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Classroom assessment practices play an important role in increasing students' learning. These practices are also key to the success of curriculum reforms. In line with this importance, the current study aimed to explore Iranian EFL teachers' classroom assessment practices following the new curriculum reform introduced in 2011. It also examined whether there were differences in teachers' practices based on variables such as gender, teaching experience, and educational degree through qualitative and quantitative approaches. A total of 28 EFL teachers at public high schools from three provinces in Iran (Lorestan, Kermanshah, and Ilam) participated in the semi-structured interviews. After transcribing the interviews, recurrent themes were identified by thematic analysis. The results revealed that English teachers used primarily assessment for learning or formative assessment, yet their assessments were still exam-based. The frequency of assessment practices indicated that oral questioning during instruction (60.7%), test after each lesson or unit of lesson (50%), written exams (35.7%), and group activity (32.1%) were the most frequently used assessment practices among teachers. The findings revealed that there is a discrepancy between teachers' classroom assessment practices and the curriculum reform. Across gender, there was a significant difference between participants in terms of role play, assigning summaries of lessons, and playing audio files. Regarding teaching experience and academic degree, there was no significant difference between participants. The findings would have implications for teacher education programs and EFL teachers.Key Words: Classroom assessment; EFL teachers; Formative assessment; Practices

This paper reports a study which investigated if there was a match between students’ English vocabulary size and the vocabulary load of a locally produced textbook. The analysis of the passages of the pre-university English textbook currently in use in Iran’s education system using RANGE program indicated that in order to comprehend the texts, students need to know not only words from 2000 high frequency word list, but also words from academic and low frequency lists. On the other hand, results of the 2000 vocabulary level test administered to 464 Iranian pre-university students, male and female, showed that students did not possess sufficient vocabulary knowledge in order to comprehend the texts and that their vocabulary knowledge was limited far below 2000 words. Other analyses of the textbook, including exercises and word glosses provided more evidence for the inadequacy of the textbook. The paper concludes that the pre-university textbook is flawed in terms of the required principles and standards in materials development which results in students’ frustration and disappointment in learning English. The findings of the study are discussed, which should be of much interest to local and international ELT stakeholders, especially textbook writers.

Flipped classroom establishes a framework for personalized education tailored to students’ individual needs by incorporating simple technologies of audio/video recordings into instruction. Considering the challenges General English (GE) students and instructors face such as time limitation, students’ low motivation and diverse learning preferences, there seems to be an urgent need for studies on flipped learning. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of flipped classrooms on Iranian EFL learners’ learning outcome in a GE course. As such, fifty students of engineering majors in two intact classes participated in the study and were assigned to a control (n=25) and an experimental (n=25) group. The experimental group received instruction in line with the principles of flipped learning while the control group was taught using the conventional method. The participants’ level of learning outcome was measured before and after the treatment by an achievement test consisting of two parts: grammar and vocabulary. The data were analyzed by Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA). The results revealed a significant difference between the two groups’ performance on the achievement post-test in general and in its two sections (grammar and vocabulary) in favor of the experimental group. Further analysis showed that the effect size for the intervention was large (ηp 2=.19>.14) for general learning outcome; however, as for the components of the achievement test, the effect size was found to be large for vocabulary section (ηp 2=.16>.14) and middle for the grammar section (ηp 2=.134<.14), respectively. Possible interpretations of the findings are discussed and certain implications and applications for GE instructors and materials developers are suggested.      

Iran Language Institute (ILI) plays a crucial role in teaching English in Iran and offers a comprehensive Teacher Training Course (TTC) for the teachers before their being employed. Still, these teachers encounter difficulties in different areas, but there are few studies investigating the teaching challenges of EFL teachers teaching at ILI. Thus, this study investigated the teaching challenges of newly-hired and experienced teachers, teaching at different age levels. The data were gathered data through 100 classroom observation forms belonging to 18 kids’ teachers, 47 young-adults’ teachers, and 35 adults’ teachers (69 experienced and 31 newly-hired). We also interviewed with 5 kids’ teachers, 5 young-adults’ teachers, and 6 adults’ teachers. It was revealed that young-adults’ teachers faced fewer challenges than kids’ and adults’ teachers. Besides, experienced teachers encountered fewer problems than newly-hired teachers. The results of the observation forms were different from the interviews. However, time management was the only problem which was mentioned in the interviews, observation forms, and different age levels. According to the teachers, the reason behind these challenges was the intensive syllabus, old books and videos, and teachers’ having to follow a series of fixed teaching steps.

This study is an attempt to evaluate certain areas of the Iranian ESP program through the lens of its immediate stakeholders, i.e. policy implementers, authors, teachers and learners. Using questionnaires, interviews and classroom observations through a quantitative-qualitative mixed-method design, the collected data were analyzed. The results of the study indicate that the program is suffering from lack of systematic observation and evaluation policy, and its stakeholders especially in the users’ strand are not satisfied with the program’s current status, goal, methodology and textbooks. The origin of the problems and dissatisfaction in the program was found to have varying shares from different sources. Contextual factors, improper policies, unprincipled teaching methodology, and old fashioned spiritless textbooks were found and concluded to have their impeding roles in the Iranian ESP program achievement and satisfaction. The findings of the present research are hoped to provide the concerned communities in both strand of providers and users with clear insights around the common flaws and drawbacks in the program along with possible clues for the program improvement.

The promotion of language assessment literacy (LAL) among teachers and assessment developers has been deadly called and emphasized by professionals and scholars in the field of language assessment. In line with this urgent call for research, the present study sets out to investigate the EFL teachers’ literacy assessment with the aim of bringing modifications for teacher education reforms. To meet the objectives of the study, a total of 200 EFL teachers (N=88, with a TEFL background and N=112, with a non-TEFL background) with B.A. (N=125) and M.A. (N= 75) degrees were selected through stratified random sampling at high schools of West Azerbaijan Province, Iran. The required data were gathered using Plake, Impara, and Fager’s (1993) Teacher Assessment Literacy Scale (TALS). Hence, the participants’ knowledge concerning components of assessment literacy (AL) was sought for. A multivariate analysis of variances (MANOVA) was run and the results, in general, revealed that the participants were not significantly familiar with assessment literacy principles and procedures. Specifically, the results indicated that EFL teachers with a TEFL background and those with a non-TEFL background differed in terms of their assessment literacy competence, especially in terms of their perceptions of AL components. The implications of the findings for teacher education programs, teacher educators and EFL teachers are discussed and some suggestions for further research are offered.

In this study, corpus-based techniques were utilized in order to investigate the quantitative and qualitative features of adjectives across literary and technical texts. The corpus was composed of five literary novels and five engineering academic books in English. Seventy paragraphs were randomly drawn from each corpus and the frequency distribution of adjectives with respect to their position (attributive, predicative) and syntactic functions (descriptive, verbal, numeral, etc.) were tallied and summed. The results revealed that there is a significant difference in the frequency use of adjectives across the two corpora. From a register perspective, the high frequently use of adjectives in technical texts in comparison to literary texts (67.3% and 32.7%, respectively) may be due to the fact that almost all technical texts employ “expository” linguistic features which have a generally “informational purpose”, while most novels employ “narrative’’ linguistic features which have a direct functional association with the communicative purpose of telling a story of events which have occurred in the past. From a genre perspective, academic texts in engineering tend to be highly informational, non-narrative, and characterized by an impersonal style, whereas novels generally share the same primary communicative purpose of narrating a story whose purpose is to entertain.

AbstractThis study aims to highlight the key roles played by metacognitive strategies training in the development of listening comprehension skill and self-regulation strategies of EFL learners. The participants of this study (N = 60) were female Iranian students assigned to two groups of experimental and control in Kish English Language Institute. Learners in the experimental group received 6-week instruction on the listening metacognitive strategies, while those in the control group received no strategy instruction. Four instruments were used in this study: a pretest of listening comprehension, Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ), Academic Self-Regulated Learning Scale (A-SRL-S), and a posttest on listening comprehension. The analysis of the data revealed that metacognitive listening strategies training improved the listening performance of the learners in the experimental group compared to those in the control group. It also showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups in the use of problem-solving, planning-evaluation, mental translation, and personal knowledge strategies. The results also showed that learning metacognitive strategies helped language learners to regulate their use of self-evaluation, organizing, goal-setting, seeking assistance, environmental structuring, and responsibility strategies. Additionally, regression analyses demonstrated that self-regulation strategies accounted for 37% of variance in the EFL learners’ listening comprehension, while metacognitive listening strategies accounted for 6 % of the variance. The findings of this study suggested that (a) listening metacognitive strategies training can have benefits on listening skill development, increase use of self-regulatory and metacognitive strategies, (b) learners who used more metacognitive strategies revealed a high level of self-regulation strategies use.

Recent research on second language (L2) motivation emphasizes the significant role of personal vision and future-oriented self images on L2 learners’ motivation. This role is even more important in EFL contexts where learners have scarce access to authentic communicative situations. Therefore, EFL learners’ capacity to form vivid images can have an essential role in enhancing their motivation to learn. This article reports on a research study that investigated the potential links among Iranian EFL learners’ imagery capacity, sensory styles, gender and future L2 self-guides (ideal L2 self and ought-to L2 self). A total of 311 adult Iranian EFL learners responded to a self-report questionnaire. Several correlation, multiple regression and t-tests were performed to analyze the data. The results revealed a significant association between EFL learners’ imagery capacity and their future L2 self-guides. The findings show that higher ability at generating mental images is strongly related to improved future L2 self-guides and increased motivation. Also, the results demonstrate that both visual and auditory sensory styles are involved in forming imagery and vision, and are both positively associated with EFL learners’ capability for imagining their future L2 self-guides. However, the analyses failed to find any significant connection between kinesthetic style and imagery capacity or L2 self-guides. Additionally, it was shown that self-guides, sensory styles and imagery capacity are not affected by gender. The results indicate the multisensory nature of vision and imply the potential benefits of visualization and imagery training in the language classroom.

Academic literacy is a transformative approach to EAP studies that highlight the backgrounds and needs of the EAP learners in order to empower them by participating in the social practices of the international research community. From this perspective, EAP textbook development research aims to find how textbooks could empower EAP learners though considering their real needs. Accordingly , this study aims to find how EAP textbooks match/mismatch with the EAP learners’ needs. The sample of the study included 40 participants who were selected through purposeful homogeneous sampling. All participants who had passed ‘English for the Students of Science (ESS)’ as the main textbook of the EAP course completed a structured interview questionnaire that its findings were gone under content analysis and a nonparametric test of rankings themes, i.e. Friedman test. Then textbook was evaluated in terms of the established frameworks. Finally, identified themes of the interviews were compared with the content of the textbook evaluation. Findings of the study showed that EAP learners prioritized reading, writing, listening, and speaking English language skills respectively as the main language needs in the EAP community of practice. The study also found that although the design of the EAP textbook matched learners’ needs at the macro-level of needs analysis, there was little enough evidence in the content of the book that could support and match these EAP learners’ needs. The findings might have many implications for EAP textbook developers, learners, and teachers. 

The increasing use of computer-based mode in language testing raises concern over its similarities with and differences from paper-based format. The present study aimed to delineate discrepancies between TOEFL PBT and CBT. For that objective, a quantitative method was employed to probe into scores equivalence, the performance of male-female participants, the relationship between completion time and test score, and test mode’s effects on participants’ performance. Totally, 124 undergraduates partook in the current research whose ages ranged from 19 – 21 years (M = 20, SD = .66). To analyze the data, MANOVA, Pearson correlation, and regression tests were run. The findings uncovered that: (1) PBT and CBT were equivalent in scores; (2) male and female’s scores were not significantly different; (3) there was a moderately negative correlation between completion time and score; (4) computer familiarity, habit in using computers, and perception toward CBT did not affect performance in TOEFL. For researchers, the implication of this study concerns the interchangeability of the two-test modes. For CBT test designers, it concerns the appropriate inclusion of visuals, time related measurement, and procedures to design computer-based tests.