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The present study adopted a mixed-methods research design and explored the role of a set of cognitive (i.e., aptitude and working memory) and motivational (i.e., self-regulatory capacity and self-efficacy beliefs) individual difference variables in the writing quality and composing behavior of 78 Iranian undergraduate EFL learners. The necessary data were collected through a series of instruments and both quantitative (e.g., multiple regression and t-tests) and qualitative (e.g., narrative construction and qualitative comparative analysis) techniques were used to analyze the data. The results of these analyses indicated that the construct of foreign language aptitude had the highest level of correlation and contributory potential to account for the writing competence of the learners. The composing process of learners with different individual characteristics was also compared and it was found that learners with high self-regulation capacity orchestrated and managed their composing behavior in more effective ways compared to their less self-regulated counterparts. Moreover, the narratives and qualitative comparative analysis provided some insights about how various individual characteristics might affect the composing behavior of the individual learners. Finally, it was suggested that consideration of individual differences in writing can reveal more subtle information about the causes of strengths and weaknesses of different learners and may enable the teachers to design and implement more effective instructions targeting their learners’ individual needs

در رمان بازتاب دق، که ناباکف به سال 1947 نوشت، نویسنده استبداد و فشار حکومتی را زیر سوال می برد و در پوشش استعاری- تفسیری انتقاد از حاکمیتی زورگو می کند که در راس مملکتی قرار دارد و ترجمه و مترجم را به خدمت استبداد خود در می آورد. بدین ترتیب هملت، اثر ادبی معروف شکسپیر به خاطر مقبول قرار گرفتن در نزد قدرتمندی خودکامه، مورد شکنجه و عذاب مترجم قرار می گیرد و ماهیت اصلی اش را از دست داده و تبدیل به متنی کاملا تحریف شده می گردد. ناباکف با بازی با کلمات نشان می دهد که چگونه ترجمه فقط یک عامل برقراری ارتباط بین مردم نیست بلکه کاری است زیبا شناختی در برگردان گفتمان یک نویسنده که نیاز به تعهد مترجم دارد.

Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) has stood the test of time as a model of text analysis. The present literature contains a plethora of studies that while taking the ‘clause’ as a unit of analysis have put into investigation the metafunctions in research articles of a single field of study or those of various fields in comparison. Although ‘clause complex’ is another unit of SF analysis, by far there has been only one study on research articles where it was the unit of analysis (Sellami Baklouti, 2011). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to put into analysis the ‘taxis’, ‘expansion’ and ‘projection’ deployed in Applied Linguistics research article abstracts (RAAs) by native (N) and non-native (NN) writers. To this end, 20 Applied Linguistics RAAs (10 by N English writers and 10 by NN English writers on the sub-fields of Discourse Analysis and Language Assessment) were analyzed according to Halliday & Matthiessen’s (2013) ‘clause complex’ framework. The results indicated that there is a significant difference in the use of ‘projection’ by Ns and NNs, while the distribution of ‘taxis’ and ‘expansion’ is the same. The findings also showed what types of ‘taxis’, ‘expansion’ and ‘projection’ were deployed by Ns and NNs

Self-regulation of learning has been extensively investigated in second language (L2) learning. Many studies have focused on the strategies that language learners employ to regulate their own learning processes. However, motivational self-regulation is considerably less explored. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between motivational self-regulatory strategies (MSRSs) and academic achievement. A motivational self-regulation questionnaire was administered to 64 male and female adult Iranian EFL learners to measure their choice of various strategies. The quantitative data was analyzed by applying correlational and multivariate analyses. The results demonstrated that there was a strong relationship between motivational self-regulatory strategy use and academic achievement. However, no difference was found between male and female learners in their use of the strategies. Further examination revealed that higher-achieving students differed from lower-achieving participants in their preference for strategies. The article concludes that while all learners use extrinsic rewards to self-regulate their motivation, more successful learners tend to manipulate learning tasks to make the tasks intrinsically interesting and pleasant. Also, more successful learners set both long-term and short-term goals to motivate themselves. The results underscore the importance of students’ personal interests, needs and goals, and suggest that teachers foster learners’ command of the strategies through instruction and cooperative activities.

Abstract in every research paper has always been functioning as an attention-grabber which can encourage readers to keep reading the research or to dissuade it. Although abstracts are believed to play an important role in distributing the research findings, few studies have been done to evaluate the rhetorical organization of thesis abstracts, especially in the field of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). Thus, the purpose of the present study was to analyze the rhetorical moves of the MA thesis abstracts written from 1988 to 2015 in the field of TEFL in Allameh Tabataba’i University (ATU), an Iranian university. To this end, 300 MA thesis abstracts were analyzed based on Hyland’s (2000) rhetorical move framework. To track the rhetorical move trends of the thesis abstracts and for the ease of analysis, they were analyzed in three time intervals. The results revealed that while in the first interval (1988-1997) the most frequent rhetorical moves were the “Purpose”, “Method”, and “Product”, in the other two intervals (1998-2007 and 2008-2015) the “Purpose” was the most used rhetorical move. In addition, the least frequent rhetorical moves were the “Introduction” and “Conclusion” for the three intervals. The findings, on top of these, indicated that the rhetorical move patterns of thesis abstracts moved from Purpose-Method-Product (P-M-Pr) to Introduction-Purpose-Method-Product-Conclusion (I-P-M-Pr-C). That said, it can be concluded that in the examined thesis abstracts, the highest average of information was provided on the “Purpose” of the study, while the other moves, especially the conclusion move, was not deemed important; moreover, an increasing rate of information provision was detected on the “Method” and “Product” moves. This research bears some implications for L2 learners to better know their community of practice and writing instructors to prepare genre-based writing materials.

تحقیق حاضر تلاشی است برای یافتن اینکه آیا مباحثه دو نفره برخط می تواند توان گفتاری زبان آموزان را تقویت کند. این مساله از آن جهت حائز اهمیت است که می تواند باعث از بین رفتن موانع برقراری ارتباط در کلاس شود و نیز از نظر روانی شرایط مناسبتری برای ایجاد ارتباط بین زبان آموزان فراهم کند. 30 دانشجوی سال اول دانشگاه تهران با استفاده از پیامرسان یاهو (Yahoo Messenger) به مدت 6 هفته پیاپی، دو به دو با یکدیگر به صورت برخط صحبت کردند. نتایج آزمون توانش گفتاری حاکی از وجود تفاوت معنی داری بین نمرات دانشجویان در پیش آزمون و پس آزمون بود. علاوه برآن، نتایج بدست آمده از پرسشنامه ها و آزمون های مورد استفاده در این تحقیق نشان داد که مباحثات برخط برای دانشجویان خجالتی و آنهایی که از نظر زبانی ضعیف ترند و نیز آنهایی که ایستاری مثبت نسبت به اینگونه فعالیتها دارند مفید تر بوده است. همچنین تجزیه و تحلیل میزان صحبت کردن دانشجویان از نظر تعداد دفعات و واژه هایی که در هر جلسه مورد استفاده قرار می دادند نشانگر آن بود که میزان شرکت فراگیران در مباحثات دو به دو یکسان نبود. این یافته برخلاف نتایج تحقیقات قبلی است .

The present study is an attempt to find out whether there is a significant relationship between EFL teachers’ Big Five personality traits and their self-concept. In addition, ittried to examine if there is any significant relationship between teachers' teaching experienceand their self-concept. 112 EFL teachers participated in this study. They were asked to complete NEO Five Factor Inventory and Teacher Self-concept Evaluation Scale. Data were analyzed using Correlation, Multiple Regressions, and ANOVA. Results indicated thatself-concept was significantly correlated with four components of the Big-Five personality traits.It was positively related with ""Neuroticism"", ""Openness to experience"" and ""Conscientiousness"", but negatively related with ""Agreeableness"". It was also revealed that there was not any statistically significant difference among the three groups (low, mid, and high experience EFL teachers) with respect to their self-concept. The overall results of the study were discussed, and the implications for policy and practice were made.

During the last decades various researchers noticed that the traditional approaches to teaching had failed to teach learners to their utmost actual ability, therefore they put great efforts into developing post-modernist approaches and techniques such as critical thinking (CT) and cooperative learning (CL) for improving learning.The present study was an attempt to investigate the comparative effect of practicing CL and CT skills on EFL learners’ writing in a process-based approach to writing on EFL learners’ writing. Sixty Iranian female EFL learners at the intermediate level of English proficiency at Kish Language School were selected among a total number of 90 based on their performance on the Preliminary English Test (PET) and randomly assigned into two groups of CL and CT. Then the researchers administered an argumentative paragraph writing test to ensure the homogeneity of the two groups regarding argumentative writing before the treatment. Both groups were taught the same content through process-based approach throughout the 20-session treatment. Finally, the participants took a paragraph writing posttest including three writing prompts in argumentative genre. The mean scores of the two groups on the posttest were compared through an independent samples t-test. The results led to the rejection of the null hypothesis with the conclusion that CT instruction was significantly more effective than CL in improving EFL learners’ argumentative paragraph writing.

The application of critical pedagogy in educational contexts has received adequate research attention over the last decades. The main focus of this strand of research has, however, been on raising awareness of the educators. Nevertheless, little is known about the consequences of the violation of critical pedagogy principles from EFL teacher trainers’ perspectives. To begin to address this gap in research, a qualitative (phenomenological) study was carried out to explore the main consequences of violating critical pedagogy in the higher education system of Iran. The participants were 15 faculty members of TEFL and English Literature at 10 Iranian state universities. The data were collected through in-depth semi-structured face-to-face interviews and analyzed according to Radnor’s (2001) model. The results indicated that the main consequences of the violation of critical pedagogy were educational (related to teaching, learning, and testing), psychological, social, and ideological. Therefore, it was concluded that educators must follow the principles of CP in order to avoid the negative consequences and foster the learning and teaching processes more effectively.