مطالب

The purpose of the current study was to investigate culture representation in ACT series, a recently developed EFL textbook by Iran Language Institute, with a focus on the visuals. Two models were taken into account for content analysis: Cortazzi and Jin (1990) to investigate the type of culture (i.e., source, target, & international) and Adaskou, Britten, and Fahsi (1999) to investigate the dimension of culture (aesthetic & sociological). Analysis of 1581 visuals indicated that textbook developers have placed a high value on presenting international and source cultures while target culture has received comparatively little attention to fulfill the mission for which the series was developed. Additionally, as of the two dimensions of culture, visuals representing the sociological dimension of culture outnumbered those manifesting the aesthetic dimension. To conclude, it can be claimed that ACT series can be beneficial in promoting intercultural awareness among its audience and providing the learners with an opportunity to communicate their cultural and national identity with other bilingual speakers of English. The study ends with some future lines of research for the interested researcher.

The power of praise in changing student behavior is that it both indicates teacher approval and informs the student about how the praised academic performance or behavior conforms to teacher expectations. Notably, praise plays a significant role in the rate and success of learning process in general, and in language learning classroom in particular. Accordingly, the present study sought to investigate the significant influence of praise on the growing trend of university students with different majors, namely, TEFL and linguistics. To this end, from the population of students majoring in English, at the Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran, two classes of sophomore students were selected, each containing thirty participants. Subsequently, the experimental group was exposed to a wide variety of distinguishing instructor praise expressions throughout the entire term while the students in the control group were not praised and encouraged. The results of the t- test revealed that the group which was praised by the instructor during the term progressed substantially in comparison with the other group. Moreover, there appeared to be a positive correlation between instructor praise and learner progress. Evidently, the results of the present study may have practical implications for EFL teachers, materials developers, and syllable designers.

This study investigates the effects of gender, teaching experience, and brain dominance on English teachers’ teaching styles. In doing so, 68 English teachers (males and females) were selected from several language institutes in Shiraz, Iran. Considering the degree of teaching experience, the participants were categorized into three groups, namely novices, the moderately experienced, and professionals. Two instruments, including Hemispheric Dominance Test and Teaching Style Questionnaire were used to collect data. Using statistical package for the social science (SPSS) 20, the collected data were analyzed. The results of independent samples t-test revealed that male and female teachers differed significantly in terms of teaching styles, as far as the sub-component “formality” was concerned. Furthermore, the results of multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) test indicated that teaching styles in the three groups of teachers significantly differed. However, the analysis of MANOVA regarding the difference between brain dominance and teaching styles did not reveal any significant difference. Some related issues were also discussed.

Academic writing is a major concern for many university students. Despite extensive literature on students’ academic writing, little attention has been focused on students’ writing experience and practice in higher education. To fill this gap, the present study compared actual and perceived academic writing competence of postgraduate students who were enrolled in English for Academic Purposes (EAP, hereafter) courses. First, measures of actual and perceived academic writing competence were developed and validated in Phase 1, using a separate sample of EAP postgraduate students ( n = 391) in Ilam province, Iran. Phase 2 examined postgraduate students’ academic writing competence perceptions and the ways through which their perceptions might have differed from their actual academic performance. Then the developed measures of actual and perceived academic writing competence, which exhibited acceptable reliability and good model-data fit, were distributed among a sample of 210 EAP postgraduate students from nine different academic fields. The results of data analysis revealed significant differences in perceptions and actual academic practices of students across different academic fields of study.

Learning from experience is a central physiological and theoretical idea in adult language learning which has become increasingly important in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) and is closely connected to task-based language teaching (TBLT). Accordingly, this study was designed to investigate the role of experience-based learning strategies in developing male and female intermediate EFL learners’ speaking fluency. To this end, from the target population of 300 language learners attending evening English classes at a language institute, a sample of 50 intermediate participants were randomly chosen by administering an Oxford placement Test (OPT). The average age of the selected students ranged between 17 and 25. An interview was utilized as a pretest to determine participants’ speaking fluency entry behavior. Subsequently, they were divided into two groups labeled as experimental and control groups. While the control group students received instruction through a traditional method without any focus on experience-based activities and strategies, those in the experimental group were exposed to interactive solutions verbally participating in class discussions during task-based classroom sessions in which they discussed their experiences in performing carefully prepared two-way tasks. The analysis of the data obtained from the posttest interview indicated that the participants in the experimental group outperformed those in the control group. Moreover, the results reflected that experience-based tasks considerably improved language the learners’ speaking fluency. Notably, the findings of the present study may have certain insightful pedagogical implications for language instructors and material developers.