مطالب

The review of the literature indicates EFL teachers’ sense of efficacy has been influenced by cognitive and affective factors. Socio-economic factors may also influence EFL teachers’ sense of efficacy directly and their teaching effectiveness indirectly. One of the socioeconomic variables is the quality of work life (QWL). This study was an attempt to investigate the relationship between EFL teachers’ quality of work life and their teaching efficacy.  Ninety High school English teachers from Sistan and Baluchestan were selected. The data of the study were collected through two adapted instruments and analyzed through Pearson correlation and linear regression analysis. The results of the study showed that Iranian EFL teachers perceived themselves as having a good level of teaching efficacy. The results also showed that there was a significant correlation between all dimensions of QWL and teachers’ teaching efficacy except for “adequate and fair compensation” is significant at a P value of 0.05, but only one dimension of QWL could predict teachers’ teaching efficacy. Therefore, it could be strongly argued that teachers’ QWL is not the only influential factor in teaching efficacy.

Thematic progression pattern as the method of development of the text ensures that the reader follows the right path in understanding the text; in this regard, this subject is attracting considerable interest among discourse analysts. This paper calls into question the status of thematic progression in the process of translating English news into Persian. With this in mind, we analyzed the thematic progression patterns of a total of 643 T-units of English news along with their Persian translated version employing Daneš and McCabe progression patterns. The results of the Chi-square analysis revealed there was not a significant difference between the progression patterns in English and Persian except for the simple linear pattern. Nevertheless, there were some structural changes resulting in the alterations in progression patterns: Adding the theme that pushes the theme to the rheme, changing the postpositioned declaratives, omitting expletives, dislocating the theme in the T-unit and others. In spite of having linguistically motivated and unmotivated alterations, we also found that Persian translation seems to retain the progression pattern of the English news texts.

Previous literature on the study of identity representation in political discourse has been mainly concerned with the spoken discourse and the representation of self. However, the way different groups of political agents represent others’ identities across languages has not attracted much attention. Using Wodak’s (2007) Discourse Historical approach to CDA, the present study investigates the way EL2 and English speaking political actors and researchers in the context of Iran and the U.S represent others’ identities in their political discourse. Through purposive sampling, 28 English political speeches and columns produced by native and non-native (Persian) speakers of English were selected for analysis. The results of CDA, as well as Chi-square tests of statistical significance, indicated there were differences in the quality and quantity of the strategies employed by the two groups of political agents across language groups. EL2 speakers of English used more implicit, covert, anonymous and less transparent as well as more distant representation strategies than English agents who tended to use more explicit, direct and involved strategies. Implications were drawn for ESP material development at an advanced level.

Authenticity has always been the concern of test developers in the history of second language assessment. This study was an attempt to investigate the authenticity of the present researchers' innovative idea of “Language Town” as a method for assessing learners’ speaking ability. To this end, a simulated town was designed like a real town in an outdoor space of about 400 square meters. The participants in this study were 31 undergraduate students of Translation Studies at Jahrom University who were taking the 4-credit course of Conversation 2. First, the students’ speaking ability was measured based on the IELTS testing system. Then each student was sent to the Language Town with a few definite missions determined in advance by the teacher; e.g. ordering food in the restaurant, depositing/withdrawing money in a bank, etc. Using IELTS band descriptors, each student’s speaking ability was measured by two raters in both tests. Then the correlation between the two sets of scores obtained from the IELTS test and the one in the Language Town were calculated. Using open-ended questions, a survey was also conducted to extract the students’ attitudes towards the Language Town. The results of the statistical analyses showed a weak correlation (0.36) between the two sets of scores. The survey also revealed that almost all the students were interested in and had positive views towards Language Town as an authentic method of assessment. A Virtual Language Town (VLT) could be a solution to the practicality problems of the Language Town.