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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.

One of the important issues in EFL instruction is the idea of eliminating students’ linguistic errors through providing corrective feedback (CF). Accordingly, this study investigated the effect of various CF types (i.e., comprehensive, selective, and no feedback) on advanced EFL learners’ writing in different writing conditions (i.e., individual & collaborative). 132 EFL advanced learners aged from 14-20 were considered as the main participants. Learners were divided into 6 groups (i.e., three individual and three collaborative writing conditions). Furthermore, each writing condition included three groups with selective, comprehensive, and no correction orientations. Data collection tools and procedures encompassed an institutionalized Placement Test, pre-test, and post-test. The treatment that lasted for nine sessions was followed by a post-test. Data were submitted to a series of ANOVA tests with follow up pair-wise comparisons and independent-samples t-tests. Findings indicated that: (1) CF, especially selective one, was more effective in enhancing learners’ writing accuracy, and (2) members of the collaborative writing groups outperformed those in the individual ones in terms of their writing accuracy development. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed in relation to enhancing writing accuracy of the learners.

The changing culture toward multimodality enforces acquiring visual literacy in every aspect of today’s modern life. One of the fields intermingled with using various modes in different variations is language teaching and learning, especially for and by young learners. Young language learners’ (5-12 years old) lack of world experience forces them to make the most use of non-verbal modes of communication to receive and send the intended message, enhanced in foreign language learning environment. As a result, the language teacher him/herself will be supposed to be armed with visual literacy of this new language and to have the ability to successfully transmit this knowledge to the students. The present study aims to investigate whether the three focused factors in educational semiotics; namely, Process of abduction, Principle of kinesics, and Proxemics- proposed by Sert (2006) exist in the curriculum of Iranian pre-service language teachers in one of the educational districts in Isfahan. By distributing two questionnaires among TTC course instructors and pre-service teachers, and obtaining the percentage of the analyzed data, the findings showed that the number of institutes which focus on the matter are rare. Also, it was revealed that the pre-service teachers, majoring in English Language, performed better in terms of realizing the meaning of body language units and comparing and contrasting them (principle of abduction). The results will be useful for future teachers and their educational curriculum in favor of enhancing the fifth language skill, foreign language visual literacy.

Teacher professional identity is widely acknowledged as a multi-dimensional dynamic evolving concept contributing to teachers’ self-perception about their professional roles. This qualitative study aimed to explore how different instructional settings of teaching English as a foreign language in Iran impacted on teachers’ professional identities in a comparative way. To this end, 25 English teachers from public schools and private institutes of Kerman were interviewed to collect data and to examine how teachers conceptualize themselves at schools and institutes. All 25 participants (13 school teachers and 12 institute teachers) had a BA degree in English. Data analysis revealed that teachers of public schools had comprehended, strong, and thick initial professional identity in comparison to those teaching in private institutes. However, such an ideal professional identity was more vulnerable to professional identity shock that resulted from the discrepancy between initial professional identity arisen from pre-service training programs and an emergent one derived from the identity-in-practice in class life. In terms of preparation to teach, the findings showed that the teachers of public schools had more extended viewpoints towards teaching and its significance. Moreover, they believed that their identity influenced the teaching profession while the institute teachers believed in teaching influence on their identity that provided evidence for the variable nature of teacher professional identity resulting from parallel interconnections of different macro and micro factors leading to its steady reinterpretation and reshaping. Keywords: dyna

Writing a book review is an instance of evaluative academic writing where the writer is involved in an interaction with the author and the reader, evaluates the viewpoints stated in the book and voices his own position and stance in a dialogue with the reader. Working within the framework of Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal Theory as an effective tool for studying the essential resources employed in this interaction and evaluation, the present study examined 60 book reviews from the Humanities academic journals written by native male and female writers, and tried to investigate the type and frequency of the three Appraisal categories (Attitude, Engagement, Graduation). The findings indicate that both writer groups made extensive use of these resources in their writings. However, the male book review writers exceeded the female writers in all the three categories. In addition, the Attitude resources were used the most and The Engagement resources were the least employed resources. The implications of the study for teaching writing skills and developing materials and tasks for writing courses at academic levels are mentioned in detail

Berzonsky (1990) conceptualized three social-cognitive components of the identity process: an informational or scientific style, normative or dogmatic style, and a diffuse or ad hoc style. Despite the importance of this concept, no previous studies have been conducted to develop and validate the IPS scale to measure this construct as it relates to the EFL settings. Accordingly, the present study aimed at developing and validating a measure that could assess IPS in the EFL context of Iran. To this end, a sequential mixed methods design was conducted in two phases. In the qualitative phase, the researchers reviewed related literature and conducted semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews with EFL teachers in order to seek out the EFL teachers' perspectives regarding what shapes their identity processing styles. Next, the researchers used the principles of data analysis of the grounded theory to analyze data. Then, seven sub-components were initially identified that constitute the Iranian version of identity processing styles model, namely, informational style (analytical/rational thinking), normative style (personal norm thinking, social norm thinking, and religious thinking), and diffuse-avoidant style (pessimistic thinking and optimistic thinking). Finally, to measure the EFL teachers’ identity processing styles, 42 five-point Likert scale items were developed. Then, the newly-developed instrument was completed by 203 EFL teachers in higher education contexts. In the quantitative phase, the IPS scale was tested through different statistical procedures included confirmatory factor analysis and Cronbach alpha for reliability. Finally, statistical results were discussed and implications and applications of the study were explained.

The present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between metacognitive reading strategies, reading self-efficacy, and reading comprehension of Iranian EFL learners. The participants were 119 Iranian B.A and M.A students majoring in English at Imam Khomeini International University and Islamshahr Azad University. A Michigan Test of English language Proficiency was given to the participants to determine their language proficiency and reading comprehension. Then, they were asked to respond to the two questionnaires of MARSI (Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory), and RSEQ (Reading Self-Efficacy Questionnaire). To analyze the data, multiple regression analyses and correlation procedures were used. The results revealed a significant relationship between the use of reading strategies and reading comprehension. Also, a significant relationship was found between the use of reading strategies and reading self-efficacy. Moreover, the findings showed a positive relationship between reading self-efficacy and reading comprehension of Iranian EFL learners. The results of this study may have implications for teachers, learners, and materials developers.

Authenticity has always been the concern of test developers in the history of second language assessment. This study was an attempt to investigate the authenticity of the present researchers' innovative idea of “Language Town” as a method for assessing learners’ speaking ability. To this end, a simulated town was designed like a real town in an outdoor space of about 400 square meters. The participants in this study were 31 undergraduate students of Translation Studies at Jahrom University who were taking the 4-credit course of Conversation 2. First, the students’ speaking ability was measured based on the IELTS testing system. Then each student was sent to the Language Town with a few definite missions determined in advance by the teacher; e.g. ordering food in the restaurant, depositing/withdrawing money in a bank, etc. Using IELTS band descriptors, each student’s speaking ability was measured by two raters in both tests. Then the correlation between the two sets of scores obtained from the IELTS test and the one in the Language Town were calculated. Using open-ended questions, a survey was also conducted to extract the students’ attitudes towards the Language Town. The results of the statistical analyses showed a weak correlation (0.36) between the two sets of scores. The survey also revealed that almost all the students were interested in and had positive views towards Language Town as an authentic method of assessment. A Virtual Language Town (VLT) could be a solution to the practicality problems of the Language Town.

Circulation of scientific discoveries occurs in various discourse communities. Adopting an audience-oriented view of writing (Hyland, 2010) and drawing on the appraisal theory (Martin & White, 2005), the current study aimed to explore the evaluative strategies psychologists would use to share their specialist knowledge with scholarly and non-scholarly readers. To this end, a corpus of 38 academic research articles and 38 popularized science articles from the archive of an English international refereed journal, Current Psychology , and two English popularized magazines, Newsweek and New Scientist , were analyzed in terms of attitude resources of appraisal, namely appreciation, affect, and judgment . The results of the study revealed that palpable degrees of persuasion were achieved through including certain attitude elements in both corpora despite no statistically significant difference. The results debunked the myth of objectivity in academic discourse and disclosed the psychology experts’ appealing to persuasive tools for convincing the specialist and non-specialists of the truth value of their research outcomes. The findings carry pedagogical implications for English for the students of psychology courses. Indeed, future psychologists need to get familiar with the common discursive strategies to address their intended audience in academic and non-academic settings.