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Despite extensive research on teacher qualities, a significant knowledge gap persists regarding the interplay among psychological and professional factors influencing Iranian EFL teachers' performance, particularly concerning teacher stroke. This study aims to address this gap by examining the predictive power of teacher identity, immunity, and Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) on teacher stroke, within the Iranian EFL context. Participants included 124 Iranian EFL teachers, randomly selected from various regions across Iran, who completed a set of validated questionnaires. Data were collected using the Teacher Immunity Questionnaire, TPACK Questionnaire, Teacher’s Identity Questionnaire, and Teachers’ Stroke Scale. Statistical analysis involved Multiple Regression Analysis to explore the predictive capacity of teacher identity, immunity, and TPACK on stroke. Results revealed a statistically significant relationship among these variables, indicating that teacher identity, immunity, and TPACK collectively explain 46% of the variance in teacher stroke. These findings underscore the importance of integrating these factors into frameworks for supporting teachers' well-being and enhancing teaching effectiveness. The implications extend to stakeholders in EFL education, suggesting targeted interventions to bolster teacher development and instructional quality.

The present study aimed to find the effect of artificial intelligence (AI)-mediated speaking assessment on speaking performance and willingness to communicate (WTC) of Iraqi EFL Learners. More specifically, the study sought to find whether AI-mediated speaking assessment enhance the speaking performance (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, intonation, and fluency) of Intermediate Iraqi EFL learners and whether AI-mediated speaking assessment enhanced their WTC in English. In so doing, 40 intermediate Iraqi EFL learners were randomly selected and assigned into experimental and control groups, each comprising 20 learners. The experimental group participants received ten 60-minute treatment sessions with ELSA Speech Analyzer, while the control group received no treatment. The speaking pre-test of both groups was run prior to the treatment, and all participants were post-tested at the end of the study. The Willingness to Communicate in a Foreign-Language Scale was also administered to groups prior to and after the treatment. A speaking assessment rubric, including vocabulary, grammar, intonation, pronunciation, and fluency, was used to assess the speaking performance of both groups. The findings demonstrated that AI-mediated speaking assessment enhanced the grammar, vocabulary, intonation, and fluency of the experimental group. However, the two groups did not differ in terms of pronunciation. Furthermore, this assessment tool enhanced the willingness to communicate with native speakers, the willingness to communicate with non-native speakers, and the willingness to communicate in the school context of this group. In general, the speaking assessment mediated by AI significantly enhanced the speaking performance and WTC of the learners. These findings might advance the current scholarly discourse on AI within the domains of language pedagogy and assessment.

Writing in a second language (L2) presents significant challenges due to the existing cognitive and social intricacies. Furthermore, psychological factors such as motivation are possibly closely linked to L2 writing success. The writing motivation in an L2 is affected by different factors that interact to influence students' experiences and results. Among such factors, writing self-efficacy and enjoyment are essential elements that greatly affect L2 students' motivation. This study attempts to inspect the connections among writing, enjoyment, self-efficacy, and motivation. This study offers a thorough understanding of how such variables interrelate and affect one another. Gaining insight into the predictive force of writing enjoyment and self-efficacy provides valuable knowledge for teachers and scholars in developing interventions and strategies aimed at boosting writing motivation among L2 students. Two hundred and thirteen students from English Language Preparatory schools of two universities in Turkey took part and the three questionnaires, namely writing motivation, self-efficacy, and enjoyment were administered to the participants. The data was analyzed through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results indicated that there is a strong correlation between motivation and enjoyment, while the correlations between enjoyment and self-efficacy, as well as motivation and self-efficacy, were moderate. The result through SEM revealed that two predictors (writing enjoyment and writing self-efficacy) together explain 35.6% of the variance in writing motivation. The results suggest a moderate degree of predictability, indicating that such variables play a significant role in explaining reasons for people’s motivation to write. These results provided important knowledge for language stakeholders.

Critical discourse analysis was developed by three outstanding linguists such as Fariclough, Van Dijk and Wodak, who offered rather similar approaches towards discourse analysis. Their common point is that CDA should take a critical orientation to discourse and investigate the aspects of ideology and power hidden in the discourse. The salient purpose of CDA which differs from other related approaches is that it tends to explore the implicit underlined ideological and power patterns in the written and spoken discourses. As a whole, CDA tends to uncover the implicit ideological prejudice in the discourse which brings about a dominance, hegemony, inequality and racism, and discrimination. These scholars basically give an ideological perspective to their approaches by the inspiration from Halliday's systematic functional linguistics. Halliday's systematic functional linguistics (SFL) is one of influential frameworks which has been extensively applied for the textual analysis of a number of domains such as critical discourse analysis. This study intends to discover how it is possible to find out the ideological dimension of discourse by exploring the linguistic elements particularly the transitive verbs. It is hoped that it provides insightful guidelines for the CDA researchers to analyze a discourse with its ideological perspective. It concludes that the transitive verbs are most significant in transferring the ideological attitude of writer or speaker. These types of verbs are deliberately used within a textual discourse in which each textual element is interrelated to each other and has an influential impact of the signification of these verbs.

Self-regulation is crucial in foreign language acquisition, requiring learners to set clear goals, choose effective strategies, and manage their learning. However, many face challenges in applying these strategies, indicating a need for educator support. This study examined the impact of Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) strategies on word knowledge and speaking competence among Iranian EFL learners. Data was collected from 200 pre-intermediate and intermediate students using the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT), Self-Regulating Strategy in Vocabulary Learning Scale (SRCvoc), and Key English Test (KET), along with semi-structured interviews with 30 learners in Urmia, Iran. Analysis included descriptive statistics, multiple regression, ANOVA, and thematic analysis. Results showed that learners utilized SRL strategies for vocabulary learning above average, with specific subscales positively affecting acquisition. Commitment control emerged as the most significant factor influencing speaking proficiency, explaining 58.6% of the variance, while satiation control had minimal impact at 15.8%. Challenges in time management, motivation, and anxiety were also identified. The research advocates for targeted interventions to enhance commitment and motivation, contributing valuable insights for educators to improve learning outcomes through tailored instructional strategies that integrate self-regulation training into language curricula.

The diversity between a source language and a target language and the variation in their cultures make the task of finding equivalents a serious challenge. Expressive texts are among the most difficult text-types to be translated. Being deeply rooted in the culture of a nation, classical literary texts are seldom devoid of culture-specific concepts or cultural references (CRs). Sa‘di’s (1208-1291) Gulistan is a prominent masterpiece of classical Persian literature that abounds with CRs. It is translated by many translators. Anderson (1861) and Rosenbaum (2010) are among the earliest and the most recent translators of the Persian masterpiece, respectively. The paper aimed at identifying categories of CRs in translations, determining translators’ most and least frequent procedures and specifying the most challenging categories of CRs for each of them. The study aims at identifying various categories of the CRs in the Gulistan and the procedures employed by the two translators in rendering them. In order to specify the procedures, Davies’s (2003) model and Huber and Kairys’s (2021) taxonomy were used. The findings revealed that ‘substitution’, ‘literal translation’ and ‘generalization’ were averagely the most frequent procedures. Moreover, it was found that the terms belonging to the categories of ‘religion’, ‘garments’ and ‘social life’ were the most challenging concepts for the English translators.

While a growing body of research testifies to the benefits of asynchronous computer-mediated communication (ACMC) for foreign language learning, its contributions within the field of interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) have remained underexplored. To address this gap, the present study aimed to unveil the impact of mobile-assisted (text vs. voice messaging) ACMC on Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' pragmatic learning of apologies and requests. Utilizing a mixed method, pretest-posttest design, data from sixty intermediate Iranian EFL learners studying English at Shokouh Language Institute in Babolsar, Mazandaran were obtained based on the results of an Oxford Placement Test (OPT). The participants were assigned into two experimental groups (text-messaging, N = 20; voice-messaging, N = 20) and one control group (N = 20). A Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) and semi-structured interviews were used for data collection. The pretest and posttest analysis revealed the experimental groups’ significant gains through both text and voice messaging, with only a negligible difference between their effectiveness. The qualitative findings led to the detection of three significant themes a posteriori, namely flexibility and convenience, lower pressure, and promotion of collaborative learning and emotional engagement. The findings suggest that by incorporating multiple modes of interaction, mobile-assisted ACMC grants learners a variety of technological affordances to enrich their pragmatic learning.