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The present study strived to determine the utility of tailor-made and learner-difference-based teacher education for the amelioration of the EFL teachers’ productive teacher immunity. To this end, 62 EFL teachers were selected from 12 language institutes in Urmia, Iran. The participants were randomly assigned to an experimental and a control group, and were asked to complete the teacher immunity questionnaire prior to the onset of the treatment sessions. In the treatment phase of the study, the experimental group received a tailor-made teacher immunity education on the basis of the overarching sub-constructs of the teacher immunity construct using a web conferencing system in ten sessions during a 5-week period. Notwithstanding, the control group received a learner-difference-based teacher education based on the predominant learner factors. Finally, both groups filled out the pertinent teacher immunity questionnaire anew, in order to examine the efficacy of the aforementioned treatments for the betterment of the teachers’ productive teacher immunity. The results of the study accentuated the fact that the EFL instructors’ teacher immunity was not impervious to the teacher education intervention. Furthermore, the tailor-made teacher immunity education had a more favorable impact on the improvement of the teachers’ productive teacher immunity. The findings might provide teacher educators with certain guiding principles that might empower them to revamp the current teacher education courses and tailor their education to meet the language teachers’ needs.

Learning to teach is conceptualized as a complex process of identity development. To address this process, this study explored Prospective Teachers’ (PTs) professional identity development at different stages of learning to teach within a four-year Second Language (L2) initial teacher education program. Participating in a sequential explanatory mixed-methods approach, 140 PTs filled out the English language teacher professional identity questionnaire three times: at the end of the second year, third year, and fourth year. Then, after each round of the questionnaire administration, 12 PTs were asked to participate in the interview phase to gain further insight into the participants’ professional identity development. Three separate sets of Freidman test and grounded theory were employed to evaluate the questionnaire and interview data, respectively. The results of both quantitative and qualitative data analyses revealed that the second-year PTs’ language awareness had a major contribution to the enactment of collective identity of language analyst and language user roles as part of their professional identity. Teaching practicum experiences also helped the third-year PTs develop a sense of belonging to the school community by aligning themselves with its rules and policies, which helped them develop their professional identity in a prescribed manner, informing institutionally situated identity of formal teachers. The fourth-year PTs’ identification of themselves with regard to their prospective learners’ needs was also the identity development observed in the form of learner-oriented attitude toward learners as whole persons, all conducive to imagined future identity of needs analysts. The results and implications are further discussed.

Learning English proficiently specially in English as a foreign language (EFL) context needs developing proficiency in all four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). Knowing four language skills helps language learners to learn the language faster and more fundamentally. Teachers and textbooks as the important sources of materials in EFL education play vital roles to improve students' language skills. Improving language skills need learners' active participation. Task-based language teaching (TBLT) as an important concept in language teaching method is very helpful to develop learners' integrated language skills. In this study, a descriptive qualitative approach, using content analysis of the textbook, was used to evaluate Iranian tenth-grade senior high school English textbook Vision1 in terms of four language skills activities based on Willis' (1996) task-based lesson plan model. A questionnaire adapted from Wuttisrisiriporn and Usaha's (2019) was also administered to 107 (51 males and 56 females) first-grade senior high school English teachers to evaluate their perceptions towards four language skills activities in the textbook. Findings regarding the textbook analysis indicated that it does not adequately include four language skills activities. Considering teachers' perceptions towards Vision 1 skills activities, the findings revealed that most of the teachers disagreed with the adequacy of the four language skills activities. Based on the findings, it is suggested that appropriate language skills activities should be included in Iranian tenth-grade English textbook to enable learners to interact accurately and fluently. In this regard, the study provides some helpful guidance which might be useful for Iranian English language material developers and teachers of tenth-grade senior high school to reconsider the textbook content

Performance testing including the use of rating scales has become widespread in the evaluation of second/foreign oral language assessment. However, no study has used Multifaceted Rasch Measurement (MFRM) including the facets of test takers’ ability, raters’ severity, group expertise, and scale category, in one study. 20 EFL teachers scored the speaking performance of 200 test-takers prior and subsequent to a rater training program using an analytic rating scale consisting of fluency, grammar, vocabulary, intelligibility, cohesion, and comprehension categories. The outcome demonstrated that the categories were at different levels of difficulty even after the training program. However, this outcome by no means indicated the uselessness of the training program since data analysis reflected the constructive influence of training in providing enough consistency in raters’ rating of each category of the rating scale at the post-training phase. Such an outcome indicated that raters could discriminate the various categories of the rating scale. The outcomes also indicated that MFRM can result in enhancement in rater training and functionality validation of the rating scale descriptors. The training helped raters use the descriptors of the rating scale more efficiently of its various band descriptors resulting in a reduced halo effect. The findings conveyed that stakeholders had better establish training programs to assist raters in better use of the rating scale categories of various levels of difficulty in an appropriate way. Further research could be done to make a comparative analysis between the outcome of this study and the one using a holistic rating scale in oral assessment.

Teacher professional development plays a critical role in enhancing educational outcomes, with Teacher Training Courses (TTCs) serving as a primary avenue for improving teaching quality. This study evaluates the effectiveness of an English TTC conducted at the Iran Language Institute (ILI) by employing a concurrent mixed-methods approach. Data were gathered from TTC candidates, attendees, and ILI teachers to assess their expectations, immediate evaluation, and delayed evaluation of the TTC. Seven interviews with TTC candidates were conducted to capture expectations, while 69 questionnaires from attendees and 85 from ILI teachers provided immediate and delayed evaluations respectively. Both interviews and questionnaires were structured around the five standards of the California Standards for the Teaching Profession (CSTP), and the data were analyzed using content analysis and descriptive statistics. The findings indicate that candidates expected the TTC to focus on modern teaching techniques, syllabus design, classroom management, and supporting diverse learners. Besides, satisfaction levels were higher among female teachers and TTC attendees compared to male teachers and ILI teachers respectively. All in all, areas such as supporting diverse learners and professional development emerged with the lowest levels of satisfaction. These findings underscore the importance of tailoring TTCs to address specific needs, particularly in areas where satisfaction levels are suboptimal, to ensure the continued improvement of teaching quality and student outcomes.

Interaction has always been viewed as a key element in developing the knowledge of an L2 and establishing dynamic communicative episodes. However, it is not always materialized in foreign language learning contexts where access to English speakers is limited. Hence, this study investigated the effects of employing interactive and individual performance tasks on Iranian male EFL learners’ speaking ability. The participants were 32 homogeneous upper-intermediate EFL learners in two intact classes, randomly assigned to two experimental groups. The first experimental group performed problem-solving, reasoning-gap, and opinion-gap tasks individually, and the second group employed problem-solving, reasoning-gap, and information-gap tasks through team-work for 16 sessions. Two speaking pre- and post-tests were administered to evaluate the participants’ oral performance before and after the treatment. The statistical analysis of the data showed no statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the two groups on the speaking post-test, indicating that neither form of performance was superior to the other in the process of developing L2 oral proficiency. However, the results of two paired samples t-tests demonstrated that the learners’ speaking skill had significantly improved in both groups at the end of the experiment. Therefore, the researchers concluded that a careful execution of individual performance tasks in the absence of interaction could also contribute to developing speaking an L2.

The teacher’s professional identity (TPI) defines their perception of how to behave in their teaching profession, and it may have a significant role in determining their place in educational advancement. Yet, the moderator influence of L2 Teacher Grit (L2TG) , Critical Thinking (CT), Teacher Resilience (TR), and Teacher Self-efficacy Beliefs (TS-EB) on TPI has not been extensively documented in the literature. To fill this lacuna, this study developed a model to show the interplay between TPI, L2TG , CT, TR, and TS-EB. The Teacher’s Professional Identity Scale (TPIS), the L2-teacher Grit Scale (L2TGS), the Watson–Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal Form (WGCTAF), the Teacher Resilience Scale (TRS), and the Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale (TS-ES) were given to 437 English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers for the intention of collecting this data. Following the findings of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), L2TG , CT, TR, and TS-EB can enhance TPI among EFL teachers. Finally, the implications and future direction were offered to enthusiastic educators and researchers which may enhance their awareness of the link between TPI, L2TG , CT, TR, and TS-EB and the way it can generate great results for the educational system.

The present study investigated the translation of genderism Persian-English. Genderism is an ideology that shows partiality based on biological sex and separates society into two groups in a way that one sex is subordinate to another sex and it is reflected in languages; thus, there are sexist concepts in each language; the concepts are usually culture-oriented. The main question was: How have the sexist concepts been translated from Persian to English? The corpus of this comparative and qualitative study was Zoya Pirzad’s novel (2001 ) Cheraghha-ra Man Khamush Mikonam (L.T. I’ll turn off the lights ) and its translation by Franklin Lewis (2012) Things We Left Unsaid . The framework of the evaluation was Vinay and Darbelnet’s (1995) model. The results revealed that translation of genderism is a challenging task, and the sexiest language of the SL was modified during the translation process; hence, the tone of sexist implications of the source text has been changed to more sexist concepts or anti-sexist concepts.

Research to date has commonly suggested that meaning inferencing through concordance lines can facilitate vocabulary learning. This facilitative role, however, may be subject to mediation by the expanded contexts of the target vocabulary item in concordance and accurate meaning inferencing. Of these plausible factors, the length of the co-text of vocabulary items in concordance context remains under researched. The present study investigated how inferencing in the context of three varying concordance lengths (i.e., two complete sentences, one complete sentence, and a truncated sentence) affect EFL learners' accurate inferencing and vocabulary gain. To this end, 66 upper intermediate learners were assigned randomly into three groups and were asked to infer the meaning of 63 unknown words over seven sessions (nine words each session). For each unknown word, three examples in three different lengths were selected. Results indicated that two complete sentence co-text led to more accurate inferencing and vocabulary gain. The pedagogical implications of the findings are discussed