Research in English Language Pedagogy
Volume:9 Issue: 2, Summer-Autumn 2021

There is growing interest in integrating scaffolding in educational decisions everywhere including Iran. Drawing on sociocultural theory, this quasi-experimental study was aimed to determine the effect of technology-, motivational-, and metacognitive-based scaffolding on improving Iranian adult advanced EFL learners’ speaking. A sample of 90 advanced EFL learners was selected non-randomly based on their performance on Certificate in Advanced English (CAE) from two language institutes in Tehran, Iran during the summer and autumn semesters of 2019. The selected participants were randomly assigned to three equal groups. IELTS was used to compare their language proficiency at the beginning and the end of the study. Scaffolding provided conditions for learners to highly engage in speaking activities. The results of paired-sample t-tests revealed a significant improvement in the speaking scores of the three study groups. The results of the one-way ANOVA and Scheffe post-hoc tests indicated that motivational-based scaffolding was more conducive to enhance Iranian EFL learners’ speaking. The results of this study showed the positive impacts of integrating scaffolding into different language learning strategies, and this may carry pedagogical implications for both language teachers and learners.

The present study aimed to examine ESP teachers and students’ perceptions of using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) to identify advantages and potential challenges in using ICT in the Iranian ESP context. The sample under study was 100 undergraduate students and three TEFL teachers. An adapted questionnaire and a semi-structured interview were employed for data collection. The results showed that although most of the participants had positive perceptions of benefits of ICT integration in ESP instruction, lack of infra-structures, insufficient time, lack of syllabus consist of ICT-based materials, lack of teachers’ competence, lack of positive attitudes, and social and cultural barriers prevented them from using ICT. The results of this study have practical implications for changing from the status quo ESP teaching in Iran to ICT-based ESP teaching and for enriching ESP courses through incorporating ICT-based materials in the ESP curriculum.

The development of students’ creative potential is one of the objectives of educational programs in TEFL. The ability of TEFL teachers to achieve this objective to shape creative learning environments for their own students’ creative potential depends on their training in such a learning environment. This study attempted to investigate the effect of dynamic assessment-inspired teaching on the creativity of the EFL students, going through creative writing. This study tried to notice which model of dynamic assessment best affects creativity. The creative thinking scale in writing (Torrance, 1990) was used by the researchers to score the descriptors of creative thinking subscales. One-hundred EFL adult learners of both gender who aged between 20 to 22 were recruited to take part in the present study at Soure art and Architecture University, and a sequential explanatory mixed-method design was utilized. The control group received no mediation, and the other two classes received sandwich and cake models of dynamic assessment-related mediations, respectively. A semi-structured interview was conducted with 12 students and three main questions were asked. A thematic analysis was done using qualitative MAXQDA Software which showed a positive attitude of the learners toward this. The results have shown that both the sandwich and cake model of dynamic assessment influenced the creativity of the learners in their writing. Besides, the sandwich model was more beneficial than the cake model.

According to option-based conceptualizations of Focus on Form instruction (FonF), put forward by Ellis (2012), in EFL contexts employing mother tongue can be a viable option to be embedded in FonF instruction.  This study investigated the use of the mother tongue in FonF instruction and its possible effect on language learners’ written performance. To this end, 100 language learners at elementary and intermediate levels of proficiency, in four groups of 25, participated in this study. Two experimental groups received four FonF instructive sessions mediated by their mother tongue, and for the other groups, no L1 use was allowed. After the instruction, the participants were required to take tests in which the intended grammatical structures were supposed to be produced in a written format. The results showed that the learners receiving the L1-mediated instruction outperformed their counterparts. The findings were discussed psycho-linguistic factors involved in language data processing, and they can be useful to language teachers in  the EFL contexts regarding making decisions about using L1 in L2 language teaching contexts.

Hidden curriculum might have a substantial effect on teachers’ identity although the two variables might have been under-researched, and there appears to have been no instrument to uncover the issue more specifically. The present study aimed to develop and validate a potential inventory to examine the effect of the Hidden Curriculum on Teacher Identity (HCTI). To do so, 350 Iranian English as Foreign Language (EFL) teachers volunteered to be interviewed in semi-structured interviews to elicit the hidden factors that potentially affect teacher professional identity construction. The final inventory was a questionnaire with 51 items which was subject to reliability and construct validity issues. Reliability and factor analysis results indicated that the questionnaire enjoyed high psychometric properties. Besides, factor analysis indicated 44 items loaded on three components of 1) Hidden Curriculum and Self-Efficacy Dimension of EFL Teacher Identity, 2) Hidden Curriculum and Pedagogical Dimension of EFL Teacher Identity, and 3) Hidden Curriculum and Social Dimension of EFL Teacher Identity. Findings contributed to the effective roles that hidden curriculum could play in shaping and developing teachers’ identity.

Textbooks provide a framework for the English language teaching curriculum. Among different skills and components covered in the ELT materials, reading comprehension is conceived as an inalienable skill required to expand the students’ knowledge of the language. Reading passages are accompanied by a set of questions to check the students’ comprehension and enhance their reading efficiency. Focusing on the reading sections of the newly compiled English textbook for the 12th-grade students, the current study attempted to investigate reading comprehension questions accompanying the reading passages in Vision 3 and its workbook adopting Freeman’s (2014) taxonomy. Furthermore, it elicited 80 teachers’ perspectives on the reading sections utilizing the relevant items from an eclectic checklist. To deepen the results, eight teachers also provided their comments. First, the reading comprehension questions in Vision 3 and its workbook were analyzed and assigned to the categories and subcategories proposed in the taxonomy. The frequency and percentage values showed that Language questions were the most frequent category in Vision 3 while Content questions were the most prevalent of all in the workbook. Among the subcategories of reading comprehension questions, Form questions were the commonest type in the student book whereas both Forma and Personal Response questions were the most frequent of all in the workbook.  In addition, the results of the Kruskal Wallis test revealed a significant difference between the student book and its workbook in terms of the frequency of Content questions. The analysis of the teachers’ perspectives also demonstrated their discontent with the reading sections in that book that failed to provide the students authentic texts and challenging questions and activities. Notwithstanding the dramatic positive changes in Vision 3 concerning other skills and components, the findings showed that it needed to be revisited and revised considering the reading comprehension skills and sub-skills. The study raised the material developers’ consciousness about the existing reading comprehension questions in both the student book and its workbook. It further enabled the teachers to identify the missing types of questions and develop supplementary materials to enhance the students’ reading comprehension skills.

The priming of different mindsets is expected to guide L2 students to pursue different achievement goals in language learning that direct them to respond differently in challenging situations.This study assessed a significant predictor variable(s) of goal orientation in mindset variables and a significant predictor variable(s) of responses to failure among mindsets and goal orientations.Thequestionnaires were distributed to 68 university students.Several semi-structured interviews with 10 university students were done.T-test, multiple hierarchical regression analyses,and thematic analysis was employed to analyze the data. The results showed a significant difference between high and low proficient students regarding mindset and goal orientation. It showed that their mindset positively predicted their goal orientation, furthermore, mindset and goal orientation positively predicted responses to failure. Results of interviews showed that language learning mindset could be improved by hardworking.It was concluded that L2 studnets who held a growth mindset became more proficient; they were inspired to learn more and held more learning goals. The study may have implications forsyllabus designers and material developers.

Awareness, in language learning, is a focused area of debate encompassing many different aspects of language teaching research, especially that of grammar. Although the learner’s awareness has been widely taken into account, noticing, which embraces the meaning of awareness, is something that lacks empirical data and literature in teacher’s cognition when it comes to second language teaching studies. Therefore, this qualitative study aimed to explore the teachers’ theoretical and practical cognition in conceptualizing and using noticing in teaching and practicing language; in addition, the congruency between teachers’ theoretical beliefs and actual practices were investigated.  To this end, a total of 30 novice and experienced teachers were interviewed and the role of teaching experience as an overarching concept affecting teachers’ beliefs and performance was detected by using constant comparative analysis. Findings revealed seven conceptual themes out of the collected data as pedagogical effects, type of input, skill type, when to notice, noticing techniques, time allocation, and measurement. Then, six teachers from the same sample group were observed for possible inconsistencies in their teaching practices and their cognition about the concept. The discrepancies between the teachers’ stated beliefs and actual practices revealed that teaching experience has a relative impact on teacher’s performance.

Teacher educators play a seminal role in charting a clear roadmap and shedding light on a prosperous pedagogical journey for novice teachers. Though professional development programs today act as a proper springboard for scaffolding the incomplete knowledge of fledgling teachers, there seems to be a dire need for expanding the scope of such in-service programs to include more elements of successful teaching such as Inquiry-Based Pedagogy (IBP). Driven mainly by this aspiration, the current study strove to explore the teacher educators’ perceptions of IBP, considering the role and importance of inquiry in EFL instruction as well as the challenges that impede the practices of IBP. To conduct the study, 100 EFL teacher-educators from three Farhangian Universities in Iran were chosen through cluster random sampling. A 40-item questionnaire and a 10-item interview protocol were the instruments utilized for data collection. Data analysis via NVivo program, Factor Analysis, and multivariate analysis revealed teacher educators’ positive perceptions of IBP. The findings offer useful implications for curriculum designers, EFL teachers, and teacher educators, particularly as regards the integration of IBP into education.

The present research scrutinized the effectiveness of using technology and multimedia in smart classrooms on improving reading disorders, word chain, and word comprehension in late learning students. For this purpose, 34 male students with reading disorders (dyslexia) were selected as a sample based on the Wechsler IQ test, andKoromi Nouri and Moradi’s dyslexia test. The participants were selected from primary schools in Marand city in the academic year 2019-2020. This study isquasi-experimental research with pretest and posttest. The experimental and control groups included 17 participants, which were randomly assigned to each group. Both groups were evaluated by a diagnostic reading test as a pretest. The experimental group was taught in smart classes for 12 sessions for a year and each session was 90 minutes, yet the control attended in normal classes without using any technology and multimedia. At the end of the year, both groups were re-evaluated using the posttest. The data were analyzed by ANOVA test. The results showed that teaching based on multimedia in smart classrooms improved reading disorders, word chain, and word comprehension in retarded children.The findings can be of great importance for teachers and parents.

The goal of the current study was to investigate the effects of critical thinking skill on EFL learners’ cause and effect essay writing and their attitudes towards it. To achieve this goal, 60 Iranian upper-intermediate EFL learners were randomly divided into two equal control and experimental groups. After evaluating their knowledge of writing, the conventional teaching methods were used for the control group while an eight-step method was used to promote the critical thinking skill for the experimental group. Then the participants sat for the second test to assess the effect of critical thinking instruction and to compare the groups with each other. Elicitation of their attitudes towards the method was done by the questionnaire. The results revealed that the critical thinking instruction had meaningful consequences on the cause and effect essay writing of the participants, and the participants had positive attitudes towards the training. The findings of the research can recommend useful suggestions for the instruction of writing and critical thinking skills.

In academic writing, citation employs different phraseological patterns to serve a number of significant functions. The purpose of this study was to examine the citation practices in Iranian and international applied linguistics journals to determine how differently or similarly the two groups of journals use the citation in their writings. The data consisted of a corpus of 120 articles published by Iranian and international applied linguistic journals. WordSmith Tools (Scott, 2009) computer software was used to extract the citation patterns in different sections of the articles. Then, employing Petric’s (2007) and Thompson and Trimble’s (2001) frameworks, the phraseological patterns and rhetorical functions of citation practices were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The results showed that Iranian researchers, unlike international researchers, tended to use integral citations by emphasizing the writers rather than information; yet, international researchers preferred non-integral citations. The results also revealed that there is a relationship between articles sections and the type of citations applied. Moreover, the analysis of citations based on Petric's (2007) framework demonstrated that Iranian and international writers prefer using attribution function. In conclusion, the study argued that the phraseological patterns used to report these functions should receive more attention to avoid plagiarism.