درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Teacher professional development, as a burgeoning term, has attracted a surge of interest in English language teaching. In second language (L2) professional development, the common orthodoxy has been one which considers teachers as that of knowledge consumers. It is commonly argued that top-down approaches to teachers’ professional development has done little to maximize teachers’ professionalism. To unravel the above-mentioned dilemma, this study was an attempt to implement collaborative action research, as a viable means, to boost teachers’ professional development in a networked community of shared knowledge. To this end, thirteen male and female Iranian English teachers, within the age range of 22-35, were selected through convenience sampling. The selected participants were added to a group in WhatsApp. The online classes began with plenary debate, mostly in the form of workshops through problematizing a particular topic, which were directly linked to teachers’ actual teaching experience. Insights into the EFL teachers’ professional development were acquired through the triangulation of data from four main sources (i.e., teachers’ professional journals, reflective journals, action research projects, and semi-structured interviews). The findings revealed that engaging EFL teachers in a collaborative dialogue in a networked community of shared knowledge ultimately culminated in development of action research projects which resulted in sustained L2 professional development, whereby participating teachers developed a broader understanding of research and adopted reflective inquiry in their L2 teaching practices. The findings have important implications for language teachers in general, and EFL teachers, syllabus designers, and material developers, in particular.

Condemning a laissez faire approach to English Language Teaching (ELT), English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher trainers unanimously agree that the building blocks of teachers’ teaching framework are profoundly influenced by conducting research. Focusing on quantitative research, this study endeavored to scrutinize the impact of the Critical Appraisal of Published Research (CAPR) in undergraduate teacher training programs on EFL teachers’ Data Analysis Knowledge (DAK). To this objective, 30 male and female EFL teachers were non-randomly selected and randomly assigned to two groups. In two Research classes, the experimental group received the CAPR whereas the control group received traditional teacher-centered instruction with summative assessment. The DAK section of the Quantitative Research Literacy (QRL) questionnaire was employed as the pretest and posttest. Subsequent to corroborating participants’ pre-treatment homogeneity in terms of DAK, analyzing the post-treatment data through running an independent-samples t-test, eta squared = .338 (representing a large effect size), indicated the existence of a significant difference in the post-treatment DAK scores between the two groups. The obtained results confirmed that the CAPR has a significantly better impact on EFL teachers’ DAK which is a key area of QRL. Therefore, it seems accurate to argue that ELT teacher training programs should endeavor to involve the students in a mentally engaging process, e.g. CAPR, where the content of the course is put into practice by the students, something which is required for balancing the concrete and the abstract.

Teacher education philosophy plays an important role in enhancing the teachers’ awareness of the practices particularly in the context of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). This study meant to observe the possible effect of the awareness of teacher education philosophy on EFL teachers’ professional skill in the light of Kumaravadivelu’s postmethod parameters, tapping teachers’ gender, academic qualification, teaching experience, and age. Through a mixed-method approach employing the posttest-only equivalent-groups design, 60 EFL teachers from four language institutes in Isfahan, Iran, were randomly appointed to experimental and control groups. The philosophy of adult education inventory for treatment of experimental group and a book for placebo of control group were used. A questionnaire, an interview, and classroom observation checklist were tools for data collection. T-test, ANOVA, and Mann-Whitney tests exposed a significant difference between EFL teachers’ awareness of teacher education philosophy and their professional skill. Female teachers, bachelor holders, the most experienced teachers, and teachers in the third age range showed better perception of the teacher education philosophy. The implications derive education policy-makers to demarcate quality resources, teacher educators to modify training approaches, and EFL teachers to develop their professional related presentations.

This study was an endeavor to develop a model of cultural identity among Iranian advanced EFL learners. To achieve this end, a multiphase design was implemented. Initially, it was attempted to investigate different factors of cultural identity to propose and validate a model. Thus, 20 EFL learners studying in Safir English language institute in Tehran were interviewed about their views of their cultural identity in the qualitative phase. After extracting four factors of cultural identity including: “religion, culture, nationality, and language”, a questionnaire was constructed which reflected these factors. Then, in the quantitative phase, the 30-item questionnaire went through an exploratory factor analysis for the sake of validity and after its validity and reliability were corroborated through a pilot study with 183 learners, it was distributed among 384 EFL learners. In addition, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis was run through LISREL 8.8. to confirm that the final proposed model enjoyed validity for future research. To do so, a confirmatory factor analysis was run and the model of cultural identity was developed. Eventually, the possible relationship between 384 EFL learners’ cultural identity and their English language achievement scores was examined and the results of this phase indicated that there was a significant and positive relationship between learners’ cultural identity and their English language achievement scores. The findings of this study can enhance awareness among English teachers, materials developers, and syllabus designers to equip themselves with the updated techniques to handle the possible challenges that may occur in EFL learning contexts.

This study examined the role of the native language (L1) transfer in a non-native language (L2) acquisition of the there-insertion construction at the syntax-semantics interface. Specifically, the study investigated if Mandarin EFL learners would make overgeneralization errors in the situation where an L1 argument structure constitutes a superset of its L2 counterpart. Verbs of existence and appearance (EAA) such as exist, appear are possible with the there-insertion construction in which the single argument remains in the underlying direct object position. In Mandarin, some verb classes also allow their single arguments to appear in the verb-subject (VS) order. For example, VEA and verbs of monadic change of state (COS) (die, escape) are compatible with the VS order. Some verbs of manner of motion (MOM) (run, swim) are also permissible with the construction. Seventy upper-intermediate and advanced L1 Mandarin EFL learners and 30 native English speakers participated in an acceptability judgement test, the results of which show that L1 Mandarin EFL learners acquired native-like knowledge of the there-insertion construction with verbs of EAA, but they have difficulties recognizing the unacceptability of the there-insertion sentences with verbs of COS and MOM. Individual results by subjects show that it is possible to recover from L1 transfer. Mandarin EFL learners start to unlearn the overgeneralization errors with MOM verbs by drawing on the semantic properties. The experimental results provide further evidence for the previous findings suggesting that the L2 argument structure acquisition is constrained by L1, and the recovery from L1 transfer is also possible.

Styles and strategies are among the fundamental issues to be investigated in the language classroom in order to monitor learning process of language learners and to increase their awareness levels. Research on learner style and strategies suggests that a certain degree of awareness on these issues helps both learners and teachers distinguish between the weak and strong aspects of the learning process and take action reasonably. In this sense, in the present study, it was aimed to investigate the learning styles of the student teachers attending Turkish universities and their awareness about indirect strategy use. In the study, survey method was used. To identify style awareness and strategy use of the student teachers, three questionnaires -The Learning Style Checklist, Indirect Strategy Use Questionnaire, and Strategy Instruction Awareness- were administered to the student teachers. Quantitative analyses were used to evaluate the collected data. Undergraduate student teachers –total 226 second year student teachers- participated in the survey. The results indicated that the student teachers used indirect strategies efficiently as consistent with their learning styles. They used metacognitive, affective, and social strategies to defeat the possible problems they faced during language learning process. It was also reported that they felt themselves capable of planning and evaluating their learning process, lowering their anxiety level, taking emotional temperature by encouraging themselves, and cooperating with others.

A key component of any educational program is the “textbook”, the efficiency of which greatly contributes to the accomplishment of the pedagogical goals of the program. The grave significance of the textbook necessitates its rigorous evaluation (Tomlinson, 2008). This study aimed to investigate EFL teachers’ and students’ perspectives on a recently developed Iranian EFL junior high school textbook entitled “Prospect 3”. The participants were 218 third-grade junior high school students and 103 EFL teachers conveniently selected from different junior high schools of Khuzestan, Golestan, Hamedan, and Qom provinces. The evaluation of the textbook was carried out quantitatively through a 5-point Likert scale questionnaire. The analyses revealed that EFL teachers were partially satisfied with Prospect 3; however, EFL students were rather neutral. For the teachers ,                                                                       “Vocabulary and Grammar” was the most meritorious aspect, while “ Language Type ” was the least acceptable dimension. From the students’ perspective, the most meritorious aspect of the text was “ Vocabulary and Grammar” ,  while “ Layout and Physical Appearance ” was viewed as the least satisfactory dimension. The findings of this work might be of interest to Iranian EFL teachers, syllabus designers, materials developers, and the stakeholders involved in the materials preparation Bureaus of the Iranian Ministry of General Education.  

This paper aims to make the reader familiar with the Brahui language which is spoken as a minority language by the Brahui people, mostly in Balochistan province of Pakistan; some parts of Nimroz province of Afghanistan, and some parts of the Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchestan. To achieve this goal, first, a brief sketch of the Brahui ethnography, the origin of their language, and the Brahui language including phonology, lexicon, dialects, and its verb system is given. Second, two texts in Brahui are interlinearized, one of which is already transcribed in Latin. The other one, which was originally written in Brahui based on the Arabic alphabet, is transcribed in the Latin-based modified alphabet. Some sentences from the beginning and the end of the first text, and all of the second text have been interlinearized. In the glossary, which consists of all the words used in both texts, grammatical information such as nominal declension, according to the eleven Brahui case system, and verb inflections, based on tense, aspect, mood, and affirmative/negative is clearly explained in full details. In the end, the reader will have an overall view of the language that makes him/her able to continue his/her study and increase his/her knowledge about Brahui.

Due to the significance of teachers’ beliefs and individual variables, a bulk of studies has focused on teacher characteristics over the past two decades. As an attempt to further clarify the interplay between teacher-related constructs in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context, the present study set out to explore the structural model hypothesizing the predictive role of teachers’ self-efficacy and collective teacher efficacy in affecting the psychological well-being of teachers in Iranian EFL context. In so doing, a sample of 179 English teachers was given the three self-report scales measuring the variables under investigation. As for the statistical analysis, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was employed to test the fit of the hypothesized model. The results indicated that teacher self-efficacy accounted for 19.8% of the variance while collective teacher efficacy amounted to 11.3% of the variance in psychological well-being. In addition, it was revealed that although both predictors had a unique effect on psychological well-being, teacher self-efficacy was a stronger predictor of psychological well-being than collective teacher efficacy. The results and implications are finally elaborated.

Interlanguage pragmatic learning strategies (IPLS) as particularly tailored language learning strategies for acquiring L2 pragmatic knowledge have been recently paid paramount attention in the pragmatics literature. These strategies are, therefore, related to some other social variables which are central to pragmatic development such as L2 social identity. Because of the importance of the IPLS and the rarity of research about the relationship between IPLS and with L2 social identity as a highly pragmatic-oriented variable, the current study tried to investigate the contribution of various forms of IPLS to L2 social identity among a randomly selected sample of 125 upper-intermediate to advanced EFL learners at a state university in Iran. During the two-phased data collection procedure, first, the participants filled out Locastro’s (2001) L2 social identity questionnaire, and then Malmir and Tajeddin’s (2015) IPLS inventory in two subsequent sessions. Data analysis using multiple regression revealed that all types of IPLS were significant contributors to L2 social identity except for the memory IPLS. Among the other five types of IPLS, social IPLS was a significant and strong contributor to L2 social identity. Affective and compensatory IPLS were significant moderate contributors to L2 social identity; however, metacognitive and cognitive interlanguage pragmatic learning strategies were weak albeit significant predictors of Iranian EFL learners’ social identity in English as an L2. The results of this study imply that L2 teachers can enhance social identity among the learners by fostering the knowledge of various forms of IPLS.

Researchers and teaching practitioners have been trying to find more effective methods of teaching idioms due to the significance of these expressions in language learning contexts. The present study sought to investigate the effects of three verbal mnemonic tools (grouping, stories, and conceptual metaphor) on EFL learners’ recognition and recall of English idioms. Ninety EFL learners at intermediate language proficiency level who were preparing themselves to take IELTS participated in this study. They were in three groups of thirty members each. Each group was randomly assigned to one of the experimental conditions and was instructed idioms using one of the verbal mnemonic devices. The collected data were analyzed using the one-way ANOVA procedure. The results showed statistically significant differences among these devices, with ‘stories’ being the most effective on recognition and ‘conceptual metaphor’ being the most beneficial in the recall of idioms. The findings of the study can have potential theoretical implications for researchers and pedagogical implications for curriculum developers, language teachers, and learners.

Working memory is believed to interact with a second language (L2) learning at the cognitive level. The present study sought to explore the impact of L2 readers’ prior knowledge on the contribution of working memory to reading comprehension. Eighty Iranian English learners were divided into two groups of high and low by their scores on L2 knowledge and the topic knowledge tests. Their working memory spans, and reading comprehension abilities were measured via a working memory test and a reading comprehension test respectively. The results indicated that working memory significantly predicted L2 reading comprehension only when the readers had sufficient topic knowledge. The results also show that the learners’ comprehension was mostly determined by their L2 linguistic knowledge, even when they had considerable working memory capacity. The findings imply that readers’ prior knowledge could moderate the contribution of working memory in L2 reading comprehension. A certain level of knowledge in the target language and on the topic is required for L2 readers to help working memory work more efficiently.

The Covid-19 pandemic has been with us, for almost a year now. It has affected our lives in multiple ways and challenged our achievements as well. Daily life has changed in aspects we never would have imagined. We had to change our habits and behaviors quickly in order to assure the health of our family, our neighbors and the rest of the world. While facing this “unprecedented” situation, there are terms that appear to describe the health crisis and its consequences. This planetary pandemic has also changed human behavior. In this article, we will see how the word Covid-19, a real agent of change in our existence, initiated changes in language and our behavior. Indeed, within the generative process of meaning as envisioned by semiotics, Covid-19 is an actant that crosses the different stages of process, from denomination to discourse. The discursive effervescence of Covid-19 is narrative. It appears as the prototype of the anti-subject. Perfect and absolute embodiment of evil. A single narrative program motivates it: propagation. We also see that Covid-19 is no longer just the anti-subject of this story. It truly becomes the Anti-Sender, leading in the shadows an army of villains, capable of reinventing themselves at one’s leisure. This is a spectacular example of actantial cumulation.

Following the recent developments in educational technology-integrated learning, interest in the true implementation of flipped and blended classrooms as innovative approaches has become increasingly popular among language education authorities. This research aimed at comparing flipped, blended, and traditional teaching (T-learning) contexts on Iranian EFL learners’ grammar learning. To this end, 60 intermediate EFL students out of 80, based on their performance in an Oxford Placement Test (OPT), were selected and divided into three groups, including two comparative and one control group, 20 in each. At the beginning of the study, the three groups participated in a pretest to assess their initial ability of grammar knowledge. To integrate technology into their instruction, both comparative groups received the same treatment and materials based on the Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition (SAMR) model. The blended comparative group received instruction in both on-line and T-learning contexts, while the flipped comparative group received instruction in an online context. The control group received instruction in a T-learning context. After the treatment sessions, they participated in a post-test. The findings showed that reading interesting English newspaper articles, both in the blended and flipped classrooms had a statistically significant effect on developing EFL learners' grammar knowledge. The findings of the study may be beneficial for EFL teachers and material developers to reconsider the role of educational technology (Ed Tech) tools to support classroom-based learning.

Listening comprehension is a challenging skill in EFL contexts and it is necessary to research various aspects of this skill. Therefore, this study tried to investigate EFL learners’ progress on two types of listening comprehension items, receptive-response and productive-response, through diagnostic assessment (DIA) and dynamic assessment (DA). To do this, a Nelson proficiency test was administered among 120 EFL students in six classes, out of which, 90 students whose scores were in the acceptable range were selected. The classes were then randomly divided into three groups of control, DIA, and DA. As the pretest, a KET listening test in two sections of receptive-response and productive-response items was used to check the learners’ initial performance. Next, as for the treatment, in the DIA group, the learners took four listening tests with receptive-response and productive-response items in the form of test-feedback; in the DA group, the learners took the same four tests in the form of test-mediation-retest, and in the control group, the learners practiced receptive-response and productive-response items after each listening activity. At the end of the study, another KET listening test in two sections of receptive-response and productive-response items was administered to the participants to investigate the three groups’ progress from pretest to posttest. Finally, two repeated-measures two-way ANOVAs and one MANOVA were run, and the results showed that both DIA and DA resulted in significant improvements in the learners’ performance on both receptive-response and productive-response listening items; however, the difference between the two types of assessment was not significant.

This article reports on a study of interaction amid beginners with the use of the technological resource WhatsApp . Its major objective was to analyze online oral negotiated interaction characteristics, using mainly WhatsApp audio-recorded messages, but also multimodal interaction (text, images, GIFs, emoticons, etc.). It was a qualitative, interpretive, and exploratory case study applied to 33 participants from a public technical school in Brazil, in which participants were in the first year of High School. The analysis revealed that negotiated interaction was the main component of interaction, although in a different sense if related to the theoretical framework held in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Therefore, this study added a discussion on interaction in SLA, which considered the peculiarities of the online oral negotiated interaction among beginner learners of English using WhatsApp . The interpretive findings discussed in this article may enlighten pedagogical practices in SLA as well as broaden possibilities in terms of activities development to work on online oral interaction amongst beginners, with the aid of technological resources. Finally, this study may serve the purpose of promoting reflections on SLA theories about interaction.