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The present investigation sought to explore the relationship between learning styles and writing behaviors of EFL learners in a blended environment. It also aimed to identify the learning style types best predicting writing behaviors. Initially, the participants' preferred learning styles were identified through the Kolb’s learning style inventory (Kolb, 1984). Secondly, data were obtained through analyzing the Stat counter and Input log data to reveal the pausing, revising and switching behaviors of the participants who attended a writing course in which they developed their writing texts using an online module. The results indicated a negative and significant correlation between the accommodator learning style and the revision behavior. A statistically significant and positive relationship was also found between the converger learning style and the pausing behavior, and between the converger learning style and the revision behavior Furthermore, a positive and significant relationship between the accommodator learning style and the switching behavior was revealed. The accommodator learning style was found as the best predictor for the switching behavior and the converger learning style turned to predict the revision and pausing behavior at an optimal level. The findings suggest that internal factors, cognitive and learning styles, play a significant role in the learning behaviors of English writing learners. The results encourage writing educators to take into account students’ learning style and provide more flexible and rigorous learning environment in which all learners can take benefit.

This research intends to explore the efficacious English teachers’ goals and strategies to effectively manage their own as well as their students’ emotions. The data of the study included interviews with 22 English teachers and 92 diary journals kept by 12 teachers who were among the top 20% of ELTEI (ELT teacher efficacy instrument) scorers and identified as efficacious English teachers. The results indicated that teachers’ goals for regulating their positive emotions included maintaining authority in relation to students, presenting unbiased teacher character, and enhancing teaching effectiveness. For regulating negative emotions, the goals included maintaining the teacher and students’ mental health, promoting teacher-student relationships, and reinforcing the image of teachers as moral guides. Teachers also used a variety of antecedent-focused and response-focused strategies hierarchically for effective emotion management including situation selection, situation modification, attention deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation. The findings were discussed with reference to the role of culture in emotion regulation and effectiveness of different sub-strategies. The results may promise some implications for teacher education programs and teacher educators about the inclusion of professional development opportunities for EFL teachers in terms of effective emotion management

در تحقیق حاضر، محققان انجام روش های تحقیق اقدام پژوهی(action research) را که در سال های اخیر رنگ و بوی نظام مند به خود گرفته است با استناد به انجام تحقیقی در این قالب به چالش کشیده اند. در پژوهش انجام گرفته بر روی پانزده دانشجوی فارسی زبان در رشته بهداشت (خانواده و محیط)، تدریس نوشتار دانشگاهی در ژانر مقاله نویسی در مدت یک ترم تحصیلی به طریق اقدام پژوهی صورت پذیرفت. مشکلات دانشجویان 1) در انتخاب موضوع و 2) سخن پردازی در موضوعات منتخب آنان دو چالشی بود که سنجش دو نوع روایی را بر اساس مدل اندرسون (1994) شامل روایی فرایندی(process validity) و فروگشا(catalytic) برای محققان دشوار ساخت.

The concept of teacher change is critical in second language teaching and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context due largely to the fact that, almost, whatever we do in teacher education looks for initiating change of one sort or another. A substantial body of research has been dedicated to investigate teacher change (TC) from various perspectives. However, having studied the related literature, we found no robust, valid and reliable measure for TC in EFL context. Accordingly, effort was made to develop and validate a reliable and valid measure that could assess TC in an EFL context. The review of the prior research resulted in the collection of 186 items affecting TC out of which a temporary data driven model of teacher change was developed. 324 Ph.D. and M.A. graduated EFL teachers took part in exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of the initial measure. Finally, a 66-item scale consisting of three components and thirteen sub-components was developed.The results showed both factorial validity andinternal consistency reliability for the measure.The TCSsubscales also had strong validity evidence based on the associationsfound. This study has various applications for language teachers and practitioners in the field.

Although decades of research have well elaborated on teacher professional development, we still do not have a thorough picture about what teacher professional development could entail and what components it consists of. The present study aims to develop and validate a teacher professional development scale in an Iranian English foreign language context. An initial tentative model with 130 items was piloted and tested through exploratory and confirmatory data analyses on a sample of 400 EFL teachers. This level resulted in the removal of 28 items in our sample loaded, resulting in a final 102 teacher professional development inventory. The developed inventory measures the extent to which EFL teachers are professionally developed and makes teachers aware of multiple characteristics of professionally developed teachers. These competencies are essential components of teacher professional development, enabling the teachers to utilize them in everyday teaching and learning practices in the classroom settings which, as a result, leads to student achievement. As teachers fulfill important professional roles, they need valid instruments to assess their day-to-day functioning in the class. With the instrument developed and validated in the current research, we, in fact, allow language teachers to assess their extent of professional development in different pedagogical contexts.

Task difficulty across different macro-genres continues to remain among less attended areas in second language development studies. This study examined the correlation between task difficulty across the descriptive, narrative, argumentative, and expository macro-genres. The three components of task difficulty (i.e., code complexity, cognitive complexity, and communicative stress) were also compared in the four macro-genres. The design included the administration of short reading texts with comparable length and readability indices based on the four macro-genres followed by task difficulty questionnaire. The macro-genre-based reading textsalong with the task difficulty questionnaire were administered to 50 EFL students in the University ofLorestan, Iran. Task difficulty questionnaire explored the learners’ perceptions of task difficulty in the code complexity, cognitive complexity, and communicative stress domains. The results revealed that there were no significant differences among the task difficulty components in the four macro-genre-based text types. The findings also showed that there was no significant correlation between task difficulty of each macro-genre with those of the other genres except thoseofthe narrative and expository genres.The findings hold implications for the use of macro-genres with different task difficulty indices in task-oriented programs, teacher training, and testing.

This study sought to examine the relationship between the use of formative -efficacy. Moreover, this study investigated the relationships and interactions between the EFL use of formative assessment strategies, their gender, level of experience, and sense of self-efficacy. This is a descriptive ex post facto design study which employed a three- assessment strategies f self-efficacy. In order to collect data, sixty-one EFL teachers, including thirty-one female and thirty male participants who were selected through convenience sampling, completed the questionnaire. Multiple statistical strategies were employed to analyze the research questions of the study. The use of formative assessment strategies was positively correlated with their sense of self-efficacy. However, the results of eta correlation coefficients revealed that there formative assessment strategies and two other variables of gender and level of experience. Finally, the results of a three way factorial Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) evinced that there was no statistically significant interaction between the strategies -efficacy, their gender, and level of experience. Therefore, when the teachers become more aware of the ways to implement formative assessment strategies to inform instruction, their sense of self-efficacy can increase. This study has some implications in language testing, English pedagogy, and syllabus design and materials development.