درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The current study aimed to investigate the relationship among English for academic purposes instructors’ interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence types, language teaching anxiety, and classroom management beliefs taking a correlational research design. To this end, a convenient sample of 98 EAP instructors were asked to complete the excerpted sections of McKenzie’s Multiple Intelligences Questionnaire, Teacher Anxiety Scale, and Behavior and Instructional Management Scale. The results of Pearson product-moment tests revealed a significant negative relationship between interpersonal intelligence and classroom management beliefs while no significant link was observed between intrapersonal intelligence and classroom management beliefs. The same results were obtained for the possible relationship between these two intelligence types and language teaching anxiety. Furthermore, a significant negative relationship was found between EAP instructors’ language teaching anxiety and classroom management beliefs. The multiple regression analysis also showed that interpersonal intelligence could strongly predict EAP instructors’ classroom management beliefs. Furthermore, the two independent samples t-tests demonstrated that language and content instructors differed with regard to their language teaching anxiety and classroom management beliefs in EAP classes. The results were discussed in light of previously existing literature and some pedagogical implications were presented for EAP teacher training courses.

This study sought to promote EFL learners' speaking ability drawing on Bakhtin’s notion of dialogic discourse pattern (DDP) and to explore their perceptions towards implementing dialogic teaching (DT) in a speaking classroom. To this end, from the population of students in different language institutes, 47 students were selected based on a purposive sampling method. The data were collected at two step-wise processes adopting a mixed-method approach. First, the researcher directed two EFL teachers to apply the DDP principles in a dialogic (DG) and non-dialogic group (NDG). The intervention lasted for 12 weeks. Then, a posttest of speaking was conducted to track the possible improvement. The findings attested that the dialogic talk could promote EFL learners’ speaking ability. Next, DG group was required to complete a written discourse completion task to determine the extent to which incorporating DT could promote learners’ speaking ability. To analyze the data, Thomas's (2006) inductive approach was adopted comprising the dominant themes. The results revealed different themes and sub-themes such as developing self-directed learning skills, disseminating critical literacy practice, fostering language learning, promoting motivation and affective factors, to name but a few. The findings propose some implications for classroom management, materials preparation, and language policy program.

Complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) are measures of language proficiency in productive skills. This study with a non-equivalent control group pretest-post-test design explored whether Dynamic Assessment (DA) procedures enhances EFL teachers' writing CAF. Three 22-member groups of homogeneous teachers were randomly assigned to one control group (Non-DA), an interactionist DA group (IA-DAG), and an interventionist DA group (IV-DAG). After the nine-session treatment, the study groups took a writing post-test. A one-way ANOVA test showed that the experimental groups outperformed the control group, although no significant differences were found between DA groups. Besides, no statistically significant differences were found between the groups' writing complexity. Considering accuracy, IA-DAG outperformed Non-DAG whereas no significant differences were observed between the experimental groups and between IV-DAG and Non-DAG. Fluency measures showed the superiority of DA groups to the control group. The first conclusion was that DA processes have a decisive role in improving writing skills and the CAF triad. Second, CAF components do not develop in a linear process, and employing DA procedures can be useful for its improvement. The paper has implications for language teachers and SLA researchers.

This study addresses the acquisition of the morphological markers in Persian learners of English as a foreign language. To this end, the accuracy order of nine morphemes including plural –s, progressive –ing, copula be, auxiliary be, irregular past tense, regular past tense –ed, third person –s, possessive -ʼs and indefinite articles was studied in 60 teenage Persian EFL learners. Placement and proficiency tests and a demographic questionnaire were employed to collect the data. The total production of 2160 morphemes was manually checked, classified, and counted to rank their acquisition order. The learners’ accuracy order was ranked in a decreased order from 1 to 9 as follows: regular past tense, auxiliary be, copula be, present progressive tense, indefinite articles, plural –s, possessive -ʼs, irregular past tense and third-person singular –s. The Spearman correlation showed that Persian students’ accuracy order had a moderate and weak relationship with the accuracy order of ESL and EFL learners, respectively. This finding proves that Persian EFL learners do not learn English grammatical morphemes in a natural order. Moreover, the universal grammar does not remain fully in these learners. The minor role of UG in EFL acquisition also indicates the important role of transfer in foreign language learning.

This study has been carried out to develop a critical checklist for global/commercial textbooks which play a crucial role in language teaching/learning. For this aim, a number of items have been developed based on a comprehensive review of the related literature and experts’ opinions. The tentative checklist was administered to the targeted population, yet 326 checklists were deemed appropriate for the analysis. The statistical analyses utilized in this study were exploratory factor analysis and partial confirmatory factor analysis. Prior to the exploratory factor analysis, a correlation analysis reduced the items into 44. Next, the exploratory factor analysis identified ten components. Additionally, six items were excluded from the checklist due to simultaneous factor loading and the finalized checklist was truncated into 38 items.  To investigate the possibility for further validation studies, the result of partial confirmatory factor analysis was not statistically significant.  Results of this study have the potentials to shed some lights on the ideological aspects of textbook evaluation.

The current study sought to explore the impact of SFL-oriented register instruction on Iranian EFL learner’ writing performance with a central focus on their English proficiency level. As its secondary aim, the study delved deeply into the learners’ perception of the register-based instruction. To these ends, 50 intermediate and 50 advanced Iranian EFL learners were selected randomly and assigned to four groups: two experimental and two control groups. Employing an experimental pretest/posttest design, the learners of the two experimental groups received instruction on the three components of register; that is, field, tenor, and mode along with the implementation of a three-phase teaching/learning cycle, whereas the learners in the control groups were exposed to a conventional writing instruction. Quantitative analysis of the learners’ writing performance on the pre- and posttest measures revealed the contributory role of register instruction in improving Iranian EFL learners’ writing performance, regardless of their English proficiency level. Furthermore, having been surveyed through a researcher-made questionnaire, the advanced and intermediate learners expressed their positive attitude towards the instruction. The findings highlighted the necessity of superseding the traditional linguistic-based writing instruction by a contextual and situational teaching methodology similar to what has been implemented in the current study.