درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

If the target of foreign language teaching is to use the language, communicative language teaching (CLT) seems to be an ideal teaching model. The goal of teaching with this method is to use the language as a medium of communication (Adi, 2012).The application of the communicative approach in teaching English as a foreign language, however, is associated with some problems that can cause the method turn out not to be so much successful and the learning outcome not to be efficient enough. This paper mainly intended to evaluate the problems that may lead to the failure of communicative language teaching in EFL contexts and some possible solutions for such problems. Awareness of these problems and the possible remedies can be helpful for both EFL teachers and learners, providing them with insightful ideas about how to manage their teaching and learning activities for the successful implementation of this method.

There is controversy on the conditions under which cooperative learning methods can improve academic achievement. Group-specific motivational aspects might contribute to the effectiveness of cooperative learning among which classroom goal structures were focused on. More specifically, the study aimed at investigating the efficiency of cooperative writing technique through performance versus mastery-oriented classroom goal structures in improving academic writing of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. To this end, 83 intermediate EFL learners took part in this quasi-experimental pretest, post-test study. The participants were required to write a 5-paragraph essay for pretest and post-test. The collected data was analyzed based on an analytic writing rubric (Hedgcock & Leftkowitz, 1992). The results of one-way ANOVA tests indicated that the experimental group which practiced cooperative writing through performance goal orientation outperformed the individual and mastery-oriented classes. It was concluded that performance goal orientation, between-groups competition, and extrinsic motivation, can help EFL teachers in setting a more effective classroom structure for cooperative writing practices to improve the writing proficiency of L2 learners.

The present study intended to design some materials based on the guidelines of González Davies (2004) for ‘legal texts and correspondence translation’ course of graduate students majoring in translation studies. To this end, first a checklist on the basis of Gentry and Gable's (2001) model was designed to find out the participants’ perceptions of the tasks. Next, the researchers designed related tasks based on Gonzales Davies’ (2004) guidelines inspired by Kiraly’s (2000) constructivist approach. In the third phase, the participants were given the designed tasks published in a book during10-12 sessions. Finally, the researchers held a semi-structured interview with the participants to find out their perceptions towards classroom activities as well as their translation ability. The results indicate that the participants had positive perceptions regarding the designed tasks. The findings have implications for translation classroom courses.

Although FLIP learning has been used as an effective face-to-face and online learning pedagogy, there is a scarcity of research on students' English speaking skill using FLIP learning in these two modalities. Therefore, this study set out to investigate the effect of face-to-face vs. online FLIP learning on the speaking skill of lower-intermediate Iranian university EFL learners. The study was quasi-experimental with 32 participants (18 female and 14 male) whose homogeneity in terms of language proficiency at lower-intermediate level was assured through the administration of Oxford Placement Test. Then, the participants were randomly assigned to two experimental groups, both of which took the pretest and posttest of speaking. One group participated in face-to-face FLIP classroom and the other one took part in online FLIP context using Adobe Connect. The findings revealed that using FLIP learning significantly improved the speaking skill of the two groups since the participants of both groups performed more successfully on the post-test as compered to the pre-test. The findings also indicated that the face-to-face FLIP learning participants outperformed the online FLIP learning participants. This means that using face-to-face FLIP learning in which the students had face-to-face interactions had a positive effect on their speaking skill more effectively.

Although previous studies have shown the benefits of graphic organizers in improving learners' vocabulary knowledge, scant attention has been paid to the possible differences in the effect of individually-developed, cooperatively-developed, and teacher-developed graphic organizers on intermediate L2 learners' vocabulary knowledge. The present study addressed this topic by examining 80 intermediate language learners. The participants were selected based on convenience sampling procedure and studied English in four classes. The learners in the conventional group received the translation/definition of the lexical items. Those in the teacher-generated were provided with the graphic organizers prepared by their teacher, and the participants in the other two groups made the graphic organizers either individually or cooperatively. The researchers employed Vocabulary Knowledge Scale as the pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test to examine the participants' vocabulary knowledge. The findings of this study indicated that the mean scores of the control group in the immediate and delayed post-tests were significantly lower than those of all graphic organizer groups. In addition, the cooperatively-generated graphic organizer group was significantly more successful than learner and teacher-generated graphic organizer groups, but there was no difference between the learner and teacher-generated groups.

Despite the determining role of culture-bound materials in the enhancement of EFL learners’ productive skills, a scarcity of investigation on the influence of culture-oriented content on their productive skills is staunchly perceived. This gap can be partly filled by implementing Content Based Language Teaching (CBLT) program which contrives the EFL content especially in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classrooms. In this respect, a culture-oriented EAP course book was designed based on Tomlinson’s (2001) materials development framework. A total of 100 participants were recruited according to their language proficiency results, and were fractionated into two productive EAP task groups embracing Oral Presentation and Systematic Writing as the two befitting techniques to strengthen productive skills. After practicing and teaching the developed course book in each class in twenty treatment sessions, the participants were given a posttest. Correspondingly, a paired samples t-test indicated that culture-oriented content affected the EFL students’ speaking and writing skills separately. Similarly, an independent samples t-test revealed the influence of culture-oriented content on their speaking skill than the writing skill. The findings suggest the significance of the first culture as the benchmark for incorporating second culture contents in EFL teaching arenas.

Visual literacy (VL), despite its significance, has not received deserved attention in EFL classes in Iran. Addressing this pedagogic and research lacuna, the researchers integrated VL practices into a General English course attended by female university learners, and examined the vision competencies developed by them. The analysis of the data collected through class observation, learner documents, and semi-structured interviews revealed that the learners developed the vision competencies regarding compositional, affective, and critical dimensions of visuals. It is hoped that the findings of this small-scale study encourage language planners, materials developers, and English teachers to pay heightened attention to the visuals’ potential and open more spaces for VL development in their curricula, materials, and language teaching practices. 

Recently translation researchers have endeavored to adopt new directions in the current translation quality assessment (TQA) approaches. To this end, they made them more congruent with the desired requirements of a translator’s competence, especially considering the latest paradigm shifts, including ideological skewing and localization (Tiselius & Hild, 2017). Thus, such frameworks as Angelelli’s (2009) definition of translation competence (TC), as the study’s theoretical framework, need to be improved. An attempt was made in this study to design a rubric based on the proposed TQA model representing the TC construct with its comprehensive sub-components and finally, to test its applicability to the Persian translation of The Catcher in the Rye . The assessment procedure through which the obtained results were textually analyzed based on the proposed rubric specifically for each sub-component, revealed the inadequacy of the translation quality on the whole and the underlying implications of the rubric’s applicability to other translation products.                                                                                                                                                                   

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.  

Learning in every context is influenced by the social factors such as the people with whom the learners are communicating in that specific learning environment. As the role that social factors can potentially play in the process of education seems not to have been explored comprehensively in the field of English language teaching, in general, and in the Iranian educational context, in particular, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the impact of both social goals and achievement goals on emotional, behavioral, and cognitive engagement, in an academic context. The participants of the study consisted of 302 undergraduate students (88 females, 206 males, 8 unspecified), majoring in English literature at two state universities and two private universities in Iran. The data were collected through one questionnaire consisting of items relating to different types of social goals and various types of engagement. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Regression Analysis were conducted to analyze the data. The results of CFA confirmed the validity of such goals in our context. Also, regression analysis showed that mastery goals, social status goals, and social concern goals predicted variance in different facets of engagement.

The interdependency between education and psychology has been valued for a long time and the educational psychology as an interdisciplinary field reconciling these two disciplines has been introduced to the field of teacher education. However, theoretically present in teacher training programs, the practical ways of applying educational psychology has not gained enough attention. The interviews with 21 Iranian EFL teachers and educators reveal that those teachers start their career after doing a teacher education course, do not have enough awareness to deal with learners’ cognitive and emotional problems. Therefore, the researchers tried to put psychological theories into practice through assigning some mini-action research during the teacher education courses. To check the effectiveness of the method, two groups (experimental and control) were selected and then their awareness of psychological issues while reflecting on their teaching process were compared after the treatment. The qualitative findings of the study indicate that the method was successful in increasing pre-service teachers’ psychological awareness towards language teaching. The method is beneficial for those designing and planning teacher education courses.

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.