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Although reflective teaching is believed to be a significant feature of effective teachers, there is little empirical evidence to demonstrate its influence on learners’ evaluation. This study examines the relationship between EFL teachers' degree of reflection and learners’ evaluation of teacher effectiveness. Data were collected from 71 Iranian EFL teachers teaching at the private language institutes and 296 language learners. Reflective teaching inventory designed by Akbari, Behzadpour, and Dadvand (2007) was administered to the teachers and their learners’ evaluation was elicited through Murdoch’s (2000) checklist. The statistical analysis revealed significant positive relationships between reflection subscales and learners’ evaluation. It was thus assumed that understanding how reflection can change language learners’ evaluations can shed light on the role of reflection in improving teachers' performance and consequently learners’ appraisal. Hence, 10 teachers with the highest degree of reflection participated in follow-up interviews. Analysis of the interview data, indicated how reflection subscales contribute to teachers' in getting higher ratings from learners. In line with these findings, the implications for teachers, administrators and teacher education are discussed.

As a trigger to communication, motivation still includes undiscovered aspects which require further investigation. Hence, considering the newly proposed dual continuum model of motivation, this study investigated the relationships among willingness to communicate (WTC), active/passive motivation, and foreign language achievement (FLA) among 216 high school English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. The modified version of the active/passive motivation scale (APMS) was revalidated using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed significant relationships among active/passive motivation, L2WTC, and FLA. Additionally, six models were proposed for the prediction of learners’ L2WTC and FLA. The findings indicated that socio-cultural and sensory-perceptual active motivation as well as cognitive and sensory-perceptual passive motivation significantly predict learners’ L2WTC, while only cognitive active motivation predicts FLA. Furthermore, passive motivation predicts FLA in all sub-constructs. Finally, active motivation is a negative predictor of FLA if mediated by L2WTC. Overall, the study highlights the importance of passive as well as active motivation in promoting WTC and improving FLA among EFL learners.

The present study sought to compare the effect of two modes of corrective feedback, that is, recast and elicitation, on the speaking accuracy of impulsive and reflective EFL learners. In doing so, 95 intermediate EFL learners who were studying at Tehran's Kish Language School were selected through nonrandom convenience sampling and sat for the Impulsivity Sub-Scale of Eysenck's Impulsive Questionnaire (EIQ). A total of 15 learners who were within the middle range were excluded, thus leaving 80 impulsive and reflective learners. Subsequently, a sample PET speaking test was administered as the pretest to assess the participants' speaking accuracy at the outset. Next, the participants were divided into four subgroups: 20 impulsive and 22 reflective learners undergoing a recast treatment, and 18 impulsive and 20 reflective participants experiencing elicitation. Once the 16-session treatment ended, another sample PET speaking test was administered as the posttest, and all four hypotheses were tested through a two-way analysis of covariance. The findings demonstrated that both recast and elicitation were significantly effective in improving the participants' speaking accuracy, while the elicitation impulsive group benefited the most compared to others. The pedagogical implications of this research and suggestions for further study are elaborated in the paper.

The control construction has attracted the attention of a considerable number of linguists since the early development of generative grammar. The present study examines the properties of PRO in Persian, adopting the syntactic approach developed in Kim’s (2003) theory of Merge Control within the minimalist framework. According to this theory, the control construction is fundamentally based on the theta-domain relation between PRO and its controller. The findings indicate that Kim’s theory of Merge Control addresses certain issues related to promise verbs, which challenge two key properties of PRO, namely, the locality and C-command conditions. Within this framework, there is no need to distinguish between obligatory and non-obligatory control; instead, the distinction should be made between complement and adjunct control clauses. Consequently, the violation of the proposed properties of PRO in Persian is resolved because the theory accounts for the objects of promise verbs in control constructions as adjuncts rather than complements. As a result, such objects are neither theta-marked by the promise verbs nor passivized, and they do not function as the controller of PRO.

Although reflective teaching and well-being have been promoted as a means to promote teaching quality, there is little empirical evidence to illustrate their impact on enhancing professional development. To fill this existing gap, this study adopts a mixed-methods approach to examine the contribution of reflection and psychological well-being as predictors of professional development. In so doing, 350 English language teachers participated in a survey and follow-up interviews. The correlational analysis confirmed the positive relationship among these three constructs, and a structural equation modelling indicated that both reflection and well-being significantly predicted professional development; however, well-being was a stronger predictor compared to reflection. The qualitative analysis of data revealed four main themes contributing to professional development among teachers. The pedagogical implications are also elaborated and discussed.

his study investigated the construct validity and measurement invariance of the Teacher Emotion Questionnaire to introduce a valid and reliable instrument for assessing English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teachers’ emotions inside the classroom. Second language (L2) teacher emotions have been largely neglected, despite the fact that Educational Psychology has long recognized and researched the role of teacher emotions in different aspects of teaching and learning. To bridge this gap, the current study had 208 Iranian EFL teachers in private language institutes fill out the Teacher Emotion Questionnaire (TEQ), which assessed six emotions teachers experience in their classroom, i.e., Joy, Pride, Love, Anger, Fatigue/Exhaustion, and Hopelessness. The preliminary analysis of the data showed that six items from the TEQ had a factor loading below the minimum recommended level of 0.3, meaning that they contributed to the total variance in the participants’ score less than expected. The collected data were then submitted to confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) for the purpose of construct validation and establishment of the factorial structure of the TEQ. The CFA results indicated that the hypothesized six-factor analysis had more favorable goodness-of-fit indices than both a one-factor structure and a two-factor structure (e.g., positive versus negative emotions). Multilevel CFA revealed that the tested six-factor structure of the TEQ was invariant across male and female EFL teachers. The implications for the use of TEQ in EFL teaching contexts are discussed, and some suggestions are proposed for further validation of the TEQ in language teaching contexts.

Partant d’un diagnostic des difficultés linguistiques des élèves, une démarche didactique de la réécriture accompagnée a été adoptée et développée dans une séquence didactique centrée sur le type argumentatif. L’analyse qualitative des données montre que les élèves du groupe d’intervention ont nettement progressé par rapport au groupe contrôle. Les écrits de ces derniers font apparaître un net progrès dans l’écriture d’un texte et ses procédures. Une analyse quantitative et statistique, réalisée à l’aide du logiciel SPSS, vient par la suite confirmer les résultats de l’analyse qualitative. Les résultats soulignent l’importance de l’enseignement des procédures rédactionnelles et de la distanciation par rapport à l’écrit. Ces éléments, et d’autres, nous ont offert des pistes didactiques intéressantes qui peuvent constituer des hypothèses de recherche pour des études ultérieures.

Abstract The present study developed a model of L2 speaking proficiency investigating how lexical sophistication, lexical diversity, syntactic sophistication, syntactic complexity, and cohesion are associated with holistic scores of L2 speaking proficiency employing structural equation modeling (SEM). A corpus of 419 monologues delivered by Iranian EFL learners was compiled and rated to develop the model. Based on the overall scores, the corpus was divided into independent (B1 and B2) and proficient (C1 and C2) users. The results of SEM analysis revealed that the developed L2 speaking proficiency model had an acceptable fit, with partial generalizability across independent and proficient users. Structural regression analysis showed that lexical diversity, lexical sophistication, syntactic sophistication, cohesion, and the indirect effect of syntactic complexity through lexical sophistication explained 34% of the variance in L2 speaking proficiency in descending order of importance. However, their relative importance changed depending on proficiency level. Based on the results, while lexical, syntactic, and cohesive features are sound predictors of L2 speaking proficiency, they function differently across proficiency groups. These findings offer valuable insights for improving speaking proficiency assessment by showing that lexical sophistication, lexical diversity, syntactic sophistication, syntactic complexity, and cohesion do not contribute equally to overall L2 speaking proficiency, and their order of importance varies across proficiency levels. Therefore, prioritizing indicators of L2 speaking proficiency in assessment frameworks based on their importance in each proficiency level can add to the validity and reliability of speaking assessments.

The present study was an attempt, to empirically investigate if there was any significant difference between authentic listening materials and their simplified version in terms of the listening comprehension of Iranian EFL learners. To this end, two groups of thirty subjects were chosen. One group received authentic listening materials and the other group received the same topic in simplified version through ten sessions. The subjects studied Top Notch Book, level 3. The listening parts were followed with seven listening comprehension questions to assess the listening comprehension of the subjects. Then, at the end of the course, the listening comprehension scores of the two groups were compared by a T-Test. The result showed that simplified demonstration of materials had a benefit over the use of authentic version. A questionnaire was also given to the subjects at the beginning and at the end of the course to find out their motivation toward using authentic or simplified materials. The result indicated that there was no significant difference between two groups in terms of motivation.

ranslated literature almost always involves a degree of manipulation of the source text for a certain purpose. Such manipulations are imposed by the ‘patrons’ who try to regulate the relationship between the literary system and the other systems a society is composed of. Working on this fundamental broadly-acknowledged assumption about translation, the present study aimed at identifying the concepts that are often manipulated in translated literature published in contemporary Iran. It also attempted to spot the manipulative strategies imposed on translations and the counter-manipulative strategies adopted by translators to sidestep those manipulations. Drawing on the findings of the so-called ‘Manipulation School’ and Dukāte’s typology of manipulation strategies, it conducted a comparative analysis of the source texts and translated versions of four American novels recently published in Iran. The codification of the data revealed the frowned upon taboo concepts to be descriptions of, or references to, sexual activity, physical contact between the sexes, human body, extramarital relationships, swear words, prostitution, nudity, homoeroticism, alcoholic drinks, and dancing. The most frequent manipulation strategies were 1) deletion of the taboo concepts, 2) substitution of the concepts with totally different concepts, and 3) attenuation of the forbidden words, that is to say, expressing them in a more polite, softer language. Although the manipulation mechanism is most effectively in place, the translators seemed to have occasionally applied creative strategies to evade the imposed manipulations. Such counter-manipulative strategies were classified as legitimization, archaism, use of less familiar words, degenderalization, denunciation, and borrowing in this study.

Machine translation (MT) of literary texts presents unique challenges due to their stylistic complexity and cultural nuances. This study evaluated the performance of Google Translate (GT) and Microsoft Bing Translator (MBT) in translating Camus’s The Stranger from English to Persian. Data collection for this study involved automated evaluation using the Bilingual Evaluation Understudy (BLEU) metric and human evaluation conducted by three experts using the Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA) rubric. The results showed that GT significantly outperformed MBT across nearly all dimensions. GT achieved a BLEU score of 21.57 compared to MBT’s 6.36, with superior n-gram precision at all levels. The human evaluation phase also revealed GT’s fewer critical and major errors in almost all categories compared to MBT. However, both systems struggled to preserve the aesthetic and philosophical richness of The Stranger . These findings highlight the persistent limitations of MT in literary translation, particularly for linguistically distant pairs like English and Persian. While MT shows potential as a supplementary tool, it remains unsuitable as a replacement for human translators in capturing the depth and artistry of literary works.

This article investigates how native Persian speakers process and comprehend affirmative and negative discoursal causal assertions. To examine this, an eye-tracking experiment was conducted with 10 male and 20 female Persian-speaking participants. The main experiment involved 32 Persian vignettes, each containing three sentences: an opening sentence, a target sentence (affirmative or negative discoursal causal), and a concluding sentence. The polarity of the target and concluding sentences was varied (affirmative vs. negative) within participants. When participants heard an affirmative discoursal causal assertion (e.g., Because my skin was dry, I applied moisturizer ), they primarily fixated on the factual phrase ("applying moisturizer"), with a fixation probability of 63%, whereas the conjectural phrase received little attention, attracting only 12% of fixation probability. A similar pattern was observed for negative assertions (e.g., Because my skin was not dry, I did not apply moisturizer ), where participants focused on the factual phrase ("not applying moisturizer"), attracting only 63% of fixations, largely ignoring the conjecture, with a fixation probability of only %19. Fixation data confirmed that factual phrases consistently received more attention than conjectural ones during early processing stages. In the final analysis, the effect of specificity on fixation patterns was tested. Results showed that specificity did not significantly influence either early attention or increased attention to factual content across polarity conditions. Overall, the findings align with Mental Model Theory, emphasizing the cognitive priority given to factual representations

Reading is the main language skill in English as a Foreign Language (EFL)contexts, and the key to the reading skill is the knowledge of the alphabet. Although there are various approaches to teaching early reading and the alphabet in L1, such as whole language, language experience, literature-based, whole word, alphabetic method, and analytic and synthetic phonics, the topic of teaching alphabet and early reading is almost missing in language teaching methodology textbooks, and the few sources which deal with the subject seem to be mainly concerned with English as a Second Language (ESL) contexts where the learners’ mother tongue also uses a Latin alphabet. Early reading and alphabet teaching in EFL contexts has also received little research attention, and many aspects of literacy teaching in these contexts such as the effectiveness of different approaches for different age groups are still a mystery. ELT community, hence, needs to pay more heed to the needs of teachers and learners in EFL contexts. This paper intends to sensitize the international ELT community, including the researchers, teachers, and publishers to the importance and necessity of taking early literacy in EFL contexts into account.