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Critical cultural awareness as a component of intercultural competence (Byram, 1997, 2012) has received the extensive attention of scholars in the fields of language teaching, cultural studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, communication studies, etc. in the recent decades. However, no instrument has ever been developed to assess this construct among Iranian EFL teachers. To fill this gap, in the first phase of the present study a theoretical framework for critical cultural awareness and its components was developed through reviewing the literature and conducting interviews with ELT experts. In the second phase, a questionnaire was developed and piloted with 370 participants who were available and willing to participate in the study. More specifically, the 37 items of the newly-developed ‘CCA' scale were subjected to principal component analysis which revealed the presence of three components. These phases led to the development of a questionnaire with three components and 37 items: (1) ‘CCA in ELT Programs' including 20 items, (2) ‘CCA in ELT Textbooks and Materials' including 13 items, and (3) ‘CCA in General Terms' including four items. The findings of this study may shed some light on this fuzzy subject and help researchers assess Iranian EFL teachers' critical cultural awareness.

While some researchers have questioned the efficacy of corrective feedback (CF), other researchers believe that CF can be effective if implemented through new technology types, including e-portfolio (EP). However, whether EP can be used as a medium of providing CF for language learners at different levels of language proficiency is still unknown. The purpose of the present study, therefore, was twofold: (a) to examine the writing performance of EFL learners across three levels of language proficiency receiving direct corrective feedback (DCF) via EP, and (b) to investigate which language proficiency group benefits more from DCF provided via EP. For the purposes of the present study, sixty (60) Iranian EFL learners who were divided into three levels of language proficiency at Sharif language center in Tehran, Iran participated in this study. The results of data analysis showed statistically significant differences for two components of writing—content, and mechanics—between beginning and intermediate, and beginning and advanced language learners. The results also showed that the higher the language proficiency level of language learners, the more they benefit from the provision of DCF through EP. These findings suggest that EP may be a viable option to supply Iranian EFL learners across levels of language proficiency with DCF. The article concludes with a call for testing the threshold-level hypothesis that may exist for language learners to use EP.

The present qualitative research, for the first time, aimed at comparing and contrasting the extent cultural components and subcomponents are represented in the elementary levels of A Course in General Persianand Top Notch Seriesas foreign language teaching textbooks. The adapted checklist of Lee's Big ‘C' and little ‘c' cultural components (2009) was used for the current study.  After content analysis, Big ‘C' cultural components with the highest, lowest, and no frequency in each textbook were identified, and the possible reasons behind the occurrence of each one were addressed. Based on the findings, it was revealed that although the two textbooks enjoyed approximately similar functions concerning non-/presenting Big ‘C' cultural components, the Persian textbook was richer in introducing cultural capsules. And while the cultural capsules in the Persian textbook were associated more with people's common life styles and their daily interactions, those in the English textbook were concerned more with entertaining life style. Concerning little ‘c,' no cultural component was observed in the two textbooks. It is implied that the embedded cultural components and subcomponents in FL/SL textbooks should be the ones which a) are in harmony with learners' language proficiency levels and b) are used (most) frequently in the daily lives of their native speakers.

Research on teacher cognition concerning listening instruction has not been sufficiently touched upon. The present case study aimed to investigate Iranian EFL teachers' stated practices, their perceptions of how effective those practices are, and their actual classroom practices of two casual process-oriented listening instructional approaches namely, strategy-based instruction (SBI) and metacognitive instruction (MCI). To this end, a mixed methods design was utilized. Five experienced EFL teachers were required to be observed and to fill a self-report questionnaire. The findings from the questionnaire revealed teachers' relative but insufficient use of the two process-oriented approaches. Regarding the effectiveness of the process-oriented approaches, the majority of the techniques were perceived by the teachers as effective. Also, the result of the observation showed that process-oriented approaches were conspicuously absent in the teachers' actual classroom practices. Finally, pedagogical implications for EFL teachers, teacher educators, and material developers concerning how best to teach listening are discussed.

For many English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers, working contingently with language learners' problematic learner contributions in classroom interaction remains a challenge. Drawing on conversation analysis methodology and using sociocultural and situated learning theories, this longitudinal case study traces the progressional changes in one Iranian English language teacher's repairing practices (his orientation to repairable, repair completion type and trajectory) along with the changing impacts of different organizational patterns of repair and interactional awareness on learning opportunities. The data material consists of video recordings of EFL oral classroom interactions (11 lessons) and reflective conversations (seven sessions) between the researcher and the participant teacher at one private language institute in Iran over a period of six months, in two phases. Qualitative results from the first (descriptive) phase indicated that the teacher's provision of repair in meaning-oriented contexts was generally convergent while in form-oriented ones divergent. The qualitative changes revealed the teacher's increasing attention to lexical errors and use of self-repair types, particularly in form-oriented contexts and the teacher's progress in interactional awareness including identification of contexts and repair organization, use of metalanguage and critical self-evaluation This study makes a contribution to conversation analytic research and our understanding of English teacher professional development.