درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Given the prevalence of COVID-19 pandemic and consequently the emergence of more online courses throughout the world, exploring teachers’ views about the shift from face-to-face to online environments seems significant. The objective of this study was thus twofold: (a) to investigate the roles EFL teachers take and (b) to determine competencies required to teach online English language courses. Mixed-methods research was conducted, and the participants were 100 MA students of TEFL at Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST). The required data were collected through administering two questionnaires, adapted by the researchers, on online teacher roles and competencies along with two open-ended questions. After carrying out descriptive statistics for the quantitative data and theme-based analysis for the qualitative ones, the results indicated that online teaching roles could be hierarchically ranked as pedagogical, professional, administrative, social, assessment, technological, and researcher. With regard to online teacher competencies, pedagogical, professional, and technological role competencies received the highest mean, while the researcher role competencies gained the lowest one. Pre-service EFL teachers held the view that having knowledge of technology and its use, knowledge of course/content, ability to sustain learners' motivation, online teaching skills, and ability to communicate were other competencies teachers require to fulfill their roles in online English language courses. The findings can provide more insights into how to redesign and map online teacher professional development courses to better prepare potential EFL teachers and boost their quality as online EFL teachers.

The present study investigated the effects of motivational scaffolding on self-determination and learning achievement of field-dependent/independent Iranian EFL learners. To this purpose, quantitative data were elicited and analyzed from 60 intermediate learners who participated in the study as experimental and control groups. The Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT) was administered to categorize the learner participants into field-dependent and field-independent learners. Then, the scaffold design proposed by Belland et al. was presented to the experimental group, while the control group got all tests and questionnaires with no scaffolding. At the end of 8 training sessions, a self-determination questionnaire was administered to both groups, and then a post-test was applied to examine the impact of scaffolding on learners’ achievement. The statistical analysis of the elicited data showed that the learners’ interaction within motivational scaffolding improved their self-determination and their learning achievement. The findings of the study have implications for teachers and learners in educational settings and help them to detect possible factors affecting EFL learners’ language performance.

Reading passages act as the locus of comprehensible input in the English language teaching materials and are mostly followed by a host of activities to ensure the learners’ comprehension. The current study aimed to carry out a comparative evaluation of Vision 3 and Learning to Read (i.e., English for Pre-university Students) in terms of the reading sections. To this end, Freeman’s taxonomy of reading comprehension questions was used. To enrich the quantitative data, thirty-two English teachers were also interviewed. The results revealed the prevalence of Language questions in both textbooks. However, the least common types of questions were Affect and Content in the old and new textbook, respectively. The results of Chi-square tests unfolded a significant difference between the two textbooks in terms of three categories of questions. The analysis of the teachers’ responses corroborated the findings of the quantitative phase. The teachers seemed satisfied with the inclusion of more Affect questions in Vision 3; nevertheless, they believed that the new English textbook needed to be revised in terms of the quantity and quality of reading texts and tasks in order to shape and expand the students’ reading comprehension skills. The findings carry pedagogical implications for the materials developers and English teachers.

Mastery of English phrasal verbs is regarded as a stumbling block for English language learners, even at advanced levels. Possible sources of difficulty can be a lack of clear meaning and the random nature of particles. The lack of an organized approach to present phrasal verbs to the learners might be a factor that could exacerbate the situation of learning them. This study takes this issue as its point of departure. It investigates whether employing radial categories, conceptual categories with one prototypical concept and some peripheral members that are organized around it, is influential in the learning and long-term retention of these verbs. Moreover, the effect of employing radial categories to teach PVs on learners' cognitive load is investigated. For this purpose, 60 intermediate high school students in 10th and 11th grade were assigned to two groups, one experimental and one control group, each containing 30 students. The study results indicated that the experimental group learners who were taught phrasal verbs using radial categories outperformed control group learners who were taught using a traditional approach. This result suggests that radial categories may help facilitate learning phrasal verbs.

The major role of self-directed learning (SDL) in a successful learning at distance education has been confirmed by various studies. Although learners pass General English courses before studying any ESP courses at distance education of Iran, they usually lack the preliminary skills for independent language learning. The current study aimed to explore the effect of self-directed training (SDT) on ESP learners’ self-directed learning readiness (SDLR). Eighty-six B.A students (19 male and 67 female) studying English for Economy and Management at Tabriz Payam-e-Noor University participated in this study. A demographic questionnaire and Guglielmino’s (1978) self-directed learning readiness scale (SDLRS) were implemented to select the participants of the control and experimental groups. The experimental group was provided with SDT in three different stages a) an introduction to SDL, b) SDT workshop, and c) SDT pamphlet. Then, a post-test of SDLRS was given to the two groups. ANCOVA was applied to analyze the data. The results revealed that SDT could enhance ESP learners’ SDLR. The findings imply that an appropriate training is needed to improve learners’ SDLR. Higher levels of SDLR can contribute to a successful ESP learning at Payam-e-Noor University in Iran.

Vocabulary learning is at the heart of language learning and language use. It is what makes the essence of a language. Having it in mind, most of the students always complain about lexical problems, and unfortunately, they are unaware of the different tools, which can help the students to learn vocabulary and improve vocabulary retention. A useful tool for learning and teaching vocabulary is a tool that uses authentic samples to enhance comprehension. Concordancing software is one of these digital tools that enable learners to explore billions of real-world materials. In this regard, the present study was conducted to investigate the actual effect of using this software on vocabulary retention. To gain this purpose, a sample of 54 intermediate female EFL students took part in this study. Participants were randomly assigned to two equal experimental and control groups. Before starting the treatment, the researcher gave the pretest to both groups. Then the treatment sessions were started for both groups, which lasted 12 sessions (4weeks); ten vocabularies were taught in each session and during this time the vocabulary of each lesson was taught by using concordancing software to the experimental group and by using a list of vocabulary to the control group. After the treatment sessions, the posttest was administered to both groups. The results of this comparison proved that the use of concordancing software improved learners' vocabulary knowledge. The outcomes have the potential to affect language learners' performance and teachers' beliefs about the effectiveness of using CALL programs, especially concordancing programs.

Language teaching and language training are integral parts of the educational curriculum in every language centers around the world. Offices, companies, and educational centers should update themselves to keep the current progression and try to help their employees to refresh their minds based on educational development. Hence, this study explored the effectiveness of different in-service training programs on EFL teachers' empowerment concerning two factors: self-efficacy and innovation and creativity held in Khuzestan- Iran. To this end, 30 EFL teachers were selected through convenient sampling related to their experiences in each of the programs- E-learning, Class-based, and Blended ones. The participants were divided into three groups of 10 – Class-based, group A., E-learning, group B., and the experiences of the two classes (A & B), group C.  An interview with 8 open-ended questions was conducted. First, all interviews were transcribed, summarized, categorized, and analyzed. Then, the derived themes were coded and analyzed through content analysis. The findings uncovered that about 80% of the participants leaned to participate in Traditional in-service class (class-based) since it had a great impact on teachers to develop and fortify their educational empowerment. Therefore, policymakers and educational centers should raise their awareness on the notion of teachers' empowerment while emphasizing on, at least, Traditional programs instead of the current E-learning and the blended ones.