درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Since teachers’ perceptions of work engagement can strongly shape their engagement level, it is imperative to explore how teachers perceive this construct and its associated dimensions. With this in mind, some researchers have evaluated teachers’ beliefs and attitudes towards this notion.  Notwithstanding this, to the authors’ knowledge, no study has examined language teachers’ viewpoints on this variable and its significance in online EFL classes. To bridge these gaps, this phenomenological study explored Iranian EFL teachers’ perceptions and experiences of work engagement and its value in online English courses. To this aim, using the purposive sampling strategy, a total of 21 EFL teachers were chosen from different state, private, and non-profit universities in Iran. To obtain the required data, all participants were invited to complete an open-ended questionnaire. To reach more comprehensive data, from among the 21 participants, nine willingly took part in a 20-minute interview session. Results obtained from content analysis revealed that Iranian EFL teachers considered work engagement as a complex variable with four related dimensions of emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and social engagement. The results also indicated that Iranian teachers perceived work engagement as an important professional behavior that results in increased academic achievements, professional advancement, improved teaching quality, and strong teacher-student rapport. Hence, education leaders and teacher educators should support Iranian EFL teachers in enhancing work engagement dimensions to improve professional growth and teaching quality.

This research sought to investigate IELTS test-takers' perceptions of obtaining scaffolded MOOC-based training. To accomplish this purpose, 50 IELTS candidates were chosen through convenient sampling and assigned to one of two groups: a MOOC-based teaching group (MG, n = 25) and a face-to-face instruction group (F2FG, n = 25). The MG test-takers were exposed to FutureLearn, while the F2FG test-takers were given identical materials in person. Scaffolding took the form of visual aids, pre-teaching the necessary terminology, drawing on the participants' past knowledge of a subject, modeling what they were requested to write, and providing them with the sentence patterns needed to complete the IELTS Writing Task 2. The writing pre-test and post-test scores of the two groups were examined using a one-way ANCOVA, which revealed that the MG learners outperformed their F2FG counterparts significantly. The perception questionnaire results revealed that MG students liked MOOC-based education for their writing courses. The implications and applications of the current study's results are provided at the end of the research

Communication skill is considered to be one of the most demanding skills of the day, and proficiency in listening and speaking skills paves the way for being communicative. To develop one’s listening and speaking skills, there are many ways and factors including the use of audiovisual materials in an English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom. This study analyzed the effectiveness of audiovisual materials in developing tertiary level students' English listening and speaking skills. To do so, experiments followed by formative assessment were carried out on the first-year undergraduate students of the Department of English, Jashore University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh. To triangulate the experiment results and ensure trustworthiness, a student-questionnaire survey was also conducted. The overall findings revealed that the use of audiovisual materials has a major impact on the development of listening and speaking skills of EFL students. The findings of this research are supposed to help education policymakers, education administrators, teachers, and students to adopt better policies and decisions to make teaching and learning English more effective and fruitful at different stages in second or foreign language contexts.

Le présent article se penche sur l’étude descriptive et analytique des noms composés dans une approche contrastive (français-persan et vice versa). Un corpus thématique dans le domaine de « faune et flore » a rassemblé ces noms en deux langues dont les exemples sont présentés dans les tableaux, parallèlement à leurs équivalents dans l’autre langue. Pour être plus systématiques, nous avons fait une taxinomie de cette thématique qui se répartit en quatre groupes « fruits et légumes », « arbres et fleurs », « plantes aromatiques et médicinales » et « animaux ». Les structures grammatico-syntaxiques ainsi que la situation de leur noyau sémantique, à savoir indocentrique et exocentrique, sont passées au crible. Selon les résultats de notre recherche, cette catégorie de nom partage plus ou moins les mêmes structures et traits caractéristiques dans les deux langues étudiées, sans oublier quelques points importants et intéressants qui les distinguent d’une langue à l’autre, notamment sur le plan orthographique.  

The present study was conducted to investigate Indonesian English language education department learners’ L2 pronunciation anxiety (PA) and whether the duration of their study in the department as well as their gender impacted their PA. This cross-sectional study employed an online survey using a Google Form questionnaire as the method of collecting data with convenience sampling. To this end, 101 learners participated in this study. The study found that in general learners experienced a moderate level of PA. This anxiety was related to interlocutors and peer comparison, learners' perception of competence, and their perception of being English as Foreign Language (EFL) speakers. Furthermore, it was found that PA did not significantly differ across learners from different study years and female learners reported a significantly higher level of PA than their male counterparts. Considering the little influence of the study duration of PA, pedagogical implications include the need to revisit English education curricula regarding pronunciation learning encompassing such aspects as learning materials and activities, teaching methods, assessment, and evaluation, as well as learning objectives.        

This study sought to probe and explain the causes and sources of failure or lack of success in intercultural communication. Thus, the researchers selected one hundred (100) participants to take part in this study. 20 participants out of 100 took part in the interview session willingly. The participants were all English language teachers from Golestan province, Iran. The researchers used the ICC questionnaire and structured interview to collect the required data. To analyze the data, the researchers used the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test and inductive content analysis. The results revealed that miscellaneous factors could cause failure among which linguistic, cultural, and emotional factors are the most important agents in failing intercultural communications. In fact, linguistic, emotional, and cultural factors are the three macro-sources that cause failure in intercultural communications. Each of these macro-sources has its sub-sets and micro-sources such as language proficiency, sociocultural knowledge, motivation, etc. In the meantime, context and the interlocutor are other factors that affect these three macro-sources and they should be taken into account. This study is of high importance for intercultural experts, psychologists, and international students to be able to find the roots of intercultural hurdles easily and eradicate them.

Writing skill is a challenging and frequently-used activity in academic circles. This study investigated the effects of reflective writing on EFL learners’ writing performance. The participants were 61 Iranian EFL learners from two intact university classes randomly assigned to the non-reflective (n=31) and reflective (n=30) groups. Over sixteen sessions of instructions over eight weeks, the non-reflective group was taught using the traditional writing method; however, the reflective group was exposed to reflective writing instruction under Kolb’s Model. The data were collected through reflective writing compositions and the content analysis of think-aloud protocols. The quantitative data analysis revealed that the reflective group significantly outperformed the non-reflective group in writing compositions. The thematic analysis of think-aloud protocols substantiated the quantitative data findings, indicating that all participants went through the cognitive psychological processes of ‘planning, drafting, pausing and thinking, reading and reproducing, reviewing, editing and revising’ as they were engaged in reflective writing via Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle. The results offer significant implications for language instructors, curriculum planners, and course designers.