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The present study aimed to explore the impact of teaching critical thinking skills through applying debate on the use of communicative strategies. At first 60 intermediate students were selected and placed in two homogenous groups of control and experimental through passing Nelson test. Then, a critical thinking appraisal was run to the two groups both before and after the treatment. The treatment that experimental group received during the term was 10 sessions of debate as a classroom activity. The analysis of the collected data exhibited significant difference between the two groups concerning critical thinking skill. The results showed that the subjects in experimental group were oriented toward critical thinking. In a subsequent stage, the subjects were asked to write a story in English based on a series of related pictures. Then, the number of communicative strategies including achievement and reduction ones were counted carefully. A t-test was run to find whether the differences between the two groups regarding the use of such strategies were significant or not. The results revealed that the subjects in experimental group used more achievement strategies. Concerning the use of reduction strategies by the two groups no significant difference was found.

A sustained, school-based approach that offers in-service EFL teachers opportunities for collaboration in creating an environment that promotes their capacity-building and instructional growth is necessary for their professional growth. This study aimed to contribute to the growing body of research on the effect of distributed leadership in teacher professional learning. Specifically, this study scrutinized the connection between distributed leadership and professional learning of teachers, focusing on the mediating role of teacher agency. A cross-sectional survey design was applied, collecting data from 458 teachers in Iran. Teacher Professional Learning Scale, Teacher Agency Scale, and Distributed Leadership Scale were completed by them. Structural equation modelling was run to analyze the relationship between variables. The findings revealed a minimal direct relationship between distributed leadership and the professional learning of teachers, with teacher agency acting as a major mediating factor. These results contribute to existing research by suggesting that distributed leadership may not have a substantial direct effect on teacher learning, but rather indirectly improves teacher agency.

This study explores the relationship and interconnections between EFL teachers’ beliefs and their motivational practices in the classroom. The present study combined qualitative and quantitative methods of research. First, the motivational practices of 30 teachers in two private language schools in Tehran were explored with a classroom observation instrument, the Motivation Orientation of Language Teaching (MOLT) which was used to estimate the time that teachers spent for each motivational strategy. Then, teachers’ beliefs were examined through the Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) and an open-ended questionnaire aimed to assess beliefs about motivational strategies. The quantitative results indicated that the higher the teachers’ scores on the BALLI, the less frequently their use of motivational strategies in the classroom. The findings based on qualitative data, drawing largely on data from observations and the open-ended questionnaire, showed that although teachers were observed to generally follow their beliefs, there existed several points of difference between their beliefs and practices. Also, there was evidence that what teachers practice in the classrooms does not always impact their beliefs.

Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) assume different roles amongst which is leadership. To lead effectively, they need to possess some significant awareness of the language in order to adequately respond to learners’ needs. One domain of awareness is the ability to distinguish between structurally similar, yet semantically different structures. This study set out to assess ESL teachers’ level of semantic awareness in view of establishing their readiness to meet learners’ needs within their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The Follow-up Explanatory Research Design was used. Data on the cognitions of ESL teachers were elicited from a questionnaire survey while a test was used to quantify ESL teachers’ language awareness levels in the domain of semantics. The quantitative data from the test were analyzed using frequencies and simple percentages while the qualitative data were analyzed using the framework of Content Analyses. The findings reveal that though ESL teachers overestimate the level of their knowledge base in components that have a bearing on semantics awareness, a majority of them do not wield beyond a fundamental level of awareness as concerns applying that knowledge to differentiate the meanings of structurally similar pairs of sentences. It is therefore crucial for English language pre-service and in-service teacher training to seek ways of enhancing the professional knowledge base of ESL teachers especially in domains that are critical to establishing differences between pairs of sentences that tend to be similar.

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.

Lesson plan is a written description of education process in which it is shown what, when, where and with which method learners should learn and how they should be assessed. Lesson plan is one of the key factors in the educational process. According to the literature available, unfortunately few studies have been conducted on this issue in the context of Iran. Therefore, the effect of EFL teachers' attitudes towards lesson planning on improving teaching process seems to be neglected to some extent. With regard to this gap, the present study was an attempt to survey 93 English teachers' views concerning lesson plan at secondary high schools and institutions. Participants in this study answered a Modified Questionnaire, adopted from Ramaila et al. (2014). This Questionnaire was used to measure teachers' attitudes towards lesson planning and the degree of educational differences among them. Data analysis was done by utilizing descriptive statistics and T-test. The results showed that English teachers agreed with utilizing lesson plan. No significant difference was observed among teachers' views concerning the given variable. The findings revealed that due to the importance of lesson plan, holding specialized workshops may provide information for developing better course plans.

In this study, challenges in the translation of Islamic Shi’a texts of practical laws were investigated. The English translations of the books of Islamic laws written according to three Iranian Twelver Shi’a mujtahids namely, Grand Ayatollah Wahid Khorasani, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, and Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi were examined. Next, the culture-bound terms concerning practical laws of religion in the three English translations were looked at to see what kinds of procedures have been used by different translators and which procedure(s) is/are the most frequent one(s). The results of this study indicated that the challenges found in the translation of Islamic law texts could be classified into two groups: lexical challenges and structural challenges. Moreover, it was found out that the main challenges include Islamic words, culture-specific items, units of measurement, common words with uncommon meanings, fixed expressions, and modal verbs. In addition, it was found that the translators of these texts have used six procedures more than others and those are transliteration, literal translation, cultural equivalent, functional equivalent, descriptive equivalent and recognized translation. The analysis of examples in this research suggests that among all procedures, the translator, in most cases, has used transliteration and literal translation to cope with the lexical gap.

The study investigated the impacts of motivational scaffolding as one of the most effective instructional procedures on self-efficacy and learning achievement of field-dependent and field-independent English language learners. This study attempted to use both qualitative and quantitative data to get more reliable results. As qualitative part, 15 teachers in a semi-structured interview, and as quantitative part, two groups of learners participated as experimental and control groups. Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire was used to determine students' self-efficacy. The Group Embedded Figures Test was administered to categorize them into groups of field-dependent and field-independent. To determine proficiency level, a pre-test and a post-test were used. As treatment, eight sessions of Bandura’s training were administered to improve self-efficacy. Analysis of the qualitative data was conducted using content analysis, and as quantitative analysis, two-way Multivariate Analysis of Variance was conducted. The results showed that learners’ interacting within motivational scaffolding improved their self-efficacy and their learning achievement, and there is no significant difference between learners in the dimensions of field-dependent, field-independent. The findings have implications for teachers and learners in educational settings to detect some factors affecting the English language learners’ language performance and their psychological status.