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Driven by the concept of mediation, this study is set out to use sociocultrual theory as the theoretical framework to explore the mediation role of textbooks, specifically, the series Northstar in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) university classes in Vietnam. Learning journals with guided questions are employed to collect data on how different aspects of English textbooks assist students’ learning in the classroom. Besides, transcripts of recorded classroom obervations are analysed to interpret how the textbooks formulate and faciliate students’ ideas related to the given tasks and generate their interaction in both the target language and the mother tongue. It is found from the students’ journals that the textbooks assist them in understanding the lesson contents and the images help them with visualizing the lessons. Besides, the students make use of the tasks/activities when practising language skills, especially the listening skill. The transcripts reveal the process in which students refer to their previous knowledge related to the topics/tasks provided in the textbooks to interact with one other. More speficially, the tasks and the ideas of other group members mediate more thoughts of the students, leading to collective knowledge construction and task completion. From the findings, recommendations for the use of textbooks in the framework of sociocultrual theory are put forward.

Problem-based Learning (PBL) as one of the newest teaching methods in the area of language teaching in second and foreign contexts, has been used by teachers in the last two decades in different institutes. In the current study, attempts were made to find out the effect of the two PBL subcategories, i.e. Hybrid Problem-based Learning (H-PBL) and Pure Problem-based Learning (PPBL) in comparison to a traditional lecture-based method, on Iranian EFL university learners’ speaking skill and their self-confidence, by implementing these two methods in the EFL classroom using eight teacher-made real-world problems. To this purpose, 56 undergraduate participants of Payam Noor university (PNU) in Abadan, Iran, were randomly selected, divided into a control group and two treatment HPBL and PPBL groups. The statistical analysis of the obtained results of the participants’ pretest-posttest scores, through one-way ANCOVA and Man-Whitney U test, revealed that the treatment groups outperformed the control group in speaking skill and self-confidence The findings of the study might bear implications for teachers and university curriculum designers to take more proper approaches towards the instructing university participants.

This study aimed to discover the possible relationship between intrapersonal intelligence and grammatical ability of Iranian EFL male and female learners. To this purpose, 139 undergraduate English students (46 males and 93 females), with the age range of 22-32, were selected through a TOEFL test as the participants. To obtain the needed data, the instruments used were a 119-item Multiple Intelligences Questionnaire (MIDAS) to assess the participants’ intrapersonal intelligence, and a 30-item grammar TOEFL test to the measure their grammar ability. The obtained data were analyzed through descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation and linear regression. The difference between male and female students in grammar ability and intrapersonal intelligence was determined by independent samples t-test. The results indicated a statistically significance relationship between intrapersonal intelligence and English grammar ability scores. The results also revealed no significant difference between male and female students in terms of intrapersonal intelligence and English grammar ability. The findings of this study may assist language teachers, policy makers and curriculum designers to consider the role of intrapersonal intelligence as a helpful construct in learning English grammar.

The main purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between EFL teachers’ self-regulatory trait and effective teaching. Furthermore, the study aimed to find out the relationship between EFL teachers’ self-regulatory trait with some demographics such as gender and years of teaching experience. The participants were 85 EFL male and female teachers between the age ranges of 27 to 52. In addition, 200 male and female high school students between the age ranges of 15 to 17 participated in this study. Self-regulatory trait of the teachers was explored through Teacher Self-regulation Scale (TSR) questionnaire and the qualities of successful Iranian EFL teachers were explored through Qualities of Successful Iranian EFL Teachers’ Questionnaire (QSIET). Empirical analysis revealed that no significant relationship existed between teachers' gender and their self-regulatory trait. However, a significant relationship was found between teachers' self-regulatory trait and years of teaching. The implications of this study can be practical and useful for EFL teachers, who eagerly try to improve their teaching qualifications as well as teacher-training courses. The findings can be also helpful for language teaching designers to design proper syllabuses and materials for language teaching.

Free riding behavior or not contributing equally in group work, is a common obstacle in many cooperative activities in language learning. The present study aimed at comparing male and female EFL learners' attitude and their free riding tendency to use the benefits of lowering free riding behaviors in order to make group work more influential in language learning. To this purpose, 140 intermediate and upper intermediate Iranian EFL learners and 30 teachers participated in the study. Semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were used to investigate the topic. The obtained results revealed that the female learners act better in reducing free riding behaviors. The results further revealed a positive perception of interpersonal activities at both level of language proficiency-- intermediate and upper-intermediate. Actually, the obtained results showed that the intermediate group (males and females) acted more positively than the other group in this respect. The findings of the study bear some implications and suggestions for scholar interested in the topic of this.

This study aimed to investigate collaborative reading in reading sessions among young Iranian EFL learners. It actually was an attempt to examine the process and components of collaborative reading which are expected to improve young learners’ reading ability in the English language. To this purpose, a group of second year Iranian EFL young learners at a primary school in Tehran together with their teachers participated in the study. The young learners were around eight years old. The duration of the study was 12 weeks. Since the study was qualitative in nature, teachers’ reflective journals, a number of observations and face-to-face interviews with teachers were used as instruments to collect the needed data. The analysis of the qualitatively-elicited data presented a in so far as reading processes and reading comprehension enhancement through collaborative deeper understanding of the importance of the process and components of collaborative reading. In fact, the findings revealed that collaborative reading promote young EFL learners’ reading performance. Thus, the study has practical implications for both teachers and young EFL learners reading in terms of reading performance enhancement.

What is “the best method” of language teaching? It has been one of the oldest questions of language teaching and learning during the last century. However, no comprehensive quantitative study has tackled the issue. In order to answer this question, the researchers meta-analyzed 56 studies with 7960 participants from many contexts. A coding scheme of 46 variables, in the form of four major moderator sets, including design characteristics, language characteristics, participant characteristics, and teaching characteristics, was developed. The overall effect size (g= 1.00) was found to be positive, strong, and significant for all language teaching methods. The findings showed that all language teaching methods, irrespective of various contexts, were positively effective. The results of moderator analysis showed that most of the moderators, excluding language skills and place of the study, had no significant effect on language teaching methods. Implications for current theory and practice, for both method and postmethod, are discussed.

This study aimed to investigate the impact of web-based cooperative teaching through strategy-based instruction on EFL learners’ speaking and listening skills. Moreover, the use of cooperative teaching was hypothesized to have impact on the EFL learners’ self-efficacy. To this purpose, the study followed a mixed-methods design by implementing both qualitative and quantitative data gathering procedures through tests, questionnaire and interviews. The population of the study was made up of 48 EFL learners in a language institute in Kerman, a city in the south east of Iran. In order to collect data, four instruments were used: Cambridge Placement Test to homogenize the participants, pre- and post-listening and speaking tests, a questionnaire to estimate EFL learners’ self-efficacy and finally an interview. Based on the obtained results, it was revealed that the learners in the online group improved much more satisfactorily than those taught through traditional teaching procedures. It was, therefore, concluded that collaborative teaching strategies were effective in the web environment. Besides, meaningful relationships were observed between the use of the applied strategies and the oral skills. Furthermore, the results of the questionnaire clearly indicated the learners’ self-efficacy improvement from pre- to post-administration. Finally, the resulted obtained from the interview showed the positive effect of web-based cooperative and strategy teaching in the oral language class. In fact, majority of the learners in the online group clearly maintained that using collaboration in the web-environment could enhance their learning level. The findings of the study are of much help to language teachers who observe learning problems among their students. They can also assist learners who suffer from communicative difficulties in the situations where they have to collaborate with other groups and exchange ideas.

In every field of teaching and learning, there are some factors that have an important role in both teachers’ and students’ performance. Two of these effective psychological factors in the context of education include self-efficacy and burnout. This research was conducted to examine the statistical relationship between English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ self-efficacy and burnout levels in the universities and schools of Iran. The data collection instruments were two questionnaires, ‘Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale’ and ‘Maslach Burnout Inventory’. The participants included 152 randomly selected teachers working in universities and schools. After data collection, the SPSS software was applied to convert the obtained data into numerical and interpretable data. To quantify the statistical relationship between teachers’ self-efficacy and burnout levels, correlational analysis was used. Results indicated, there was negative correlation between teachers’ self efficacy and burnout levels. Furthermore, multiple regression analysis was conducted to estimate the relationship between self-efficacy and burnout better, which indicated that teachers’ self efficacy was a negative predictor of their burnout.

This study was an attempt to examine the effects of direct (DCF), indirect (ICF) and metalinguistic (MCF) written corrective feedback and the types of responses (i.e. + /– revision) on the perception of present/past perfect tenses by Iranian intermediate EFL learners. A pretest-posttest design was utilized to conduct the study with 210 intermediate EFL learners who were randomly selected based on their scores on Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT). They were assigned to 7 groups, each including 30 participants: DCF+ Revision, DCF – Revision, ICF + Revision, and ICF – Revision, MCF + Revision, and MCF – Revision, and a control group. All students were asked to take a multiple-choice test (i.e. perception test) as a pretest and a posttest. After administering the pretest and imparting the relevant treatment, the posttest was administered. Results indicated that all experimental groups improved their knowledge of past/present perfect tenses from the pretest to the posttest, the ‘DCF + Revision’ group outperformed all other groups, all of the groups doing revision (i.e. DCF / ICF / MCF + Revision) outperformed their counterparts without revision (i.e. DCF / ICF/ MCF – Revision), and the only groups whose scores were not significantly different were the ‘ICF + Revision’, ‘DCF – Revision’, and ‘MCF – Revision’ groups. The findings provide insights into new ways of helping students to improve their L2 writing skills in general and specifically teaching grammatical structures through effective combinations of written corrective feedback and follow-up revision.

T The textbook analysis is a vigorous research approach for evaluating the conformity between the content and the purpose of education. Accordingly, the relatively newly-published Iranian ELT textbooks for senior high school, known as the “Vision series” were analyzed for their prominent levels of learning objectives according to Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy. Activity sections of textbooks were codified according to the Taxonomy’s coding scheme, and the inter/intra-rater reliability which were measured and approved. Results revealed that the lower-order categories of cognitive domain are more frequently represented in Vision series of 1 and 2, and chi-square statistics indicate that Vision 3 is significantly different from the other two. The inclusion of higher-order categories in Vision 3 creates hope for increasing students’ proficiency and activating students’ need to develop higher-order thinking skills which are prerequisites to critical thinking and autonomous learning. Findings also maintain that the cognitive domain and metacognitive knowledge domain were the least perceived in the three textbooks which call for inclusion of more reflective activities and supplementing higher-order cognitive activities or complementary tasks in Visions 1 and 2.

The current study investigated the relationship between teachers’ creativity, motivation and job satisfaction. In so doing, the role of demographic factors, i.e. gender, teaching experience and teaching context was also taken into account. To conduct the study, a total of 103 EFL teachers at both institute and school contexts were selected. The teachers were recruited on a voluntary basis, and the sample included teachers from a variety of backgrounds and experiences, coming from both genders and either of the teaching contexts. Three questionnaires (Teacher Creativity Questionnaire, Teacher Motivation Questionnaire, and Job Satisfaction Scale) were employed to gather the data, which were then analyzed through a number of analyses, including Spearman’s Rank Order Correlation, Multiple Regression Analysis, Mann Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis test. Findings revealed the existence of a significant correlation between teachers’ motivation and their job satisfaction. Furthermore, teachers’ motivation in comparison with their creativity had a greater predictive power with regard to job satisfaction. However, demographic factors did not have a significant role in job satisfaction. The findings can offer insightful implications for educational authorities, teachers, school leaderships and academicians to help promote job satisfaction in different instructional contexts.

Reading passages act as the locus of comprehensible input in the English language teaching materials and are mostly followed by a host of activities to ensure the learners’ comprehension. The current study aimed to carry out a comparative evaluation of Vision 3 and Learning to Read (i.e., English for Pre-university Students) in terms of the reading sections. To this end, Freeman’s taxonomy of reading comprehension questions was used. To enrich the quantitative data, thirty-two English teachers were also interviewed. The results revealed the prevalence of Language questions in both textbooks. However, the least common types of questions were Affect and Content in the old and new textbook, respectively. The results of Chi-square tests unfolded a significant difference between the two textbooks in terms of three categories of questions. The analysis of the teachers’ responses corroborated the findings of the quantitative phase. The teachers seemed satisfied with the inclusion of more Affect questions in Vision 3; nevertheless, they believed that the new English textbook needed to be revised in terms of the quantity and quality of reading texts and tasks in order to shape and expand the students’ reading comprehension skills. The findings carry pedagogical implications for the materials developers and English teachers.

Teachers usually teach according to how brains naturally learn. In this way, not only do their learners learn, retain, and recall quickly, but also the teaching becomes more joyful. Increased attention to the worthwhile role of the mind in learning/teaching in recent times Due to the lack of a valid scale for estimating teachers' awareness of brain-friendly teaching, the current study intended to construct and validate a 54-item brain-friendly teaching inventory by the implementation of the Rasch model. The test was administered to 200 Iranian EFL teachers from different educational contexts. The results revealed that all the 54 items of the scale had a good fit to the Rasch model. Infit and outfit values were within the acceptable range which indicates unidimensionality of the scale. Furthermore, it is asserted that the inventory enjoyed suitable reliability. This demonstrates that the Brain-Friendly Teaching Inventory is valid and can be applied as a scale for assessing the teachers' awareness of brain-friendly teaching.

The aim of this investigation has been to predict Viewing Comprehension through Aural and Picture Vocabulary Size among Iranian EFL Learners . To this end, 110 intermediate students were selected from two institutes of a city in Khorasan Razavi province, Iran. Pictorial vocabulary knowledge of learners was tested by Picture Vocabulary Size Test, Aural vocabulary knowledge was measured by Aural vocabulary size test and viewing comprehension was tested by a multiple-choice question test. All analyses were carried out using SPSS for Microsoft windows 22. Pearson product moment correlation analysis was run to analyze the relationship among viewing comprehension, picture vocabulary size and aural vocabulary . After the correlation analysis, we did step-wise multiple regression analysis to predict an outcome variable from two predictors . Interestingly, it was found that both picture and aural vocabulary size have a significant positive correlation with viewing comprehension. It was also proved that only aural vocabulary size can be considered as a significant predictor of EFL learners' viewing comprehension ability.