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The expansion of mobile wireless technology into education in recent decades has offered an incredible opportunity to design learning differently and to enhance students' learning experiences that extend beyond the typical teacher-led classrooms. Following the outbreak of COVID-19 and the subsequent closure of educational institutions around the world, distance/mobile learning has become a widely accepted form of information and communication technology-enhanced education. Given the infancy of technology-enhanced education at Iraqi educational institutions, this study was conducted to determine how Iraqi EFL learners preferred information and communication technology-enhanced education and how ready they were to adopt mobile learning for English learning purposes in higher education. This study also examined whether there were any significant differences in the learners' preferences and readiness for mobile learning considering their gender. Methodological triangulation was undertaken using a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with some Iraqi EFL learners at four public universities so as to seek the research objectives. Descriptive analysis was used to analyze the data from the questionnaire. The data of the interviews were then analyzed using thematic analysis to identify and report the common themes of the two coders of the interviews. The findings revealed a plethora of evidence indicating learners' positive attitudes towards using mobile learning as a viable medium for language learning purposes in intra- and extramural situations, as it expanded the boundaries of learning beyond the limitations of traditional pedantic educational settings. Besides, no significant differences were found in the preferences and readiness of Iraqi EFL learners considering their gender for the adoption of mobile learning in higher education, though females liked mobile learning better than males.  

The interaction between the writers and the experts while using citations is one of the main features of academic texts. For the integration of external experts into the text, writers usually use reporting verbs, which seem to function differently. Furthermore, selecting reporting verbs (RVs) by the researchers of disciplines seems to vary. This paper explored the functions of RVs across sciences. To this end, 200 “Results and Discussion” section of RAs from the four sciences, namely Life Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities, Physical Sciences and Engineering, and Health Sciences were gathered and used as the data, and their functions of RVs were analyzed based on Hyland’s framework (2002). Hyland (2002) considered three basic RV types based on their function, including research, cognitive, and discourse acts, subsequently dividing each category into several subcategories. The results showed that the writers in Life Sciences used more research acts in comparison to the other disciplines. In terms of cognition acts, the rates of tentative verbs were high in all sciences since the researchers tried to report the results with caution as they were uncertain about the findings. The results approved this claim, indicating the high frequency of tentative verbs under the category of discourse acts, across disciplines using verbs like hypothesize, indicate, and suggest to show doubt with different rates. The obtained results can guide novice writers of the above-mentioned four disciplines to advance an authorial perspective and adjust to the expert conventions of the relevant research areas.

Technology-mediated instructional activities have received increasing attention in second language acquisition (SLA) studies. Yet, research on the role of technology in language learners’ emotional intelligence has been limited. More specifically, the role of data-driven learning (DDL) using concordancing, as a technology-mediated approach to learning English, in developing emotional intelligence has been left unattended. Through a mixed-methods explanatory sequential design within a quasi-experimental comparison group pretest-posttest design, the present study examined if DDL statistically significantly influenced the English learners’ trait emotional intelligence (TEI) and its attributes, including emotionality, self-control, well-being, and sociability. The results of questionnaires, open-ended surveys, and semi-structured interviews with 92 female undergraduate English learners indicated that DDL did not statistically significantly influence their TEI and its attributes. However, in terms of well-being, learners in the experimental group were slightly higher than learners in the control group. Finally, analysis of the qualitative data pointed to an increase in the learners’ TEI through enhancing self-confidence, stress management, and emotional perception.

L’identité et l’ethos sont deux des notions importantes qui servent à révéler les traits de caractère intradiscursifs et extradiscursifs du sujet parlant dans les analyses du discours. Cet article a pour but de jeter quelque lumière sur les traits identitaires et l’ethos discursif d’un leader exceptionnel qu’est Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, commandant de la Guerre d’indépendance turque et fondateur de la République de Turquie. Le corpus étudié a été délimité par certains extraits de discours tenus entre 1919 et 1939, où Atatürk a utilisé le pronom « je » (et « nous »). Le cadre théorique est composé de deux notions relevant de l’analyse du discours : l’identité et l’ethos. Dans les analyses effectuées, il a été traité d’une part l’identité personnelle, l’identité de positionnement et l’identité discussive d’Atatürk, de l’autre, la dimension catégorielle, expérientielle et idéologique dans les extraits de discours d’Atatürk. Et les différents ethos ressortis à travers le corpus ont été précisés comme ethos combatif, solidaire et honnête ; ethos résolu et hardi ; ethos humble ; et ethos collectif.

This study intended to investigate the interplay of critical thinking explicit instruction, academic writing performance, critical thinking ability, and critical thinking dispositions of Iranian students. To this end, 140 students of Jahrom University of Medical Sciences (73 males and 67 females) were selected. They were divided into the experimental and control groups. Both groups received instruction in academic writing course for 15 weeks 3 hours per week. However, the experimental group received instruction integrated with critical thinking strategies. The students in both groups were administered pre- and post-instruction tests to examine the effectiveness of instruction. Three instruments were utilized in this study including, the researcher-developed essay test, Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay Test, and California Critical Thinking Dispositions Inventory (CCTDI). Descriptive statistics and independent-samples t-test were used to analyze the data. The results indicated that there were statistically significant differences between the mean scores of the experimental and the control groups. The results also showed that some CCTDI subscales were not significantly different at the posttest such as, truth-seeking, cognitive maturity, and open- mindedness, whereas the mean posttest scores of other CCTDI subscales had significant difference such as, analyticity, CT inquisitiveness, CT self-confidence, and systematicity. The experimental group had a higher score in the academic writing test compared with the control group. Changes in students’ critical thinking ability, academic writing performance, and their critical thinking dispositions suggest that the CT techniques have been fruitful, and more efforts should be made to integrate the explicit instruction in critical thinking into academic courses.

This study aimed to examine the impact of Group Dynamic Assessment (G-DA) on the listening comprehension of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. To this purpose, through the Preliminary English Test (PET) 140 Iranian EFL female learners in four English Language Institutes of Ahvaz, Iran, were tested, and 80 of them were selected as the sample of the study using convenience sampling. They were taught through group dynamic assessment. After the pretest and treatment sessions, the participants were given the listening comprehension post-test and the resultant scores were statistically analyzed to detect their development from pretest to post-test. The obtained results revealed that Group Dynamic Assessment (G-DA) had a positive impact on the participants’ listening comprehension. This finding implies that EFL teachers may need to consider the positive impact of dynamic assessment on EFL learners’ listening comprehension improvement and provide them with more opportunities to interact. They may also need to create a change in the traditional models of listening comprehension assessment which emphasize psychometric quantification of students' performances

To date, a number of studies have investigated the use of euphemism in media to classify and analyze the euphemisms of different categories. However, these studies were mostly based on political contexts and the corpora have been limited due to the qualitative nature of the studies. Moreover, few studies have investigated the use of euphemism in countries where English is practiced as a foreign language. This study was an attempt to not only compare and contrast Iranian-published English newspapers and the New York Times thematically in terms of euphemistic expressions but also to ascertain the most frequently used ones in both.To this end,three corpora of all the sections of three journalistic materials within (2014-2019) were thoroughly examined. The data were collected using the search section of the three newspapers to look for the euphemistic expressions based on the Oxford Dictionary of Euphemisms as a point of reference. The results indicated that the most frequently used expression in the New York Times was ‘African American’ whereas the most frequently used expression in both Iran Daily and Tehran Times was ‘conflict’.The thematic changes between the three journalistic materials were also examined. The results revealed that the most frequently used category of euphemistic expressions in the New York Times was ‘Commerce, Banking, and Industry’, and the most frequently used category of euphemistic expression in Iran Daily and Tehran Times was similarly ‘Warfare’. The study might inform learners about a rich source of euphemistic expressions and enable them to recognize the most prevalent categories of euphemistic expressions thematically

This experimental research centered on considering the effect of cognitive intervention instruction on the phonological awareness of Iranian dyslexic students at primary schools. For this purpose, 32 male and female students between 8 to 11 years of age with 90 to 110 IQs average, were purposefully selected from primary schools and randomly assigned to a control group and an experimental group. Wechsler Intelligence test (WIT), Karami and Noori (KNT) test, and a cognitive intervention package were used as tools in this research. Then, to check the participants’ phonological awareness, (KNT) measurement was applied to the students. The covariance analysis of the resultant data showed that this package was effective on the phonological awareness of the experimental group after receiving the cognitive intervention package in contrast to the control group. The independent sample t-test also showed that there was no statistically meaningful difference between dyslexic male and female students in the experimental group regarding phonological awareness. The findings recommend that instructors at primary schools should teach the students to use cognitive intervention programs in phonological awareness to accelerate and do their more effective homework and develop productive insights into their phonological awareness.

This article analyzes complex words, morphologically and semantically, within the Perceptual approach introduced by Safavi (2020). The authors aim to examine the possibilities of word formation of complex words in Persian as their first objective. To achieve this goal, they examined 2850 complex words selected randomly from the Sokhan Dictionary (Anvari, 2004). Following the mentioned approach, word-formation patterns are determined based on whether the morphemes belong to closed or open classes. According to a predetermined agreement, A stands for closed class units and B stands for open class units. This study reveals 57 patterns of word formation, with ‘B + B’ appearing to be the most common among all the patterns examined. Next, the authors investigated how much closed-class units help Persian speakers interpret the semantic head of complex words examined. To reach this aim, 20 Persian speakers not having any knowledge of linguistics were given a questionnaire of 120 words made up of eight affixes selected by the authors and questioned about interpreting each word. Finally, data analysis related to the questionnaire revealed that the meaning interpretation of the words appeared to be significantly impacted by the morphemes belonging to the closed class.

Combining Bachman’s (1990) conceptualization of content validity with Messick’s (1989) unifying model of construct validity, this study attempted to fill the gap in researching content validation in the context of a university reading achievement test by (a) examining traditional content validity evidence and (b) analyzing the test scores to either back-up or rebut the evidence and explore the construct of the underlying test structure. On a sample of 477 third-year English-majored test takers at a Central Vietnamese University (CVU), the study was conducted in the pre-test stage where the test content was compared with the test specification and the post-test stage where the test scores were processed via Rasch and CFA competing model analyses. Results showed that while content relevance was satisfactory and the test construct was to a large extent not threatened by construct-irrelevant variance, content coverage of the test remained problematic with instances of construct underrepresentation. Moreover, the study supported the one-factor model of general reading ability as the underlying structure of the reading achievement test over the correlated three sub-skill and higher-order factor models. The study bears implications for both test writers in designing and test takers in performing the L2 reading test.