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During the twentieth century, the views of sustainability and its vital contribution to the refinement of education systems have become so momentous that many researchers have sought to remove barriers to achieving sustainability in the education system and across disciplines. Yet, such research has been less common in the humanities. Hence, the present study tried to depict a picture of the strengths and shortcomings of EFL and Social Sciences (SS) instructors in terms of sustainability literacy, sustainability implementation, and eventually Sustainability Education (SE). Moreover, it provides the readers with the status of SE in EFL and SS faculties in Iran and offers clear recommendations for how and in which specific areas to adopt interdisciplinary approaches for SE development. This comparative study can pave the way for further practical studies in these areas through a quantitative method using a researcher-developed questionnaire with 300 participants. It proved that SS instructors have the potential to make outstanding contributions to sustainability literacy enhancement and EFL instructors are well aware of the strategies which work for sustainability implementation. It also came down in favor of the specific courses which should be incorporated into all-round teacher education policy. The study can be an important step towards teacher education reform and has implications for different fields of humanities. It has been implied that multidisciplinary approaches can bring about livelier and more effective teacher training programs. 

Knowledge of verb-argument constructions (VACs) has been examined in a variety of contexts where English is mostly taught from the early stages of their schooling. No study has so far examined EFL learners’ knowledge of VACs in a context where English as a foreign language is taught only late at the secondary school level. The current study fills this gap by exploring construction knowledge in a context where teaching EFL is postponed until other languages have been introduced to learners. Using written essays of 180 students of 3 different proficiency groups, three indices of syntactic sophistication (i.e. the frequency of the Verb-argument constructions, the frequency of the verb-construction combinations and the verb-construction strength of association) were examined for their development across the three grade levels. As a second objective, this study examined the ability of these indices to predict students’ writing quality, through their grades. The results suggest that while the higher proficiency group showed a significant improvement in the rareness of their VACs, the three groups showed slow progress in the use of less frequent and less strongly associated verb-construction combinations. Similarly, only the index of construction sophistication (i.e. rareness) correlated significantly with and could predict variance in the writing score. This suggests that EFL learners follow a ‘necessary first’ principle in their learning of constructions. Similarly, these results indicate that the use of rare constructions enhances raters’ judgements of students’ writing quality.

Compared to non-academic contexts, the use of address forms in academic settings is insufficiently researched. To fill this gap, the present study investigated the address forms commonly used by students and lecturers in Iranian universities in their oral and written communication. The analytical framework of this study is semio-cultural conceptualization. A qualitative descriptive research design was adopted, which included six open-ended questions. Thirty Iranian EFL lecturers participated in this study, 20 males and 10 females, representing 14 different universities. The average age of the participants was 50. The thematic analysis of the data revealed that in addition to the conventional polite forms, some innovations have emerged in the academic address practice in Iran. While students always addressed their lecturers using respectful forms and honorifics, the lecturers’ address choices varied according to sociolinguistic factors such as the students’ age, gender, degree of intimacy and distance, and educational status. In the majority of cases, the lecturers employed title plus last name; nevertheless, some of them opted for more intimate forms. However, such forms were never reciprocated by students owing to the perceived power dynamics and elevated respect for teachers, which is deeply entrenched in the culturally-constructed conceptualization of the unique teacher-student relationship in Iran. The findings also suggest that the scope of address studies can be expanded to include semio-cultural conceptualizations, such as emotion schema, and symbolism.   

During the Covid-19 pandemic, universities around the world faced closure because of social distancing and lockdown, therefore, unprecedently, education had to move online and universities in Iran were not exceptional. This sudden and abrupt shift required teachers to rethink their attitudes and beliefs. This study has been conducted to explore English Language Teachers’ attitudes toward their practices concerning the effects of social distancing and the maximized use of technology in the teaching profession. Having adopted a qualitative method to investigate teachers’ experiences, the data of this study were collected through interviews with nine English language university teachers, and their reflective journals. Generally, the results communicate considerable appreciation for integrating technology in English language courses. To be more detailed, this study revealed three main categories for positive attitudes (pedagogical innovation, instructional support, and professional identity formation) each with some subcategories. Also, the analysis highlights three concerns (technology-related challenges, classroom management, and inflexibility in behavior) for online teaching. The implications of the study mainly provide a welcoming environment for utilizing technology in teaching, especially in English language teaching.

The presented study examined the effect of applying software technology, (i.e., WhiteSmoke Writing Software (TM 2020), on the improvement of EFL learners' writing skills. To do so, 55 EFL learners ranged in age from 20 to 22 who were studying English as a Foreign Language in Bahar Institute of Higher Education, Iran were invited to participate in the research. During the study, the participants who were already studying Passages coursebook were informed that for 7 weeks the class orientation and focus will change to writing instruction, which was most welcome by them. One class was considered as an experimental group of 26 students, while the other one was a control group of 29 students. Based on the prior completion of the course, all were considered intermediate. Control group students worked conventionally on the book and received feedback on their performance from the teacher while the learners in the experimental group worked with WhiteSmoke Writing Software which is the most comprehensive grammar checker. At the end of the study, the comparison of the pretest and posttest demonstrated that the participants in the experimental group outperformed the control group subjects at a 0.05 significant level. The outcomes of the current study approved that the application of software technology in the classroom context was treasured. Also, the utilization of software made the learners be in charge of their own learning process, which can be a great advantage on the part of online teaching and learning.

This study examined the possible effects of orthographic/phonologic priming techniques on the receptive language skills of Iranian EFL learners with different proficiency levels. From an initial pool of 700 EFL learners from a language learning institute, two hundred and seventy learners from both genders were selected based on their performance on an English proficiency test and classified into six experimental and three control groups. After gaining certitude about the participants’ English proficiency levels, the semantic and orthographic/phonologic priming phase was conducted, and consequently, the participants’ contextualized comprehension of the primed words was assessed via a set of reading and listening comprehension tasks. The performances of the participants on the designed tasks indicated that semantic primes were more efficient for improving both comprehension skills compared with the orthographic-phonologic primes. Moreover, based on the results, language proficiency affected the success of the primes on both reading and listening comprehension tasks; advanced learners showed a greater improvement than the beginners and the intermediates under the influence of the priming techniques. Orthographic-phonologic primes were found to be more efficient for beginners, whereas the advanced learners showed an enhanced performance with regard to semantic primes. Overall, semantic primes showed more facilitative effects across various comprehension tasks due to their activation of deeper cognitive processing. Orthographic-phonologic primes were also successful. However, they were more efficient in the early stages of language learning, where visual recognition played a more critical role.

This study investigated the effects of corrective feedback (CF) and the Flipped Teaching Model (FTM) on English language learners’ overall and categorical grammar accuracy. The study was conducted at Payame-Nour University (PNU) of Mahabad, Iran. A total of 80 Iranian EFL learners participated in the study. The participants were randomly assigned into two flipped and two non-flipped groups of 20: one in each pair of groups receiving explicit and the other implicit CF. Data were collected across two time periods (pre-intervention and post-intervention). Two measures of Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) were conducted. The results revealed no significant differences in the effect of CF type in the flipped classes, and both led to the learners’ higher level of overall grammar accuracy. However, the explicit group outperformed the implicit one in the non-flipped classes. Explicit feedback in flipped and non-flipped classes led to the learners’ outperformance in acquiring specific grammatical structures, such as adjective/reduced adjective clauses, but not in others, like comparative/superlative adjectives, gerund/infinitive, word forms, word order, and apposition. These findings have implications for language educators seeking to enhance learners’ grammatical accuracy in both flipped and non-flipped classrooms, particularly in relation to the use of explicit feedback for certain types of grammatical structures.

Acknowledging the critical role of working memory in language acquisition, this study examines the effects of multimodal input enhancement on working memory capacity (WMC) and collocation learning in adolescent and adult EFL learners. A cohort of 117 participants was randomly assigned to either experimental groups, receiving enhanced textual and auditory inputs, or control groups, experiencing standard inputs. Assessments included the Preliminary English Test, n-back test, and immediate and delayed collocation posttests. The results indicated that multimodal input significantly improved WMC and the recall and retention of collocations for all learners. Adolescents, in particular, excelled in both immediate and delayed tests and adapted their WMC more effectively in a multimodal context than adults. Additionally, an interaction between age and WMC was noted, affecting collocation recall and retention. These findings affirm the benefits of multimodal materials in enhancing cognitive functions and memory resources, thus improving language learning. The study offers practical insights for educational practices, advocating for the use of varied modalities in teaching materials to cater to different learning styles and cognitive needs. It also highlights the significance of designing age-appropriate materials and managing cognitive load in curriculum development, providing a tailored approach to language education for diverse learner populations.