درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Assessing learners’ writing is one of the primary responsibilities of English language teachers. Nevertheless, research on teachers’ writing assessment literacy (WAL) is scarce. To this end, this study a) explored Iraqi Kurdish EFL teachers’ writing assessment knowledge, beliefs, and practices and b) examined assessment strategies they employ to assess learners’ writing ability and the feedback they provide on learners’ writing performance. Data were collected from language teachers in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (N=80), who taught at universities, institutes, and schools, utilizing a modified version of the WAL questionnaire consisting of five sections, including teachers’ demographic information, assessment strategies, knowledge of WAL, beliefs about WAL, and practices concerning WAL. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a group of volunteer teachers (N=10). The findings highlighted teachers’ insufficient knowledge of writing assessments. A significant mismatch was found between teachers’ stated beliefs and their practices in the use of formative and summative assessment. The teachers had positive beliefs toward formative assessment; however, they preferred using summative assessment. The qualitative findings further pointed to a significant knowledge gap among teachers regarding specific terminologies, such as formative and summative assessment, as well as scoring rubrics. Finally, the results indicated that teachers used various feedback types to improve learners’ writing skills. The findings emphasize the need to improve teachers’ writing assessment literacy in order to bridge the gap between teachers’ beliefs and their practices of writing assessment.  

Previous studies generally showed that achievement goals are linked with academic engagement. However, the association between the newly-developed model of achievement goals (i.e. the 3*2 model) and agentic engagement has received relatively little attention. Furthermore, the underlying mechanism of this relationship is unclear, more specifically, among university students. Guided by the assumptions of the control-value theory of emotions, epistemic curiosity could be a potential mediator. The current study aimed to explore the mediating role of epistemic curiosity in the relationship between achievement goals and agentic engagement among 350 university students from Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in the academic year of 2019-2020. Participants completed the measures of the Achievement Goals Questionnaire, Epistemic Curiosity Scale, and Agentic Engagement Scale. Data analysis was performed using SPSS version 24.0 and AMOS software. The findings showed that epistemic curiosity significantly mediated the association between approach goals and avoidance goals with agentic engagement (P<0.001). Overall, the findings offer new evidence on the association between variables of the present study and shed light on the underlying processes. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

The present paper studies J.M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K (1983) and Jafar Modarres Sadeqi’s Gavkhuni ( The Marsh ) (1362 [1983]) through a spatial perspective. To this end, the study avails itself of a constellation of concepts formed around Edward Soja’s Thirdspace, Michel Foucault’s heterotopia, and Mikhail Bakhtin’s chronotope. Reading the selected novels through these key terms shows that despite striking differences concerning the nature and manifestation of space, both novels configure space as belonging to the realm of the father. In Life & Times of Michael K , Michael begins a journey across South Africa to escape this paternal realm, while the unnamed narrator of Gavkhuni , having failed to escape the memory of Isfahan even after moving to Tehran, starts to write to get rid of his nightmares about his father. At the end of the novels, both protagonists return to their first places: Cape Town and Tehran, respectively. However, as the beginning and ending points of the novels, these cities do not remain the same for them: Michael preserves his identity as a gardener even in Cape Town, and the narrator of Gavkhuni reconciles with the ever-present image of the father and Zayandehrud in Tehran through writing.