درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This study investigates the effects of task complexity and task repetition on the reading comprehension of Iranian EFL learners. The primary aim was to determine whether varying levels of task complexity and the repetition of these tasks could lead to significant enhancements in learners' reading comprehension abilities. A pretest-posttest design was utilized to assess the participants' performance before and after the intervention. Statistical analyses, including the One-Sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test and paired samples t-tests, were conducted to assess data normality and evaluate the significance of observed differences. The findings indicated that both task complexity and task repetition had a substantial positive impact on the reading comprehension scores of Iranian EFL learners. Task complexity promoted deeper cognitive engagement, while task repetition facilitated retention and mastery of reading skills. These results suggest that incorporating strategically designed complex tasks and repeating them can enhance reading comprehension in EFL contexts. The study concludes that task complexity and repetition are effective strategies for improving reading comprehension among Iranian EFL learners. The enhancement in comprehension can be attributed to the cognitive challenges posed by complex tasks and the reinforcement provided through task repetition. Educators are encouraged to integrate tasks with varying levels of complexity and to implement repetitive practice within their instructional strategies. This approach not only aids in comprehension but also fosters a more engaging learning environment. Future research should explore the optimal levels of task complexity and repetition to maximize learning outcomes and examine their applicability in diverse educational contexts.

Motivational intensity and enjoyment are considered two incentives that boost Willingness To Communicate (WTC), while boredom diminishes it. However, going through the existing literature, almost no studies have ever explored these interrelationships among the four variables -Boredom, WTC, Enjoyment, and Motivational Intensity- in the Iranian setting. To address this gap, 300 high schoolers between the ages of 11 and 19 took part in the study. Of those, 83 were beginners, 107 were intermediates, and 110 were advanced learners based on the results obtained from OPT (Oxford Placement Test). All the participants were surveyed using questionnaires administered via Google Docs. The study used Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to interpret these statistics, revealing mediation effects and showing direct and total effects between motivational intensity, enjoyment, boredom, and WTC. Statistics confirmed that boredom had a notable direct impact on WTC, though its indirect effect through enjoyment was insignificant. In contrast, motivational intensity positively influenced the WTC through both direct and indirect pathways. The study suggests boosting motivation and enjoyment in second-language classrooms would dramatically enhance the learners' WTC in formal and informal settings. Teachers should be initiative and creative in designing fascinating and new classroom tasks, transform the class into a lively environment in which all students are actively involved in the interesting classroom activities in a relaxed manner, and promote a friendly and humorous group-work atmosphere so that classroom becomes a welcoming space where students learn without boredom or anxiety.

This study examines collegiality among Iranian EFL teachers by developing and validating the EFL Teacher Collegiality Scale (ETCS) through Mokken Scale Analysis (MSA). Collegiality, which we often understand as mutual respect, teamwork, and shared responsibility, is widely acknowledged as essential for promoting positive school environments and supporting teachers’ well-being. Specifically, collegiality supports teacher well-being, operationalized as job satisfaction, lower emotional exhaustion/burnout, and stronger professional efficacy. In Iran’s educational context, specific challenges make promoting teacher collaboration more difficult. To fill an important gap in the existing research, this study introduces a culturally adapted, reliable instrument designed to measure collegiality within this context. A cross-sectional survey using a 30-item ETCS was administered online to collect data from 170 teachers from various educational backgrounds. The ETCS is organized into three main areas: collaborative practice, professional support and mentorship, and shared professional development. The development process of the ETCS instrument involved expert review and back translation. Analysis showed that the scale has strong scalability and internal consistency, with high Mokken H coefficients across all subscales. The findings indicate that strong collegiality boosts teacher satisfaction, supports retention, and builds professional networks. Finally, this study provides practical strategies and a validated tool to improve EFL teacher collaboration and highlights online collegiality in remote or hybrid settings as a key topic for future research.

Developing ESL learners’ speaking skills who study in Iranian senior high schools poses significant challenges due to the domination of traditional grammar-focused methods. This study investigates the effect of dialogic teaching rules, based on Alexander’s (2017) model, on the speaking skills of Iranian high school ESL learners. In a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design, 43 Iranian twelfth-grade students were assigned to an experimental group (n=22) taught with dialogic rules and a control group (n=21) taught conventionally using Vision 2 and Vision 3 materials. Speaking fluency, accuracy, cohesion/coherence, and interactive skills were assessed (scored out of 25). Repeated measures ANOVA showed significant improvement in the experimental group's speaking performance as a whole (F (1, 41) = 14.50, p <.001) compared to the control group, with significant improvements in fluency and interactive skills. According to Vygotsky's (1978) Sociocultural Theory, Communicative Language Teaching, Constructivism, and Bakhtin's Dialogism, these findings demonstrate that dialogic teaching enhances communicative competence. These results suggest that implementing dialogic teaching strategies can transform ESL classrooms by improving dynamic, learner-centered contexts in which oral interaction is prioritized.

Coalescing digital technologies into education has foregrounded gamified formative assessment (GFA) as a promising modality for advancing second language acquisition (SLA). The current study explored the effects of GFA on the writing proficiency of Iranian EFL learners, focusing on complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). Employing a quasi-experimental design, intermediate and advanced learners were assigned to either gamified or traditional paper-based formative assessment conditions. Writing CAF performance was evaluated by estimating the mean of macro-constructs of complexity, accuracy, and fluency. Writing performance was analyzed using established CAF measures for complexity, accuracy, and fluency, based on widely recognized frameworks. To assess group and proficiency-level effects, key statistical tests, i.e., Friedman, mixed-design ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis, Wilcoxon Signed-Rank, independent samples t-test, and Mann-Whitney U , were applied. The findings disclosed that GFA enhances writing proficiency, with the most substantial gains observed in complexity and fluency. Accuracy improvements, though evident, were more modest and varied by proficiency level: advanced learners improved more in complexity and fluency, whereas intermediate learners showed greater gains in accuracy. These results accentuate GFA’s pedagogical efficacy in fostering engagement, reducing cognitive load, and promoting self-regulated learning in writing instruction, offering crucial insights for language educators, curriculum designers, and digital assessment developers who aim to incorporate innovative, learner-centered assessment strategies.

The present study aims to investigate address terms in Hawrami, a Kurdish dialect spoken mainly in the Paveh region of western Iran. It explores how speakers of Hawrami use a variety of linguistic resources—such as kinship terms, pronouns, occupational titles, and religious titles—to indicate social roles, relationships, and values. Drawing on sociolinguistic and discourse-analytic frameworks, in particular the work of Brown and Gilman (1960), the present paper examines how the social variables such as age, gender, power, solidarity, and religious ideology shape address practices. Data were collected through ethnographic observation and interviews in Paveh. Given the lack of written documentation and the deeply contextual nature of address practices, a qualitative method based on direct observation and community-based immersion was considered the most appropriate choice. The ethnographic method is especially suitable for studying linguistic behavior in small, localized speech communities, where language usage is closely tied to cultural norms, relationships, and everyday social practices. The findings show that address forms in Hawrami do more than merely serve communicative functions; they embody cultural values and reflect broader ideological shifts, particularly those following the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. This study contributes to the documentation of an understudied minority dialect and provides insight into the intricate relationship between language, identity, and power in multilingual and multiethnic societies.

Teacher accountability, referring to teachers’ responsibility for instructional effectiveness and student outcomes, is a fundamental concept in education. However, barriers to teacher accountability in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education in Iran have not been previously investigated. This study aimed to identify these barriers by developing and validating a context-specific instrument. A mixed-method approach was adopted, starting with semi-structured interviews with 60 EFL teachers to generate questionnaire items. Following the pilot study, a 27-item questionnaire was administered to 460 EFL teachers in private language institutes. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was run to develop an adjusted model of inhibitors to EFL teachers’ accountability and to assess the psychometric properties of the BTAS. Additionally, descriptive statistics explored teachers' perceptions of the identified barriers. The analysis supported a three-factor model of teacher accountability barriers: Internal obstacles, including motivational factors; external inhibitors, such as systemic constraints and assessment limitations; and environmental inhibitors related to cultural, sociocultural, and political constraints. The findings highlight the complex and interrelated motivational, institutional, and contextual challenges that hinder teacher accountability, and they present practical implications for policymakers and educational authorities to foster supportive environments that enhance teaching quality and learner achievement.

In a world with multifarious sources of disarray, learners must be equipped with many literacies to handle their learning challenges. As a macroliteracy, attentional literacy refers to the learners’ awareness of maintaining their attention on the information from the self, others, and the environment without being judgmental toward differing viewpoints and contexts. Assuming attention as not purely cognitive but social, cultural, affective, and technological, the researchers could not find any theoretical model underpinning different dimensions of attentional literacy in the literature. This study aims to develop a conceptual model of attentional literacy for English language learners. Using a Fuzzy Delphi Method, we surveyed the related literature to identify the factors of attentional literacy. We proposed an initial model with six factors and a list of measures which, after preliminary proofreading and piloting, was administered to a group of 20 experts in two rounds. The results of Fuzzy Delphi led to the conceptualization of a new attentional literacy model comprising two dimensions (internal and external), five factors (cognitive, socio-emotional, environmental, technological, and pedagogical), and 40 measures. The findings cast light on the theoretical foundations of attentional literacy and elucidate the dimensions, factors, and measures for language learners. Pedagogical contributions are discussed for researchers in language education.

Although there has been ample research on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ formative assessment practice (FAP) and their agency separately, scant attention has been paid to the possible influence of teachers’ level of agency on their FAP. Accordingly, this study investigated EFL teachers’ FAP in the light of teachers’ agency. The initial participants, selected based on convenience sampling, comprised 180 male and female Iranian EFL teachers within the age range of 22 to 45. Their teaching experience fell between a few months to 21 years. The initial 180 teachers were given a Teacher Agency Questionnaire (TAQ) to determine teachers with high and low levels of agency. To this aim, 30 teachers who scored the highest and 30 who scored the lowest on the TAQ were selected. The 60 teachers were asked to fill out the Teacher Formative Assessment Practice Scale (TFAPS). Moreover, 15 teachers from each group were asked to take part in semi-structured interviews to explore their perceptions regarding their FAP. The results of parametric independent samples t-test revealed that teachers in the high-agency group scored significantly higher than their counterparts in the low-agency group in terms of both teacher-directed (p = .00<.001, effect size = 3.32) and student-directed FAP (p = .00<.001, effect size = 3.44). The descriptive and qualitative comparison of the thematic analysis between teachers in the high agency and low agency groups demonstrated marked differences both in the total number of themes and theme mentions as well as the theme contents between the two groups. Based on the findings, teacher educators are encouraged to enhance EFL teachers’ level of agency to improve their FAP.

The present paper reports a study conducted among Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners, addressing the critical issue of imagined identity/community within a globalized world. The concepts of “imagined identities” and “imagined communities” (ICs) refer to the internalized self-conceptions learners develop regarding who they aspire to be and the broader social groups they envision themselves as part of in the context of language learning, respectively . Drawing on Norton’s (2000, 2001) framework of ICs, this study focused on the diverse imaginations that Iranian EFL learners possess while learning English. The study involved five participants, aged between 13 and 36, and employed a qualitative approach utilizing semi-structured interviews for data collection. Through these interviews, rich narratives illustrating the learners’ unique perspectives emerged. The findings revealed that while the imagined identities/communities differed among participants, a common thread was their significant influence on guiding learners through the language learning process. Moreover, the research indicated that a lack of awareness regarding learners’ desired membership in their ICs could detrimentally impact their engagement and commitment to language learning, often resulting in various forms of non-participation in the classroom. Pedagogical implications of the study for EFL teaching practices, emphasizing the importance of creating classroom environments that validate and support learners' ICs and foster their imagined identities/communities as essential components of effective language instruction, are discussed. The study also offers recommendations for future research endeavors to further explore the dynamic interplay between imagined identities/communities and language learning outcomes.

This study investigates the representation of starvation in Gaza across two leading Arab media outlets, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, through the lens of Cognitive Critical Discourse Analysis (Hart, 2014). Focusing on agency attribution, role allocation, and event construal, the analysis reveals how media discourse shapes public perceptions of responsibility and crisis. Findings demonstrate that Al-Jazeera denaturalizes starvation by foregrounding Israel’s agency and situating the crisis within a conflictual space open to contestation and alternative narratives. Conversely, Al-Arabiya depicts the issue by naturalizing starvation as a self-propelling humanitarian catastrophe, thereby suppressing antagonism and foreclosing discursive plurality. These divergent discursive trajectories illustrate how discursive stratifies such as de-naturalization and naturalization are enacted in media discourse and highlight the ideological orientations of representing humanitarian crises. The study contributes to scholarship on mediated representations, and Critical Discourse Studies by foregrounding the role of event construal in mediating political action and public consent.

This study investigates Doris Lessing's narrative techniques for depicting fictional realms in her science fiction stories. Focusing on two pivotal works, The Memoirs of a Survivor and Briefing for a Descent into Hell, we examine how Lessing employs World-Building Elements and Function-Advancing Propositions, as defined by Gavin's Text-World Theory, to represent imaginary text-worlds and develop the discourse in her science fiction stories. Our analysis reveals Lessing's adept use of supernatural world-building elements, such as one-eyed giants, giant fishes, and armies of angels, to establish the backdrop of her narratives. Additionally, she utilizes unreal, transtemporal, and extraterrestrial actions—such as passing through walls and temporal excursions—to propel the narrative and enrich its discourse. The temporal and spatial elements remain ambiguous and unknown, with narrative progression primarily occurring through mental and relational processes. This study helps to understand and identify Lessing's narrative techniques in her science fiction stories, offering a unique perspective on examining her works.