درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The current study was conducted to discover the impact of the positive assessment on Iranian pre-intermediate EFL learners speaking skill and their self-efficacy. To accomplish the research, 40 Iranian females (17 to 8 years old) were selected from Shokooh Andishe Language Institute in Mashhad. A KET test which administered to determine the participants’ level of proficiency. Then, they were divided into two groups, one control group and one experimental group (each included 20 participants). Two instruments, including KET speaking test and a self-efficacy questionnaire, were administrated to both groups as pretests. The experimental group received the treatment based on the principles of positive assessment i.e. using phrases such as very good, excellent, giving small gifts, using thrilling labels and so forth. At the end of the study, the same instruments (as post-tests) were conducted to collect the required data for the analysis. To measure the statistical differences between the means of two groups, some independent samples T-tests were calculated. The results of the analyses indicated that the experimental group outperformed the control group both in the case of speaking skill and self-efficacy. The findings of this research might be useful for EFL teachers and EFL learners, also they can be helpful for training programmers, institutes, and course designers.

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. 

This paper reports the study undertaken on types of defense mechanisms used by Iranian EFL teachers. Furthermore, the significant differences between male and female EFL teachers at different age groups in the use of defense mechanisms are also considered. In the first phase of the study, the focus was on identification of defense mechanisms teachers generally adopt in their daily activities, while the second phase was exclusive to the deployment of defense mechanisms inside EFL classes. Accordingly, Defense Style Questionnaire was distributed among 100 EFL teachers. Next, to capture in-class atmosphere, the researchers carried out 30 semi-structured interviews with Iranian EFL teachers. All the participants (15 males and 15 females) were teaching in public schools as well as private institutes at the time of the interview. The results of the questionnaire indicated that teachers used two mature defense mechanisms, namely, anticipation (M=13.8) and rationalization (M=13), in their daily lives more than the others. Nonetheless, the results of the interview denoted the dominance of pseudo- altruistic behaviors (N=30), as a neurotic mechanism, in EFL classes. Sublimation and humor (N=29), as two mature defense mechanisms, were also frequently used. On the other hand, splitting (N=2), passive aggression (N=2), and projection (N=3), all of which are considered to be immature mechanisms, were the least-frequently used mechanisms. Moreover, Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests signified no significant differences in terms of gender and age in the use of defense mechanisms among Iranian EFL teachers.

The study analyzed a corpus of 40 emails of requests composed by Vietnamese students to their university lecturers. The study purpose was to identify politeness strategies composed by Vietnamese students using Brown and Levinson’s model and Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper’s framework as guidelines. To obtain the results, a discourse analysis was implemented. The AnConc software was used as a research tool for the study. 40 emails from 80 students were collected and divided into three types of requestive emails: assistance, confirmation and consideration, and recommendation for data analysis. Syntactical and lexical modifiers were examined and politeness markers were identified manually by the assistance of the AnConc software. The results indicated that Vietnamese students often used status-stating, deferent and solidary politeness strategies to approach their professors for personal requests. While using these three strategies, the target students had to use syntactical and lexical devices such as modals, interrogatives, please, and hedges as speech acts or supportive moves to gain their requestive purposes. The study also identified a common pattern that Vietnamese students liked to use the email corpus in the direction of salutation, self-introduction, requests, reasons for request, and thank compliments. The study has pedagogical implications for language teachers and learners; e.g. email writing should be taught to students, especially ESP students as these students do not know the format and the appropriate language they should use in email composition. Language students should also pay attention to the correct formal form and cultural differences when composing requestive emails delivered to their professors.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many countries all over the world. Most universities and institutions throughout the world offer online instruction to avoid disruptions in education during this global pandemic. This qualitative study investigated Iranian EFL university lecturers’ perspectives toward online instruction during the Coronavirus pandemic. Based on a researcher-developed protocol, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 university lecturers from Karaj and Science and Research Branches of Islamic Azad University, in Karaj and Tehran, Iran, whose teaching experiences ranged from 7 to 27 years, to identify their perspectives toward online instruction during the COVID-19 outbreak. The interviews drew upon emergent methodology to categorize the interviewees’ value-laden comments into four major attitudinal themes, namely,change in pedagogy with four subthemes of online teaching software, synchronous versus asynchronous teaching, benefits of online instruction, and university lecturers’ challenges regarding online instruction; supporting students with two subthemes of establishing rapport and positive relationship with students and student engagement; ethics in online instruction with a subtheme of assessment in an online environment; and the future of online instruction with two subthemes of university lecturers’ suggestions or recommendations regarding online instructionand changes in learning approaches after the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings demonstrated that Iranian EFL university lecturers require professional training on the latest technology updates for online instruction. Further, the adequacy of technological infrastructure and free internet access could facilitate online instruction during the COVID-19 outbreak. Thus, universities and educational organizations are expected to promote the infrastructure and provide a variety of internet access alternatives.  

کیفیت زندگی کاری (QWL) معلمان یک چترواژه است که به میزان رضایت معلم از شغل خود و شرایط کلی کار اشاره دارد که تحت تأثیر سه عامل حمایت سازمانی از جمله مشارکت در تصمیم گیری، انصاف درپاداش و فرصت رشد می باشد (ویلگاس-ریمرز، 2003). مطالعه حاضر رابطه بین حمایت سازمانی درک شده (POS) و QWLرا در بین معلمان دوره متوسطه زبان انگلیسی به عنوان زبان خارجی بررسی کرده است. برای این منظور از روش همبستگی توصیفی استفاده شده است که در آن تعداد 173 معلم شرکت کردند که به روش نمونه گیری خوشه ای چند مرحله ای از بین جمعیتی متشکل از معلمان زبان انگلیسی به عنوان زبان خارجی در مدارس متوسطه ی تهران (N=1826) انتخاب شدند. ابزار گردآوری داده ها شامل پرسشنامه نگرش مبتنی بر مدل POS آلن، آرمسترانگ، رید، و ریمنشنایدر(2008) و همچنین پرسشنامه QWLوالتون (1973) بوده است. برای تجزیه و تحلیل داده ها از روش های همبستگی پیرسون و رگرسیون خطی چندگانه استفاده گردید. رابطه بین POSو QWL0.71 یافت شد. به عبارت دیگر، سه بعد POSمی تواند QWL را 71 درصد تحت تأثیر قرار دهد. به طور خاص، سه بعد مشارکت در تصمیم گیری با 21.4، انصاف درپاداش با 24.7، و فرصت رشد با 64.1 درصد می تواند برای پیش بینی QWL استفاده شود. این یافته ها از آن جهت حائز اهمیت است که نشان می دهد POSبه طور قابل توجهی با QWLمعلمان زبان انگلیسی به عنوان زبان خارجی ارتباط دارد که آن نیز به نوبه خود می تواند بر عملکرد این معلمان در مدارس تأثیر بگذارد.

The study compared the pedagogical effects of early versus delayed Form Focused Instruction (EFFI vs. DFFI), both subsumed under Isolated Form Focused Instruction (IFFI), on the achievement of three target structures with relative degrees of complexity by monolinguals and bilinguals. Six intact Gilaki-Persian learners of English as L3 and six groups of Persian learners of English as L2 participated in the study. They were all male beginning learners of English in Iranian public high schools who followed a pretest-treatment-posttest procedure. Four groups (grade 7) received instruction for the simple structure; four other groups (grade 8) were taught the moderately complex structure and four groups (grade 9) were exposed to the highly complex structure instruction. Within each grade, one group of Gilaki and one group of Persian natives received EFFI while their native counterparts benefited DFFI. The overall results revealed that when the method of instruction was the same, Gilaki natives outperformed Persian natives both in the post and delayed tests regardless of complexity. The groups that received the simple structure via EFFI did better than their native counterparts instructed via DFFI in both the post and delayed tests though a significant difference was only observed in the latter test. In contrast, DFFI groups outperformed their native counterparts taught via EFFI on the fairly and highly complex structures in the post and delayed posttests. Further analysis of the data demonstrated that DFFI contributes better to the durability of gain effects for more complex structures regardless of linguistic background of the learners.

Academic Confidence, Grit and WTC of students play important roles in their second language achievement. This paper examined the role of academic confidence and grit in willingness to communicate of Iranian EFL students in different communicative and educational contexts. To this end, 385 EFL students responded to the relevant questionnaires. The analysis of the data revealed that the students with higher levels of academic confidence and grit had a higher L2 WTC in in-class, out-of-class, and online classrooms. The results also revealed that the students’ grit was a predictor of their L2 WTC in all communicative contexts, and the university students scored the highest, followed by language institute and senior secondary school students. Moreover, academic confidence and grit had significant relationship with L2 WTC of students in senior secondary schools, language institutes and universities. Another finding was that grit was a predictor of all groups’ L2 WTC, while academic confidence predicted L2 WTC of students in language institutes and universities. The results of this study have implications for EFL teachers.

Thanks to the significant achievements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Translation (MT), in general, and Google Translate (GT), in particular, have been extensively used in all facets of life, including language learning. However, faced with a plethora of research evidence on GT’s educational contributions, erroneous translations create disparity regarding its use in language learning. To address this lacuna, the present study systematically reviewed 10 databases, namely, Web of Science, Scopus, ERIC, ScienceDirect, Taylor & Francis Online, Wiley Online Library, SAGE Journals, Springer Link, Springer Open, and DOAJ. Additionally, it hand searched the reference lists of 44 studies selected to be included in the synthesis from database search along with references cited in three previous systematic reviews on similar topics to capture a comprehensive view of the literature related to the use of GT in language learning between 2010-2021. It reviewed 50 studies witnessing a rise in the number of studies in this area. Studies reported that although significant improvements in the quality of GT led to pedagogical gains and more tendency to implement it in language learning, instructors still distrust it. Accordingly, this research provides pedagogical implications and suggests avenues for future research on the use of GT in language learning.     

Changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have tremendously affected different aspects of education and have shifted the traditional face-to-face approaches to online learning. As a non-innovative mode of learning, online teaching and learning have created a new cultural ambiance since teachers and students have to change shortly. The present study draws upon the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework combining teaching, social, and cognitive presences to explore students’ online learning experiences. It aims to assess the interrelationship among presences of CoI and find out which presence is a major factor influencing cognitive presence. A total of 207 university students participated in this study. Data was collected using the Community of Inquiry Survey Instrument and quantitatively analyzed through Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) and descriptive statistics.The obtained results indicated that teaching, social, and cognitive presences are correlated, and social presence has a significant impact on students’ learning process. This has a wider implication for online teachers to create more activities and motivate the students to communicate and participate openly in social interaction.  

Cognitive appraisal of individuals directs to the creation of an emotional response, which is related to emotional intelligence. The present study shows the presence of induced emotions as an unrelated factor on the construct of a TOEFL iBT reading test which can interplay with emotional intelligence for regulating the induced emotions towards reading passages. The present participants were 393 Iranian EFL TOEFL iBT candidates. The present researchers detected induced emotions based on PANAS before and after reading the three selected passages of a TOEFL iBT reading section. Also, emotional intelligence was detected by Schutte Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Test after reading the selected passages. Our results confirmed this hypothesis statistically by reporting that induced emotion from the passages of the selected TOEFL iBT test has a significant effect on emotional intelligence. This study found that if test developers provide a condition for test-takers to activate their emotional intelligence, they might control the induced emotion as the construct-irrelevant variable during reading.