فهرست مطالب raouf hamzavi

This study intended to identify the status of educational accountability and quality of classroom life in Iranian public-and private-sector EFL contexts. To this end, 120 (60 public-and 60 private-sector) EFL learners and 80 (40 public-and 40 private-sector) EFL teachers of distinct ages (16-50) from different senior secondary schools and private language institutes in Kermanshah took part in the study. The participants completed the relevant questionnaires. Moreover, a semi-structured interview was conducted with 20 (ten public-and ten private-sector) EFL learners and 20 (ten public-and ten private-sector) EFL teachers. The results revealed that educational accountability was reasonably high among Iranian EFL teachers and learners, and the quality of classroom life was also acceptable in Iranian EFL contexts. Additionally, both EFL learners’ and teachers’ educational accountability was found to be more significant in the private-sector context. Besides, the quality of classroom life was significantly higher in the private-sector context than the public-sector context. The findings can help EFL teachers, syllabus designers, and material developers to grasp a better picture of educational accountability and quality of classroom life in Iranian public-and private-sector EFL contexts.

Academic Confidence, Grit and WTC of students play important roles in their second language achievement. This paper examined the role of academic confidence and grit in willingness to communicate of Iranian EFL students in different communicative and educational contexts. To this end, 385 EFL students responded to the relevant questionnaires. The analysis of the data revealed that the students with higher levels of academic confidence and grit had a higher L2 WTC in in-class, out-of-class, and online classrooms. The results also revealed that the students’ grit was a predictor of their L2 WTC in all communicative contexts, and the university students scored the highest, followed by language institute and senior secondary school students. Moreover, academic confidence and grit had significant relationship with L2 WTC of students in senior secondary schools, language institutes and universities. Another finding was that grit was a predictor of all groups’ L2 WTC, while academic confidence predicted L2 WTC of students in language institutes and universities. The results of this study have implications for EFL teachers.

The present study explored the characteristics of 147 Iranian EFL teachers teaching at senior secondary schools (N= 62) and those teaching in private language institutes (N=85). Data were collected through a Likert-scale teacher characteristics questionnaire mainly adapted from Borg (2006). Also, for data triangulation purposes, 20 teachers from each group (i.e. 40 in total) were randomly selected and attended a semi-structured interview. The results of Independent Samples t-test indicated, overall, there was a significant difference between the characteristics of senior secondary school teachers and those of language institute teachers. Moreover, the results of Chi-square analysis and content analysis of interviews revealed that EFL teachers of language institutes and senior secondary schools were significantly different regarding some specific characteristics commonly ascribed to successful teaching including good command of aural-oral skills, ʻbeing disciplined and punctualʼ, ʻbeing open to criticismʼ, 'respecting the personality of studentsʼ, ʻlistening to students’ opinions and letting them express themselvesʼ, and ʻshowing interest in students and their learningʼ. The findings of the study might prove fruitful for syllabus designers, teacher educators and pre-service EFL teachers as discussed in the paper.

The current study aimed at investigating the nature of EFL teachers and learners’ perspectives on the intercultural competence potentiality of an EFL textbook, i.e. Top Notch Series, which is used extensively in Iranian institutional EFL context. To this end, forty EFL teachers and eighty-eight advanced EFL learners from private language institutes of Kermanshah, Kurdistan and Hamadan provinces took a researcher-made textbook evaluation questionnaire including thirty eight 5-point Likert scale items. The questionnaire was designed to assess the text in terms of four factors of cultural awareness, cultural knowledge and attitude, intercultural skills, and cross-cultural understanding. The face and content validity of the questionnaire was verified by the experts in the field. In addition, using Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient, the reliability of the questionnaire was estimated to be α=0.87 in this study. The results of Frequency analyses indicated that both EFL teachers and learners were satisfied with the overall intercultural competence potentiality of the textbook. However, MANOVA analyses revealed that EFL teachers and learners’ perspectives on the text’s potential for creating cultural awareness, cultural knowledge and attitude, intercultural skills, and cross-cultural understanding were significantly different. The EFL learners believed that the textbook covers the aforementioned factors well enough, whereas, the teachers believed that it falls short of sufficient attention to the factors. Furthermore, the results suggested that cross-cultural understanding receives scant attention in Top Notch series. Findings of the this study can be specially illuminating for all of the stakeholders of Lingua Franca pedagogy who pursue the development of intercultural competence through language education, in general, and language teaching materials, in particular.

As the main part of a large-scale project, the present study investigated the relationship among reflective thinking, listening anxiety, and listening comprehension of Iranian EFL learners with regard to their proficiency level. To this end, 223 (106 intermediate and 117 advanced) adult male and female Iranian EFL learners from a private language institute took part in the study by completing the Reflective Thinking Questionnaire (RTQ) developed by Kember et al., (2000), the Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale (FLLAS) developed by Kim (2000) and a listening comprehension test selected from the listening part of IELTS. Using factor analysis and Chronbach’s Alpha, the questionnaires were revalidated and their reliability was re-estimated. The results of Pearson product moment correlations indicated there was a statistically significant: (a) positive association between reflective thinking and listening comprehension, (b) reverse correlation between listening anxiety and listening comprehension, and (c) reverse relationship between reflective thinking and listening anxiety of Iranian EFL learners. Furthermore, the results of multiple regression analysis indicated listening anxiety, compared to reflective thinking, was a significantly stronger predictor of listening comprehension. Additionally, the results of MANOVA revealed there was a significant difference between intermediate and advanced EFL learners with respect to their reflective thinking and listening anxiety. In the light of the findings of the study, foreign language education policy makers in general and EFL teachers in particular are thus recommended to introduce ways to enhance reflective thinking of the students and decrease their listening anxiety if they are to improve their listening comprehension. The results and implications of the study are discussed in more detail in the paper.

The current study aimed at investigating the nature of EFL teachers and learners’ perspectives on the intercultural competence potentiality of an EFL textbook, i.e. Top Notch Series, which is used extensively in Iranian institutional EFL context. To this end, forty EFL teachers and eighty-eight advanced EFL learners from private language institutes of Kermanshah, Kurdistan and Hamadan provinces took a researcher-made textbook evaluation questionnaire including thirty eight 5-point Likert scale items. The questionnaire was designed to assess the text in terms of four factors of cultural awareness, cultural knowledge and attitude, intercultural skills, and cross-cultural understanding. The face and content validity of the questionnaire was verified by the experts in the field. In addition, using Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient, the reliability of the questionnaire was estimated to be α=0.87 in this study. The results of Frequency analyses indicated that both EFL teachers and learners were satisfied with the overall intercultural competence potentiality of the textbook. However, MANOVA analyses revealed that EFL teachers and learners’ perspectives on the text’s potential for creating cultural awareness, cultural knowledge and attitude, intercultural skills, and cross-cultural understanding were significantly different. The EFL learners believed that the textbook covers the aforementioned factors well enough, whereas, the teachers believed that it falls short of sufficient attention to the factors. Furthermore, the results suggested that cross-cultural understanding receives scant attention in Top Notch series. Findings of the this study can be specially illuminating for all of the stakeholders of Lingua Franca pedagogy who pursue the development of intercultural competence through language education, in general, and language teaching materials, in particular.

Dynamic Assessment (DA) is built upon the progress in the Vygotsky's (1978) Zone of Proximal Development and is a framework for the integration of instruction and assessment as a unitary activity and serves first to identify the abilities of the learners and second, actively support the progress of such abilities (Poehner, 2008). Considering the adhered importance of DA and in an effort to investigate the efficacy of this newly introduced assessment mode, this study delves into the results of a number of empirical studies of DA that are recently carried out in the field of EFL/ESL. The results of this secondary analysis revealed that the application of DA in the second or foreign language learning contexts enables the teachers and even the learners to efficiently identify the origins of the learner's educational problems and provide them with the appropriate feedback or solutions. The provision of solution is the main distinctive feature of DA as the static modes of assessment even if are able to identify the origins of the learners educational problems, are not oriented towards the immediate provision of appropriate remedies for the problems. Furthermore, DA is a better means to distinguish the learners from each other based on their knowledge or communicative competence and to predict their future performances.

Most of the studies on the key word method of second/foreign language vocabulary learning have been based on the evidence from laboratory experiments and have primarily involved the use of English key words to learn the vocabularies of other languages. Furthermore، comparatively quite limited number of such studies is done in authentic classroom contexts. The present study inquired into the effect of using mnemonic key word method of vocabulary instruction on the learning and retention of vocabulary over long term in a normal EFL classroom context. Fifty5th grade primary school students were selected and randomly assigned into experimental and control groups. The experimental group received vocabulary instruction using mnemonic key word method and the control group received classic memorization based instruction of the same vocabulary items. The two groups took three posttests a day، two weeks، and a month after the last treatment session. A MANOVA analysis was run on the data and the results indicated that subjects in the key word group outperformed the memorization group at a significant level in both their learning and retention of the newly learnt vocabularies. The results of the study underscore the efficacy of the establishment of mental links and images for the vocabulary learning and retention of novice and beginning level EFL learners. It further implies that mnemonic devices like key word method should be given prompt attention by both EFL material developers and practitioners as a potentially effective strategy for vocabulary teaching، learning and long term retention at the early stages of second or foreign language development.