teaching. The findings also revealed that teachers in this study maintained that using the students’ first language supports second/foreign language learning and teaching processes in the pre-intermediate levels.

The present research was conducted to compare the efficiency of 3 groups of ESP instructors: content teachers, language teachers, and professional ESP teachers. The main question was aimed to investigate whether there was a significant difference between the 3 mentioned groups of ESP teachers and if there was, who was more qualified to teach ESP. To find the answer, a questionnaire was developed by the researchers, with an acceptable reliability and validity. The questionnaire was distributed to 135 students in several universities. The obtained results revealed that there was a significant difference between the 3 groups of teachers. Content teachers gained the least score, while language teachers and professional ESP teachers were located in the same subset and gained the highest score. It was concluded that language instructors and professional ESP teachers were more qualified to teach ESP.

Motivation in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses is an issue of utmost importance. Expanding specialized vocabulary is one of the objectives defined by ESP stakeholders. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the role of vocabulary enrichment through close integration of reading and writing tasks in promoting advanced English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) learners’ motivation and attitudes. To this end, fifteen civil engineers were selected through convenience sampling. Following an eight-session course centered around technical vocabulary using reading and writing tasks, questionnaires were used as pretest and posttest based on Attitudinal/Motivation Test Battery (ATMTB), to measure nine types of motivation. Nine paired samples t-tests were conducted to determine whether there was a mean difference in the questionnaire results across time from pretest to posttest. The results demonstrated significant increase in all types of motivation following the integration of reading and writing tasks, excluding intrinsic motivation considering self-confidence. It was shown that there is a close relation between ESP learners’ motivation and the amount of vocabulary they learn. The results proposed certain practical strategies in order for ESP/EOP material developers and teachers to fulfill the objectives and aims of these needs-based courses.

Translation of literary texts, especially poetry, is one of the most difficult tasks; it requires mastery and knowledge of the language system and culture, and lack of this might lead to wrong translation. This study aimed to examine the loss and gain of the sociocultural implicit meanings in the English translations of the Mu’allaqat, and assess whether the translators of the Mu’allaqat have succeeded or failed in transferring the sociocultural implicit meanings from the source text (ST) to the target text (TT). The study examined four English translations of two poems; namely, Labid’s poem and Tarafa’s poem. The selected poems are considered as masterpieces of the Arabic ancient poetry loaded with cultural signs. This study combined New mark's approach (1988) of translation with Baker’s taxonomy (1992-2011), i.e. translation equivalence, in analysing the data. The findings of the study showed that there are two types of loss made by translators in translating the Mu’allaqat: inevitable loss and avertable loss. The findings also revealed that the loss of socio-cultural implicit meaning occurred because of the inadequate use of the communicative equivalence by the translators and absence of employing pragmatic equivalence.

Considering one of the earliest calls for applying pragmatics in the second language, Kasper and Rose’s (2002) study “Is Pragmatic Teachable?”, pragmatic features have been analyzed during the last 20 years in EFL/ESL contexts. The amalgamation of studies has been conducted on many speech acts around the world within the two decades, among which apology is considered as the second most-appreciated speech act in Iran. The aim of the current meta-analysis is twofold: first, to unravel the overall effectiveness of the instruction in an Iranian EFL context on the speech act of apology, and second, to explore whether treatment types and research designs moderate this effectiveness. To this end, out of a total number of 31 studies, 12 papers were chosen based on the exclusion and inclusion criteria, which were coded for the analysis. The results of the study revealed that the instruction of apology is effective for this speech act, and it documented a medium effect size. Furthermore, it was found that research design is a good predictor for this effectiveness, and the quasi-experimental group displayed a large (g = 2.39) and positive effect. Although treatment types (e.g., explicit & non-explicit) produced medium and large effect sizes, they are not a suitable predictor for the overall effectiveness of instruction on the aforementioned speech act. The study concludes with pedagogical implications and suggestions for future studies.

A good lesson plan will most probably end up in effective teaching performance. Despite the positive role of planning lessons in the success of any teaching and learning experience, it has not been fully addressed in the Iranian EFL context, and many teachers consider it an impractical or challenging performance. Hence, the present survey study aimed at investigating what EFL teachers conceived of lesson planning and implementation. Furthermore, the role of a series of demographic variables, namely, gender, teaching experience, and educational degree, were also considered. The study participants included 120 EFL teachers working at universities, schools, and language institutes of Sirjan, Iran. The instrument used for data collection was a closed-ended questionnaire developed by Ramaila and Ramnarain (2014). The results from descriptive as well as inferential statistics, including the independent samples t -test, one-way ANOVA, and one-sample t-test, demonstrated the EFL teachers' moderate willingness toward lesson plans in general and its different aspects in particular. It was also revealed that the participants’ perceptions of lesson planning did not differ, considering their demographic features. Educational administrators and authorities can utilize the obtained outcomes of the present study to take sound measures in this regard leading to better achievement of all language learners and even all learners in general.  

This article presents the outcomes of how Dynamic Assessment (DA) may be organized to function within a class’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The testing field also has recently undergone noticeable changes leading to a shift to use technology that is emerged in our era. The study investigated college students’ barriers and motivations for testing reading comprehension ability using the newly designed software. To this end, 30 participants were interviewed and the related data were analyzed thematically to identify emerging themes relating to the current status of the new testing environment. Four themes emerged relating to potential barriers and motivations and the results showed that working with the software provided positive experiences of working in a supportive environment. The study found that using the newly designed software in the classroom generally enhances learning and other outcomes. This novel software does not only aim to reduce barriers in conventional testing environment but also highlights the positive aspects which enhance motivation.

This study investigated the effectiveness of colligational corpus-based instruction on enhancing the pragmalinguistic knowledge of speech act of request among Iranian intermediate EFL learners. The objective of the study was to find out whether or not providing students with corpora through using colligational instruction had any significant effects on enhancing their pragmalinguistic knowledge and, hence, speech act learning. Sixty participants from several institutes in Mazandaran Province, Iran, participated in the study. They were all intermediate- level students, and were divided into two homogeneous groups (30 each) of experimental and control groups based on the OPT results. A multiple discourse completion test was then administered to both groups as the pretest to measure their ability and knowledge in using the speech act of request. Subsequently, the treatment started where the experimental group received corpus-based instruction through colligational practices, while the control group practiced learning the same speech act through traditional or common methods of learning speech acts (i.e., using textbooks, audios, and videos). After 15 sessions of training, a posttest of multiple discourse completion test was administered. The data were analyzed using paired- and independent-samples t tests. In order to increase the validity of the results, the researchers observed and interviewed all the participants, too. The results that learning of the speech act of request improved significantly better through corpus-based instruction vis-à-vis traditional method of teaching colligations.

Research has provided conflicting findings regarding the benefits of paired and small-group peer scaffolding in EFL writing context. The present case study incorporated collective peer scaffolding technique in an EFL paragraph writing class and elicited learners’ reflections towards this activity. After some preliminary sessions which focused on writing process instruction and collective peer scaffolding training, the students were introduced to three writing genres. Each genre was discussed and practiced every other week and was followed by a collective peer scaffolding session. During collective scaffolding sessions, representative learners were asked to write their paragraphs on the board. Other students acted as collective, scaffolding solutions to the problems they noticed in the paragraphs written on the board. All of the students were also required to carefully listen to the scaffolds (comments) provided in class, use them to self-revise their first drafts (if applicable), and develop their second drafts. At the end of the term, eight volunteer students were invited to participate in a group interview and their reactions to this technique were elicited. In general, the experience was favored by the interviewees and the challenges reported in previous research regarding pair and small-group scaffolding/collaboration were not expressed by this cohort of EFL learners.

To explore the effectiveness of flipped instruction in influencing second language learning outcomes, the current research investigated the contribution of flipped classrooms of an English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) writing course to Iranian learners’ writing development and writing motivation. In so doing, two intact classes were chosen as the participants (N=43) of this research and they were randomly assigned to a Control Group (N = 18) and an Experimental Group (N = 25). During one semester, the Control Group underwent the traditional writing instruction, while the Experimental Group received a flipped writing instruction. Second Language Writing Motivation Scale (SLWMS) and two timed writing tasks were given to gather the required data. The results demonstrated that the flipped method of teaching was substantially effective in improving the L2 writing performance of the experimental group ( F = 22.20, p = 0.000, partial eta squared = 0.35) . Also, the results indicated that the flipped instruction had a statistically significant effect on learners’ writing motivation ( F = 51.67, p = 0.000, partial eta squared = 0.56) . The findings have remarkable implications for L2 writing methodology.  

Most of the validation studies conducted across varying test application contexts are usually framed within the traditional conceptualization of validity and therefore lack a comprehensive framework to focus on test score interpretations and test score use. This study aimed at developing and validating a collocational behavior test (CBT), drawing on Kane's argument-based approach to validity. Four types of inferences including observation, generalization, extrapolation and explanation were articulated. To verify the validity assumptions, both theoretical and empirical evidence were presented within the formative and summative stages of test development and validation. Followed from Kane, theoretical evidence was sought through test specification, item construction, and test construction procedures. Empirical support, however, was sought through examining the collocational behavior test (CBT) with a sample of 60 university students majoring in TEFL. Ebel’s criteria, KR-21 reliability and a series of Pearson-Product correlation were applied to analyze the data for both theoretical and empirical phases. The findings refer to the support for the assumptions proposed for test validity, suggesting that the collocational behavior test(CBT)may provide an appropriate and accurate indicator of collocational language ability for EFL learners. The implications for language testing and assessment are discussed

In translation, choosing appropriate equivalent is essential to convey the right message from source-text to target-text, and one of the issues that may have a determinative role in appropriate equivalent choice is the semantic prosody (SP) behavior of words and the relation existing between the SP of a word and semantic senses (i.e. negativity, positivity or neutrality) of its collocations in the context. This research explored the impact of Iranian translator trainees' semantic prosody knowledge on the appropriate selection of equivalents in translation. The probable influence of proficiency level or fields of study on the appropriate selection of equivalents with respect to SP was concentrated as well. To fulfill the aims of the study, a translation test including a number of near-synonym pairs with different SPs was administered among participants with different fields of study as well as different proficiency levels. Findings were analyzed based on Sinclair's (1996) hypothesis of SP as well as Stubbs' (1995) model of SP classification. The study showed where there is more than one equivalent of a word in another language, having the knowledge and being aware of the conditions of semantic prosody is necessary to select the appropriate, accurate equivalents and thus to convey the exact message from a source text to the target one. The results also revealed that proficiency level and field of study among language learners can have an influence on choosing appropriate equivalents with respect to SP. The findings of the present study can be beneficial for the instructors and learners in both fields of translation and Teaching English as a Foreign Language to improve equivalent choice appropriateness. Also, this study by highlighting the essential role of semantic prosody in selecting appropriate equivalents can be beneficial to dictionary compilers to include semantic prosody behaviors in the definition and information of words.