Journal of Language Horizons
Volume:4 Issue: 2, Summer and Autumn 2020

Considering validity as a unitary concept, this study investigated the construct validity of the Iranian Ministry of Health Language Exam (MHLE). To meet this objective, we first conducted item analysis and reliability analysis, and verified KR20-if-item-deleted indices on the scores of 987 MHLE test takers before running factor analysis. Though the test was found to enjoy a high level of reliability, it suffered from 28 problematic items flagged through item analysis and KR20-if-item-deleted indices. Next, we ran factor analysis on the data, screened through item analysis, by implementing Horn’s parallel analysis and Velicer’s minimum average partial (MAP) tests. Parallel analysis resulted in overfactoring. The MAP test, however, produced results with two to seven factors.  Though the 4-factor result of the MAP test seemed to be more logical at first glance, the overall results were rather disappointing. Nineteen items did not load significantly on any factor and a clear pattern of item loading was not found for many items. These findings can be viewed as evidence detracting from the validity of MHLE.

Language marginalization is one of the main concerns of many nations. Several driving forces may endanger indigenous languages including globalization, hegemonic ambitions such as colonialism, and the lack of proper language planning and policy at national and international levels. This research is an ethnographic study to explore the status of Persian compared to English among the members of an Indian community residing in Iran. The data of this qualitative study was collected through semi-structured interviews with 18 teachers and parents of the students in the School of the Embassy of India in Tehran, Iran, as well as one-year observations of this school, accompanied with detailed field notes, and general investigation of the Persian and English course materials taught at this school. Thematic analysis of the data revealed that English holds the highest status among the members of this Indian community. This is while, on the one hand, members of this community are in urgent need for Persian due to their communicative and educational demands during their residence in Iran, and on the other hand, the Iranian Act of Foreign Citizen’s Schools has required quality Persian instruction and supervision in Iranian Schools for International Citizens. This study illustrates how Persian is marginalized in its homeland because of the postcolonial remnants and neocolonial forces of English dominance which lead to over-appreciation of English among members of this community, along with the absence of Iranian language policies' implementation monitoring, and poor Persian instruction.

Ethical issues are gaining more importance in the realm of Translation Studies. Ethics charters or codes of professional conduct for translators produced by professional associations seek to establish a set of ethical principles and to ensure that all members are adopting those principles in practicing their profession. The present study aims to examine the fundamental assumptions underlying the approved Iranian Charter of Professional Ethics for Translators in Iran and to explore the limitations of the Charter. Eighteen English codes of ethics for translators or translators and interpreters from countries located in various parts of the world were downloaded and analyzed to find the overall values and underlying principles commonly shared by the codes. Then, the principles underlying the Iranian Charter of Professional Ethics for Translators were analyzed to reveal the main points of similarity and difference between this Charter and the analyzed codes from around the world. Finally, the limitations of the Charter were discussed. The analyzed data revealed that the approved Iranian Charter of Professional Ethics for Translators is not very practical and could not be successful in regulating ethical practice across the translation profession in the Iranian context. Hence, it requires further modification before application.

The appearance of different types of educational technology (Ed Tech) tools has paved the way for teachers and learners in all fields of study including second/foreign language learning in order to use them for making the education and learning process more fruitful and exciting. This study aimed to investigate and compare the impact of the common WhatsApp group in which participants could have interactions versus the restricted WhatsApp group in which participants did not have any interactions, as two quittances of social network groups on enhancing English Foreign Language (EFL) learners' writing ability with a focus on process analysis type of paragraph writing. In this regard, 64 intermediate EFL learners were homogenized through the administration of the Oxford Placement Test (OPT) and divided into two virtual groups randomly. Next, a paragraph writing pretest was administered, and then both virtual groups received the same treatment and material based on the Model-Practice-Effect instruction cycle. After the treatment sessions, the paragraph writing posttest was administered. Considering the purpose of the study, data analysis indicated that the participants in the common WhatsApp group who had experienced online interaction could significantly outperform the participants in the restricted WhatsApp group.  The results and findings of this study can be useful for second/foreign language learners, teachers, researchers and experts in order to consider and become aware of the critical role of Ed Tech, as well as the central and important role of interaction in improving the quality of language teaching and learning process.

The present study investigated the characteristics of the new ELT program in Iran from the perspective of its most direct implementers both qualitatively and quantitatively. To this end, 19 teachers implementing the new program were interviewed to describe the newly introduced change through their perception of its attributes such as its complexity, explicitness and practicality. After conducting content analysis on the transcribed interviews, the emerged themes were used to survey 256 lower and higher secondary teachers by means of a 5-point Likert-type questionnaire across the nation. The results show that, although the program implementers felt more satisfied with the new program due to the perceived advantages of the change over the previous one, the lack of crucial factors such as giving due attention to the oral skills, adjustability of the change to the needs of a  wide range of users, training teachers to improve their skills in making use of  methods and techniques compatible with the reality of local language classrooms replete with logistical shortcomings, permeation of change to different layers of the educational system and mobilizing all influential subsystems for putting the change into practice has handicapped the effective fulfilment of the program’s objectives from teachers’ eyes.

Blended learning is sometimes called the best of both worlds, as it combines the advantages of online learning with traditional face to face (FTF) instruction. The present study examines the impact of blended learning (BL) on the lexical variety (LV), lexical density (LD), and syntactic complexity (SC) of Iranian high school EFL students’ speaking and writing skills over a nine-month period. Two groups of 42 homogeneous high school students were selected. One group was assigned as the blended and the other as the FTF group using the Top Notch Placement Test. Then, a website was designed as a platform for the BL group’s online activities and tasks, such as chat room discussions, synchronous and asynchronous forums for writing and speaking activities, and an online task-completion activity. The FTF group received equal but different treatment. Interviews and a writing task were administered at the beginning and the end of the nine-month academic year in order to elicit speaking and writing samples from the students. Finally, the corpora obtained from the first and final interviews and writing tasks were analyzed by two independent coders to observe possible changes in linguistic features. A one-way ANOVA test was used to find out any meaningful differences between the indices of linguistic features in the two corpora. The results show that BL instruction exerted a positive effect on lexical variety and density both in terms of speaking and writing. However, the syntactic complexity of speaking and writing were significant for the FTF group. Hence, based on the obtained results, the superiority of BL instruction over FTF was revealed when the focus of attention was on productive skills.

Dialogical thinking paves the way for EFL learners to express their thoughts in discussion, be able to convince the intended audience effectively, and provide reasons for the way they think, which consequently leads to the manifestation of individual voice. This study examined the effect of teaching dialogical thinking on the development of voice in the writing skill of a group of intermediate female EFL learners. To this end, twenty-two EFL learners were selected randomly and were assigned to two groups, namely experimental and control groups. Oxford Placement Test was administered to ensure the participants’ homogeneity in terms of their language proficiency level. The experimental group received treatment on the dialogical thinking based on Alexander’s (2008) dialogical teaching model in the form of analytical discussions on eight controversial topics in ten sessions. On the other hand, the control group was asked to take part in the routine written classroom activities. To measure the expression of voice, Helms-Park and Stapleton’s (2003) Voice Intensity Rating Scale (VIRS) was used. The findings revealed that dialogical pedagogy stimulated logical arguments, sound reasoning, and sensible evaluations, and consequently, led to the manifestation of the individual voice via linguistic and rhetorical devices.

Academic writing is one of the important skills in higher education and as a social phenomenon can be investigated for ideological manipulations. This study tries to unveil the westernized hegemonic discourse such as legitimation patterns in academic discourse of Iranian applied linguists in three major research paradigms. To this end, five-point classification of van Leeuwen’s (2008) authorization’s category was used as our analytic framework. The published articles of Iranian academic-scholarly journals were critically analyzed for the observed frequencies of the mentioned classifications and Chi-square tests were used to statistically investigate the associations between authorization’s patterns and research paradigms. The results revealed statistically significant associations between quantitative and qualitative research methods on one hand and between qualitative and mixed-methods on the other hand. Accordingly, the results of this study may shed some lights on the domination of positivist’s ideology in academic writing of the applied linguists in Iran. In this respect, the policy makers in the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology, along with editorial boards of Iranian journals in the field of applied linguistics, may change the globalized and westernized view of education into more locally oriented approaches. Furthermore, professors and students may adopt more democratic views in their research and reporting studies.

Identity processing styles are those psychological, sociocultural, and socio-cognitive mechanisms that shape, reshape, and establish different individuals’ identities both in their mother tongues and in the second or foreign language they are striving to acquire. The relationship between these identity processing styles and L2 learners’ pragmatic competence is a crucial issue that has not been explored thus far in an EFL context. Therefore, the present study sought to investigate the relationship between the information-oriented, diffuse-avoidant, and normative identity processing styles as measured by Berzonsky’s (2011) Identity Processing Style Inventory (ISI-4) and L2 speech-act knowledge and production among 122 (82 F and 40 M) Iranian upper-intermediate to advanced proficiency level learners. A validated 35-item multiple-choice discourse completion test (MDCT) including five frequent English speech acts (requests, apologies, refusals, complaints, and compliments/compliment responses) and a related role-play interactive test were then employed. The application of multiple regression revealed that diffuse-avoidant and normative identity processing styles were significant but moderate contributors to both pragmatic knowledge and production; however, information-oriented identity processing style was a weak significant predictor. These findings imply that teachers can manage and tailor the instructional pragmatic practices in accordance with the learners’ identity processing styles.

As a novel concept in teacher psychology, language teacher immunity is a strong indicator of how teachers thrive or survive in the face of adversity. Research on language teacher immunity is still in its nascent stage, and the present qualitative study tries to fill the gap in the existing literature. This study aimed to investigate the possible sources of immunity among Iranian EFL teachers, the impact immunity may have on teachers’ classroom practices, and intervention strategies EFL teachers suggested to influence the development of immunity. Based on interviews with 13 seasoned high school EFL teachers, we found that four main stressors, namely, personal-level, school-level, organization-based, and sociocultural stressors, were the sources of maladaptive immunity development. The only cause for the development of positive immunity in EFL teachers was altruistic motivation. It was further found that those EFL teachers with positive immunity kept functioning effectively in their classrooms, whereas teachers with maladaptive immunity set into a state of indifference towards their students and complacency without exercising agency. These teachers had surrendered in the face of a multitude of adversities they faced during their professional life. The findings also indicated that in order to influence the development of immunity formation process to gear it towards an adaptive one, teachers’ economic situation should be improved by increasing their salaries, praising and appreciating their efforts, organizing practical in-service teacher training courses, and supporting them at schools by principals and other educational authorities.

Given the importance of collocations, different attempts have been made to facilitate their learning. One such attempt has been the the application of dynamic assessment models. This study compared the effectiveness of three DA models including Budoff's Learning Potential measurement, Group Dynamic Assessment, and Intensive Mediated Learning Experience with conventional instruction on the learning of English lexical collocations. One hundred-twenty male students studying English at Allame Helli 5 High School were selected through convenience sampling. A researcher-made collocation comprehension test, containing 100 items, was used as the pre-test. The students were divided into four intact groups. Each group received a different treatment for 16 sessions. A multiple-choice test and a fill-in-the-blanks test, each consisting of 30 items, were used as the post-tests. Analysis of data using one way ANOVA showed that the Intensive-MLE model was more effective than the other models on both comprehension and production of English lexical collocations. The findings may have useful implications for teachers, students, instructional materials designers, and language assessors.

The present study was an attempt to investigate the perceptions of cognitively more and less active EFL learners about using the ENGAGE Model, as an innovation, in the EFL classroom. The participants of the study were 10 intermediate level male EFL learners in a language institute in Iran who were randomly selected out of 60 homogeneous participants of the study. Of the 10 participants, 5 were cognitively more active and 5 cognitively less active individuals. They were selected based on their answers to a validated cognitive profile questionnaire. An interview guide was used to elicit the perspectives of cognitively more and less active EFL learners on the ENGAGE Model in the EFL classroom. The findings of the study showed that the cognitively more active learners enjoyed the ENGAGE Model class more than the cognitively less active ones. Likewise, the cognitively more active learners benefited from the course more than their counterparts in the cognitively less active camp. They assessed themselves more positively in terms of L2 speaking and writing. Both cognitively more and less active learners mentioned that they liked the ENGAGE Model classroom and found it more engaging than the other methods they had experienced before. However, the cognitively less active learners reported exhaustion, saying that the assignments were beyond their ability and that they could not cope with all of them. The findings have practical implications for EFL classrooms.