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Sandwich and cake formats of interventionist Dynamic Assessment suffer from two problems: both are time-demanding, and the intervention presented to the learners varies from one learner to another.  To suggest a solution to the above problems in teaching and assessing reading strategies, the present researchers have introduced ‘sauce’-format mediation through which intervention is provided for the learners within ‘mediation boxes’ along the test. Thirty Iranian intermediate EFL learners participated in the study. They were first given a non-mediated reading pretest, and then they took the same test along with a ‘mediation box’ following each question to observe the probable effect of ‘sauce’-format mediation.  To measure the transcendence of the given mediation, the participants answered a non-mediated delayed posttest at the end.  Comparing the means of the mediated posttest and non-mediated pretest on the one hand and those of the non-mediated delayed posttest and the pretest on the other revealed that the learners benefitted significantly well from the ‘sauce’-format mediation and could transfer their learning to a novel context. Findings of this study are consistent with the previous research on DA that intervention supports learner development.

In countries where textbooks are considered as the main source of teaching/learning process, textbook evaluation seems to be inevitable and necessary. The current study aimed at evaluating the new English textbook entitled “Vision 1”, developed for the Iranian first grade high school students. To achieve this goal, two groups of participants took part in the study. They consisted of 30 teachers teaching this book in Baghmalek in Khuzestan province and 70 students studying in the first grade high school in the city mentioned. The quantitative data were collected through two questionnaires. The questionnaires were designed to evaluate the book in terms of seven criteria namely, practical considerations, layout and design, activities, skills, language type, subject and content and cultural considerations. The findings showed that teachers and students were interested in the book in all criteria except cultural considerations. The results also showed no significant difference between Iranian teachers' and students' perceptions towards the book. It can be concluded that the book needs to be modified to include some aspects of cultural values to open a window into learning about the target language culture.

Reading comprehension is one of the essential skills for learning in every language and in Iranian educational system, there seems a need to make some revisions in teaching reading comprehension. In an attempt to address this problem, this research set out to utilize Directed Reading –Thinking Activity (coined by Stauffer, 1969) as a teaching comprehension model which was expected to enhance students’ reading comprehension ability of graded readings. To do this end, 50 intermediate students from Zabansara Institute were randomly assigned to two groups (one control and one experimental) each consisting of 25 participants.  Drawing on a mixed-methods design, the two groups were compared in pre-test and post-test in the quantitative phase. In the qualitative stage, fifteen students from experimental group were interviewed on the effect of implementing DRTA based setting on their comprehension of graded readings (The implemented readings in this study were narrative texts). The findings of the study revealed that DRTA had significant effect on participants' reading comprehension of graded reading. The study provides some pedagogical implications for EFL teachers and students, and suggests some possible avenues for further studies as well.

This study sought to promote EFL learners' speaking ability drawing on Bakhtin’s notion of dialogic discourse pattern (DDP) and to explore their perceptions towards implementing dialogic teaching (DT) in a speaking classroom. To this end, from the population of students in different language institutes, 47 students were selected based on a purposive sampling method. The data were collected at two step-wise processes adopting a mixed-method approach. First, the researcher directed two EFL teachers to apply the DDP principles in a dialogic (DG) and non-dialogic group (NDG). The intervention lasted for 12 weeks. Then, a posttest of speaking was conducted to track the possible improvement. The findings attested that the dialogic talk could promote EFL learners’ speaking ability. Next, DG group was required to complete a written discourse completion task to determine the extent to which incorporating DT could promote learners’ speaking ability. To analyze the data, Thomas's (2006) inductive approach was adopted comprising the dominant themes. The results revealed different themes and sub-themes such as developing self-directed learning skills, disseminating critical literacy practice, fostering language learning, promoting motivation and affective factors, to name but a few. The findings propose some implications for classroom management, materials preparation, and language policy program.

English is taught all over the world either as a foreign or second language. It is taught as a foreign language in the Iranian educational system as well. However, it has always been the issue that EFL programs have been developed without conducting a systematic needs analysis from the learners’ perspective. The present study examined the effect of employing critical needs analysis on the learners' speaking skills improvement. To this end, 128 Iranian intermediate learners from three language institutes were selected and assigned to two experimental and control groups. The learners' Necessities, Wants and Lacks through a questionnaire and semi-structured interview were investigated. The experimental group received treatment based on the results of the interview and questionnaire. The results of the inferential statistics showed that the students' highest mean score was in the Necessities sub-dimension, followed by the Lacks, and Wants sub-dimensions which revealed that the students' needs were mostly the items which were necessary for the learners' use of language. In contrast, the control group received treatment based on the pre-determined syllabus of the course. The results of an independent sample t-test indicated that in the post-test, the speaking scores of the participants in the experimental group were significantly higher than the scores in the control group.

This study aimed at exploring the influence of the role that a teacher employs on his/her professional success. The teacher role was investigated from a new outlook, Goffman's footing theory. According to Goffman (1981), a speaker's role can be classified into three categories of animator, author, and principal, characterized as the repeater of the ideas made by the others, the paraphraser of concepts, and the creator of original ideas, respectively. Applying this theory in the educational context, the researchers selected 36 university professors of TEFL in the MA level and asked their students (N=118) to identify their professors' dominant role as animator, author, or principal, both generally and individually, via a metaphor checklist and their professional success via the Characteristic of Successful Iranian EFL Teacher Questionnaire. The results of Chi-square analysis indicated that the professors dominantly take on the author and animator roles respectively. One-way Anova results also demonstrated that the professors taking on the principal role enjoy higher professional success than those adopting the animator and author roles. The results offer implications and suggestions for pedagogical consideration within the Iranian university context.

The present study was aimed at exploring the use of pronominal reference for identity representation in terms of power and solidarity in English political discourse. The investigation was based on a corpus of four political interviews and debates amounting 26,500 words. The analysis was both qualitative and quantitative. In the qualitative analysis, a discourse-analytic approach was used to find out the pronouns, their references and their identity load, and in the quantitative analysis, the distribution of different representations of identity were calculated. A nonparametric test, that is, Chi-Square was run in SPSS as the statistical operation needed for the current study. The analysis showed that most of the personal pronouns represented identity in the form of solidarity. The results also showed that political figures use <em>I</em>-pronoun and its variants to represent their identity in terms of power. The representation of identity in terms of power was also found to be correlated with the use of certain terms such as <em>veto</em> and active voice constructions. Furthermore, the results showed that when making claims, instead of giving pronominal reference to self, political figures use first-person plurals. In order to show solidarity, the speakers may also make use of discoursal proximity. Considering the important role that discourses play in constructing reality, it is important for CDA researchers to reveal sources of power, inequality and prejudice in discourses and interpret their hidden meanings. Pronominal choice and academic voice as linguistic constructions that are ideologically loaded need to be brought into the spotlight.

Development of science and academic knowledge has led to changes in academic language and transfer of information and knowledge. In this regard, the present study is an attempt to investigate lexico-grammaticality in academic abstracts and their full research papers in Linguistics, Chemistry and Electrical engineering papers published during 1991-2015 in academic journals from a diachronic perspective through quantitative research design. The focus of this paper is on transitivity, mood and theme analysis in the corpus according to Halliday's (1994) systemic functional linguistics model. So, all the attempts are to find the changes in abstracts and research papers of these disciplines and how they are to be positioned in different linguistic contexts over time. The results revealed that research papers employ the spectrum of possible lexical realization quite differently as compared to general English, especially concerning the use of specific lexical items. Also, the results of chi-squares of each discipline showed that there are significant differences between papers over time at .05 level of significance (.000< .05) with regard to the transitivity, mood, and theme. 

This study addresses the acquisition of the morphological markers in Persian learners of English as a foreign language. To this end, the accuracy order of nine morphemes including plural –s, progressive –ing, copula be, auxiliary be, irregular past tense, regular past tense –ed, third person –s, possessive -ʼs and indefinite articles was studied in 60 teenage Persian EFL learners. Placement and proficiency tests and a demographic questionnaire were employed to collect the data. The total production of 2160 morphemes was manually checked, classified, and counted to rank their acquisition order. The learners’ accuracy order was ranked in a decreased order from 1 to 9 as follows: regular past tense, auxiliary be, copula be, present progressive tense, indefinite articles, plural –s, possessive -ʼs, irregular past tense and third-person singular –s. The Spearman correlation showed that Persian students’ accuracy order had a moderate and weak relationship with the accuracy order of ESL and EFL learners, respectively. This finding proves that Persian EFL learners do not learn English grammatical morphemes in a natural order. Moreover, the universal grammar does not remain fully in these learners. The minor role of UG in EFL acquisition also indicates the important role of transfer in foreign language learning.

A correlational survey research design was utilized to investigate self-regulated Learning (SRL) and teacher-student interaction factors that had been realized to have contributive roles in EFL learners' academic success. A sample of 218 EFL learners (male = 102 and female = 116) was drawn with the aid of a prior sample size calculator for the structural equation models from 645 students. They were within the age range of 18-45 and were enrolled at Islamic Azad University, Tabriz Branch. The structural equation model (SEM) hypothesis testing procedure revealed that the teacher-student interaction directly and significantly influenced learners' academic accomplishments. Likewise, the obtained results indicate that the impact of the teacher-student interaction on EFL learners' academic achievement is mediated by the effects of SRL. Correspondingly, the obtained results indicate that the theorized model fits the data. The causal contribution of psychological factors, consisting of the teacher-student interaction and SRL, to EFL learners’ academic achievement was validated. The findings of this exploratory research have certain implications for classroom practice which are elaborated in detail in this paper.

Motivation in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses is an issue of utmost importance. Expanding specialized vocabulary is one of the objectives defined by ESP stakeholders. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the role of vocabulary enrichment through close integration of reading and writing tasks in promoting advanced English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) learners’ motivation and attitudes. To this end, fifteen civil engineers were selected through convenience sampling. Following an eight-session course centered around technical vocabulary using reading and writing tasks, questionnaires were used as pretest and posttest based on Attitudinal/Motivation Test Battery (ATMTB), to measure nine types of motivation. Nine paired samples t-tests were conducted to determine whether there was a mean difference in the questionnaire results across time from pretest to posttest. The results demonstrated significant increase in all types of motivation following the integration of reading and writing tasks, excluding intrinsic motivation considering self-confidence. It was shown that there is a close relation between ESP learners’ motivation and the amount of vocabulary they learn. The results proposed certain practical strategies in order for ESP/EOP material developers and teachers to fulfill the objectives and aims of these needs-based courses.

There is a bulk of studies supporting the positive effect of strategy instruction on reading comprehension. This study examined the effect of two reading strategies (i.e., false correction and inference strategy) on English reading comprehension of Iranian paramedical students, using a pretest, posttest, control group design. It also surveyed their attitudes toward the effect and usefulness of these strategies. The participants were sixty paramedical students, selected through availability sampling from the Medical University of Kashan. They were randomly assigned to two experimental groups and one control group (CG). The first experimental group was instructed to use inference strategy (henceforth IS), whereas the second was instructed to use a strategy based on elaborative interrogation theory (i.e., false correction strategy, henceforth FCS). The experimental data were collected through a researcher-made pretest and posttest, and survey data through a researcher-made questionnaire. The results of statistical analyses indicated that IS group significantly outperformed FCS and CG on the posttest. The results of questionnaire data also showed that IS led to more positive attitudes. Moreover, IS was perceived as more useful in meeting participants’ academic needs. The findings of the study imply a needs-based approach to ESP pedagogy.

Despite the fact that virtual learning seems to have considerable potential for enhancing language learners’ communicative abilities, it has received less attention for improving pragmatic competence of learners in EFL educational settings. The present study was an attempt to investigate the impact of virtual and real classroom instruction of speech acts on the pragmatic awareness and development of Iranian EFL learners. To do so, a quasi-experimental study was designed and, through a homogeneity test, 57 EFL female language learners at the intermediate level were chosen. The participants were randomly divided into the experimental groups of virtual and real classroom learning and went through the procedure of pretest, intervention, and posttest; the pertinent data were collected by means of a PET test, a speech-act pre-test and comparable post-tests of speech acts. Both measures of independent and paired-samples t-test were used to analyze the data. The findings revealed that instruction of speech acts through both virtual and real classroom techniques can be conducive to the promotion of pragmatic awareness among the EFL learners in the Iranian context; meanwhile, real classroom instruction of speech acts proved to be more fruitful and more significantly elevated the pragmatic awareness of Iranian EFL learners. We conclude the study drawing on the implications of our findings for ELT and EFL policy makers, language educators and teachers, material developers, and learners.