تحقیقات کاربردی زبان انگلیسی - Applied Research on English Language

As an inseparable part of teachers’ education career, practicum supervision can function as a double-edged sword that can generate pedagogical improvement or even make the worse worst in the class depending on the time and manner of its implementation. Given its significance and crucial role in EFL contexts, supervision has captured the attention of some scholars in this line of research. However, few studies (if any) have focused on EFL teachers’ beliefs about instructional supervision and its role in pedagogical development considering their experience level. To fill this lacuna, the current study examined the perceptions of 100 Iranian EFL teachers with different experience levels toward various supervisory practices and their contribution to teacher pedagogical growth using an Instructional Supervision Questionnaire (Kayaoglu, 2012). Furthermore, a semi-structured interview was carried out with 10 EFL teachers taken from the same sample. The results of analyses indicated that both novice and experienced teachers had a negative view concerning the existing supervision system in Iran. Additionally, no significant difference was found between the novice and experienced EFL teachers’ beliefs about classroom supervision (p > .05). The qualitative findings also revealed that both novice and experienced EFL teachers considered supervision as bureaucracy, fault-seeking, confidence-minimizing, and with little to no instructional worth. They also had similar beliefs as per the characteristics of an effective supervisory act. Moreover, supervision was perceived useful only when teachers were novice instructors, but ineffective as they became experienced.

Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL) is prevalent in English instruction to enhance students' learning interest and motivation. However, its effectiveness and practicality have rarely been well confirmed. The present study intended to investigate the effectiveness and practicality of utilizing a developed Mobile Learning Application (MLA) in listening instruction. A quasi-experimental design was applied in the study with a test and a questionnaire as research instruments. The pre-test and post-test were administered to examine the effects of administering MLA on 86 undergraduate students’ listening comprehension, and the questionnaire was employed to investigate 184 students’ perceptions of the practicality of MLA in mastering listening comprehension as data triangulation. Descriptive and inferential statistics were utilized to analyze the collected data. The results showed that a teacher-developed MLA is feasible for effective learning media to enhance students’ listening comprehension with the significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores. Moreover, it also accentuated that students' perception obtained a positive perception of the practicality of a developed MLA in mastering their listening comprehension. This finding encourages EFL teachers to use a mobile learning application in listening instruction to promote students’ independence in mastering listening skills.

This study intends to conduct a systematic qualitative meta-analysis that focuses on research studies into English Language Teaching (ELT) policy in Iran and Singapore. To identify and compare the main features of the studies and also to provide a contemporary picture of the field in Iran and Singapore, 13 articles published between 2010 and 2021 were included in this review. The analysis revealed that Singapore has employed a top-down language policy and utilized a holistic curriculum which has led to an English knowing society. The policies are well articulated and few mismatches were reported in the policies. In addition, the policies are positively perceived by stakeholders, leading to effective implementation of the policies. However, the findings showed that the Iranian top-down policy negatively framed ELT. Moreover, the policies are not well articulated and there are some inconsistencies between the policies and some mismatches between policy and practice. In addition, the analysis revealed that Iranian stakeholders negatively perceived the policies. They believed that the policies have marginalized the role of teachers and their professional judgment. Finally, research gaps for future research studies in ELT policy were highlighted and recommendations were offered.

: Peer review plays a vital and major role to determine the fate of manuscripts submitted to international academic journals. The present study analyzed the discourse structure and the language use of a corpus containing 43 peer review reports from journals from three disciplines (i.e., Applied Linguistics, Accounting, and Sociology). This study analyzed the most frequent discourse moves, negative, and positive expressions used in minor revisions, major revisions, and rejected manuscripts. The findings of this study showed that all discourse moves appeared in all peer review reports but two moves “Summarizing Judgment” and “Conclusion and Recommendation” were the most frequent discourse moves in all peer-review categories. The findings also revealed that the words “well”, “good”, and “original” were the most frequently-used positive words, while the words “unclear”, “inconsistent”, and “poor” were the most frequently-used negative words in the analyzed peer-review reports. The study recommends some points to be considered in future research on this topic.

Since language is an integral part of a culture, inspecting linguistic expressions can unveil the hidden cultural memes of a society, conceptualized as cultuling (culture in language) analysis. The present study examined the cultuling of ‘making accreditation with English’ used by Persian native speakers from the upper, middle, and lower social classes. To this end, 623 pieces of natural utterances, embracing this cultuling, were extracted from people's conversations in public and private places and from Iranian movies. Then, 279 utterances were analyzed from linguistic, cultural, and psychological perspectives based on the cultuling analysis (CLA) model. Additionally, more data were acquired through semi-structured interviews with 198 participants aged 19 to 54. The results of the study revealed that Iranians use English for various purposes in their conversations, including accreditation, power, education, superior identity, and higher social class in public/ private and formal/ informal contexts. Moreover, the analysis of Iranians’ different reactions to hearing English words in conversations manifested their hidden cultural patterns, including indirectness, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, high context, collectivism, low trust, and overstating

With numerous variables mediating the way learners interact with teacher corrective feedback (TCF), one may not comment on its efficacy before such intervening variables are adequately addressed and learners’ attendance to TCF is ensured. Among those variables, motivation is one of the most prominent ones largely affecting the degree to which students benefit from TCF. Draft-Specific Scoring (DSS), a scoring system giving learners’ a reason to notice TCF by rewarding them for the revisions they make through a flexible system of scoring, was implemented to investigate if TCF could help learners improve their use of subordinate clauses. To do so, two groups of students studying English Language Literature at the University of Tehran, consisting of 55 participants who were randomly assigned as treatment and control groups, were studied. The results of the gain analysis indicated an improvement for both groups over time in the total number and accuracy of the subordination clauses used; however, the treatment group significantly outperformed the control group. While the two groups did not differ in their use of noun clauses, the DSS group was found to outperform the non-DSS group regarding the adverb and adjective clauses. This indicates that motivation to attend to teacher feedback is of great importance if TCF is to be effective.