Teaching English as a Second Language

The present study aimed to develop a teaching competency framework for Iranian English Language Teaching (ELT) teachers by conducting interviews with 30 teachers and head teachers in the field of ELT across multiple regions in Iran. The study utilized MAXQDA 20.2.1 to conduct a thematic analysis in three phases. Intercoder reliability (ICR) testing demonstrated a significant level of agreement. The findings indicated that an effective contextualized teaching competency framework for ELT teachers should consist of six key components: professional attributes focusing on teaching-specific characteristics, skills representing practical teaching abilities, knowledge encompassing subject-matter expertise, general qualifications including foundational requirements, personal attributes, and goals and values. Fifty-nine indicators were identified and strategically linked to established reference frameworks for ELT teacher competencies. The developed framework contributes to a novel organization of ELT teaching competencies. Key findings revealed that linguistic competency, inclusivity, student bonding, pedagogical knowledge, organizational skills, and teaching passion emerged as critical indicators within the Iranian ELT context. The framework's strength lies in its systematically developed structure based on expert insights and comprehensive literature analysis that offers brevity in design while maintaining comprehensiveness. These features would make it particularly applicable for Iranian ELT settings while providing a replicable model for broader international contexts. Future research should explore longitudinal studies to understand the changes that transpire over time. Moreover, integrating the perspectives of English language learners and high school students could enhance the practicality and applicability of these frameworks.

Motivational intensity and enjoyment are considered two incentives that boost Willingness To Communicate (WTC), while boredom diminishes it. However, going through the existing literature, almost no studies have ever explored these interrelationships among the four variables -Boredom, WTC, Enjoyment, and Motivational Intensity- in the Iranian setting. To address this gap, 300 high schoolers between the ages of 11 and 19 took part in the study. Of those, 83 were beginners, 107 were intermediates, and 110 were advanced learners based on the results obtained from OPT (Oxford Placement Test). All the participants were surveyed using questionnaires administered via Google Docs. The study used Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to interpret these statistics, revealing mediation effects and showing direct and total effects between motivational intensity, enjoyment, boredom, and WTC. Statistics confirmed that boredom had a notable direct impact on WTC, though its indirect effect through enjoyment was insignificant. In contrast, motivational intensity positively influenced the WTC through both direct and indirect pathways. The study suggests boosting motivation and enjoyment in second-language classrooms would dramatically enhance the learners' WTC in formal and informal settings. Teachers should be initiative and creative in designing fascinating and new classroom tasks, transform the class into a lively environment in which all students are actively involved in the interesting classroom activities in a relaxed manner, and promote a friendly and humorous group-work atmosphere so that classroom becomes a welcoming space where students learn without boredom or anxiety.

Research on relative clause (RC) ambiguity resolution in first and second-language contexts has produced conflicting results, with some studies indicating a preference for high attachment, others favoring low attachment, and some reporting no clear preference. In conjunction with other variables, these mixed results may be due to variations in the methodological features employed across studies. Therefore, there is a pressing need for a systematic review of the methodological features of relevant offline tasks to evaluate how these differences may lead to conflicting results critically. To address this issue, a systematic methodological review was conducted analyzing 108 features of offline tasks, including identification, context, materials, design, administration, data analysis, open science practices, and transparency. The results revealed significant methodological variation in the literature and a moderate mean transparency score of 59.77. These findings emphasize the need for methodological standardization and greater transparency in future research to ensure reliable and comparable RC ambiguity resolution research results.

This study aimed to examine the cross-lingual recognition of French and English words and their pseudo-homophones to verify the presence of Grapheme-Phoneme Conversion (GPC) for the word recognition of foreign language learners. Considering the study's purposes, 100 Iranian advanced English and French learners were chosen and recruited for the study through the convenience sampling procedure. The participants' homogeneity and proficiency level were checked with the aid of an English proficiency test (McMillan Placement Test (MPT)) and a French proficiency test (Test d'Évaluation de Français (TEF)) before the examination phase. To investigate the participants' reaction times for recognizing the real words, illegal nonwords, and legal nonwords (pseudo-homophones), a computerized test was designed that sought the participants' judgments about the presented linguistic construct on the screen. The employed words were chosen according to their morphological complexity, frequency, and length from the learners' course books. Data analysis revealed that pseudo-homophones were more challenging for both English and French learners to recognize; this was shown by their higher reaction time needed for recognizing pseudo-homophones compared with the real words and the illegal nonwords. Although the occurrence of GPC for both groups was attested, it was significantly stronger for the French learners. These findings suggest that word recognition is inherently a phonological process (not an orthographic one) among foreign language learners. 

Despite communication challenges, research suggests that children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can benefit from foreign language education. This aligns with their strengths in visual learning and the documented effect of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) in teaching language to children with ASD. Building on these strengths, this qualitative case study investigated the effectiveness of combining Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) strategies for teaching English language skills to an 8-year-old boy with high-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) at Sara Autism Center. The study employed detailed observations to explore the participant's experience learning English as a foreign language. The findings revealed a significant increase in vocabulary (30 words within three months) and highlighted the effect of ABA and PECS in facilitating language acquisition and generalization. The use of the Let Me Talk app on an iPad to support communication and parental involvement were identified as crucial factors for success. This case study emphasizes the importance of multimodal learning approaches. It also highlights the need to tailor interventions to individual needs for effective language development in autistic children. The findings offer valuable insights for educators, policymakers, and parents invested in improving educational outcomes for children with ASD.

Education has evolved significantly over the centuries, ranging from the ancient and classical era to the Industrial Revolution, inclusive education, and technology integration. In the latter part of the 20 th century, technology was incorporated into education, starting with audiovisual aids and computer-based learning through to distance learning, online learning platforms, virtual classrooms, and collaborative tools, transforming education into a more flexible and accessible experience (Chiu et al., 2023; Ghahari & Nejadgholamali, 2019; Ng et al., 2023). Having emerged in the 2000s, personalized learning platforms and massive open online courses (MOOCs) offered free or low-cost online courses to a global audience and catered to individual student needs and learning styles. Finally and most recently, artificial intelligence (AI) has provided personalized recommendations, automated grading, and data-driven insights to optimize learning through such tools as Jasper, Sudowrite, Quillbot, and ChatGPT (Bates et al., 2020; Rahiman & Kodikal, 2024; Rospigliosi, 2023). The present handbook is a must-read for any aspiring teacher and researcher, providing a clear and concise guide on how to use ChatGPT in classrooms. It introduces ChatGPT as a cutting-edge tool that can revolutionize teaching and learning and spotlight the process rather than only the product. ChatGPT was created and offered by OpenAI as a pre-trained language model in 2022 and is an extension to a line of writing tools that build on Grammarly, the Hemingway app, Google Docs, Microsoft Word, etc. It is a variant of the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) model and is trained on a large dataset of conversational text. It is already reforming businesses and industries like higher education, similar to the printing press and the internet. At its core, ChatGPT uses AI to compose responses to queries spanning numerous topics. It can help educators optimize their classroom practices, particularly assignments, and evaluation, throughout the course rather than only addressing educational outcomes. Naturally, in education, the camps are divided between those opposing the use of ChatGPT as a result of concerns about academic integrity and potential cheating and those who believe it can be a valuable supplement to traditional instruction for supporting instructors and students. As an instructional technologist, Skrabut takes the latter stance and recognizes the potential benefits of ChatGPT in enhancing the learning experience. He maintains that ChatGPT for education is similar to calculators in math, which can be fine-tuned for a variety of natural language processing tasks such as language translation, question answering, and test construction.  "80 Ways to Use Chat GPT in the Classroom" offers a number of examples of using ChatGPT to enhance the classroom experience in teaching and learning. However, students need to be trained in information literacy, which is critical for developing critical thinking and lifelong learning skills. Simply rehearsing information from ChatGPT without verification does not contribute to meaningful conversation. Right at the beginning, the author provides the basic instructions to work with ChatGPT and then outlines a set of keys to using it more effectively. Surprisingly enough, the reader will find these instructions and hints highly comprehensive and informative. The keys to obtaining successful responses include (a) Be as specific as possible when making a request; (b) Use an iterative approach (asking the same question in different general or specific ways); (c) Ask ChatGPT to improve its responses to meet your expectations; (d) Assign ChatGPT a role/act to serve (e.g., act as Linux, interviewer, plagiarism checker); (e) Always validate its responses by applying critical thinking skills. Most favorably, the author has supplied multiple examples for each task that ChatGPT can do. Each example has two parts, including the prompt to provide to ChatGPT (bold-typed) and the response from ChatGPT (italicized). According to the author,  if ChatGPT is used appropriately and strategically, the possibilities are extremely helpful and time-saving. Chapter 2 indicates how ChatGPT can assist in the course preparation procedure, starting with the course description to developing classroom activities. In the first step, the user may ask ChatGPT to describe a course by clearly introducing what it is about. Next, ChatGPT can help in creating actual goals and objectives for the course. Here, the author suggests that users guide ChatGPT to create valuable results by citing Bloom's Taxonomy, for instance, in their prompts. An example of a good prompt suggested by the author follows: "Write learning objectives for a sports management course at the remembering level of Bloom's Taxonomy using verbs like Cite, Define, Describe, Draw, Enumerate, Identify, Index, Indicate, Label, List, Match, Meet, Name, Outline, Point, Quote, Read, Recall, Recite, Recognize, Record, Repeat, Reproduce, Review, Select, State, Study, Tabulate, Trace, Write" (p. 21). ChatGPT can also assist teaching practitioners in crafting lesson plans, classroom activities, warm-up questions and activities (i.e., icebreakers), community-building activities (e.g., teamwork and class discussions), lecture notes and outlines, and assignment prompts. What is highly important in persuading ChatGPT to prepare these tasks is to give it as specific prompts as the user can. Chapter 3 concerns using ChatGPT as a teacher assistant in personalizing instruction (i.e., personalized education). Some of its contributions include: (a) grading written assignments and essays (given either generic or specific guidelines), (b) facilitating reading comprehension by generating text summaries, (c) creating fill-in-the-blanks stories (i.e., Madlibs) usually in enjoyable and funny way, (d) crafting writing samples for any given prompt or topic, (e) creating personalized study plans attuned to each student's learning abilities, and (f) generating dummy data such as exemplars. What is highly important at this stage is to provide detailed and clear guidelines, precisely indicating the length, word size, and scope, before ChatGPT gets started. Here are some effective prompts as models: Generate questions about with corresponding answers at a college level; Provide ten creative writing prompts for an essay writing class at the high school level; What are some interesting or novel ways to begin a math class with children; What are some icebreaker activities one could use for a college-level course. In Chapter 4, ChatGPT is introduced as an effective tool for assessment by quickly and easily creating a variety of test tasks and questions. Among the ways in which it can serve as an assessment aid are creating assessment rubrics for subjective tasks and designing test items of a variety of formats, including multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blanks, dichotomous or true-false, matching, and ordering forms. After deciding on and determining the target article or text as a prompt, one may ask ChatGPT in the following exemplary way: "Create one (or more) fill-in-the-blank exercise on " (p. 65). Chapters 5 and 6 illustrate how ChatGPT can assist teachers and students in developing study aids and classroom activities. Using ChatGPT in building study aids such as summaries, notes, outlines, flashcards, and vocabulary lists can make learning procedures more convenient, enjoyable, and effective. Teachers may ask ChatGPT to generate example sentences using a certain word, write a list of words and definitions for an article, and create a list of flashcards for the given words. ChatGPT can also aid in checking the authenticity of students' essays and in generating arguments and counterarguments on a given topic for classroom debates. The last two agendas, for instance, can be accomplished by giving the following prompts, respectively: "Did AI write this essay? " and "Debate me on the use of AI in higher education. I believe it should be used. You are to take the opposing side" (p. 77). Even more interestingly, ChatGPT can be assumed as a classroom member interacting with teachers and/or students. After raising a question or topic in the class, the teacher can ask the students to predict ChatGPT's responses and then compare the students' responses to those of ChatGPT. Given enough rubrics and guidelines, the students can also be invited to grade ChatGPT's responses and essays and realize the strengths and weaknesses of AI by themselves. Taking the students' side, Chapter 7 indicates how students can improve their writing and communicative skills by using ChatGPT as a digital tutor and partner. ChatGPT can help students in crafting essays, paper summaries, research papers, lectures, and presentations by improving both form (e.g., grammar, vocabulary, coherence) and content (e.g., themes, main ideas, ordering, and organization). In addition, it can provide feedback on their writing assignments before submission and help them revise their drafts after getting reviewed. ChatGPT can also serve as an assistant translator and conversation partner, thereby contributing to the student's language skills development. It is also a digital tutor, being accessible anytime not only to reply to the students' questions but also to personalize learning materials by adjusting the responses to their needs, age, and level of ability. For this purpose, the user may only need to guide ChatGPT in the following exemplary way: "Answer this question or explain this topic to a 15-year-old or beginning student". Further, ChatGPT can serve as an exceptional research assistant by helping students discover trending research topics, formulate research questions, develop annotated bibliographies, paraphrase and summarize content, find credible sources, and draft and edit sections of a document. Chapter 8 showcases how ChatGPT can be used in computer programming and application development. Given a specific and accurate script, ChatGPT can quickly and easily write codes, explain what a certain code does, troubleshoot the codes, clean up unnecessary codes, write scripts for Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Linux products, and enhance programs like spreadsheets or word-processing. Chapter 9 extends to other applications of ChatGPT, such as developing blog posts, writing book reviews, drafting grant proposals, writing play/video scripts, and role-playing scenarios. It also effectively assists in drafting email messages, letters of recommendation, job interview questions, press releases for projects, and award packages suitable for nominees and accomplishments. It can be further used for converting references to different formatting styles (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago), converting grammatical structures (e.g., number, gender, tenses), analyzing data sets, and summarizing large amounts of content before a meeting or classroom session. Chapter 10 illustrates how practitioners can suppress their inhibition and/or fear of using AI as an education and assessment tool. It offers fundamental guidelines and strategies that help teachers and students find ChatGPT an asset rather than a threat. There are times when AI is appropriate and others when it is not. Teachers may ask the students to detect its flaws and limitations; they should be explicit on what is allowed and what is not. For example, if they are not allowing tools like ChatGPT, explain why it is essential to refrain from using it and the educational benefit of the assignment. ChatGPT would not have access to proprietary academic databases. Additionally, it does not have access to current events. Another point to consider is that "ChatGPT is a textual interface. It cannot see images or hear audio files. The more friction you introduce into the assignment, the less appealing it will be to use AI" (p. 159). Although organizations and instructors can enhance their productivity and save time through ChatGPT, there is a caveat regarding the accuracy of the information it offers, requiring the users to check the information from multiple other sources. Skrabut explains his point very clearly by stating that AI will inevitably impact teaching and learning, just as previous technologies have, but educators are required to prepare students for this future. While ChatGPT is an intriguing emerging technology, it is not yet a perfect tool and it is essential to weigh the potential drawbacks. While the book provides comprehensive instructions with practical examples, it lacks depth in addressing ethical concerns and academic integrity. For instance, it does not sufficiently explore ChatGPT's potential drawbacks, such as the risk of over-reliance on AI tools or diminishing critical thinking skills among students. Furthermore, the discussion on academic integrity could benefit from providing instructors with a list of hands-on techniques on how to minimize the possibilities of AI-assisted cheating. Although the book is highly practical and advisable, these limitations may explain the need for further research and instructional guidance on how to mitigate the potential threats associated with ChatGPT use in educational milieus.