Journal of Applied Linguistics and Applied Literature: Dynamics and Advances
Volume:9 Issue: 2, Summer-Autumn 2021

Wendy Steiner is the Richard L. Fisher Professor of English Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Steiner earned her B.A. from McGill University in 1970 and both her M.Phil. and Ph.D. in English from Yale University in 1972 and 1974 respectively. After teaching at Yale (1974-1976) and the University of Michigan (1976-1979), she joined the Penn faculty in 1979. Promoted to associate professor three years later, she was named full professor in 1985. At Penn, she served as Chair of the English Department from 1995-1999, Founding Director of the Penn Humanities Forum from 1998-2010, Master of Modern Languages College House from 1985-1988, and director of the Penn/King’s College Program in London from 1989-1990. Professor Steiner’s fields are interartistic relations and literature in English of the 20th and 21st centuries. Among her books on modern literature and visual art are The Real Real Thing:  The Model in the Mirror of Art (2010); Venus in Exile:  The Rejection of Beauty in Twentieth-Century Art (2001). Professor Steiner has received awards from the Guggenheim, ACLS, and Mellon Foundations among others, and her cultural reviews have appeared widely in U.S. and British periodicals, including The New York Times, London Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian. Javad Khorsandi, Ph.D. student of English Language and Literature at Shiraz University has arranged this interview with Professor Steiner.

It is frequently affirmed that EFL teachers face many stressors at work. While they keep experiencing perturbations that may cause fluctuations in their efficacy, immunity acts as a buffer and allows teachers to carry on performing academically in the classroom and emotionally and psychologically over the course of their careers (Thelen, 2005). The present study adapted a mixed-method design to investigate the distribution of the participants across different immunity types and also the destabilizing events which triggers Iranian EFL teachers' immunity. To fulfill this aim, 204 English teachers from two provinces of Iran (Isfahan and Charmahal Bakhtiari) took part in the study. To collect the data, Language Teacher Immunity Questionnaire (Hiver, 2016), reflective journal, and interview were utilized. The data gathered via questionnaire were subjected to descriptive analysis and cluster analysis while the qualitative data were analyzed through the three-stage coding process of grounded theory. The results of the qualitative analysis led to the identification of three immunity types, namely, productively immunized, maladaptively immunized, and immunocompromised with maladaptively immunized teachers having the highest rate of distribution among the participants. The results of the study further identified 3 categories of educational, organizational, and personal triggers along with 14 subcategories among Iranian EFL teachers. The findings of the study can have implications for teachers, stakeholders, and policy-makers to help teachers foster their immunity against stressors and avoid fatigue and burnout.

This study intended to investigate the effect of identity types on learners’ involvement, perceptions, and achievement scores using the validated L2 Quadripolar Questionnaire (Taylor, 2010), in the EFL context of Iran amongst the adult advanced learners of English in private institutions. Therefore, 170 participants, 69 females and 101 males were selected through convenience sampling. The data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance. The analysis of the relationship between the four main sub-constructs of the model and the two sub-constructs of involvement and perception showed significant mediation between the factors and achievement score of the language learners. Moreover, the finding of the study revealed that learners with strong public and imposed selves have a weak private self. Also, the other sub-constructs were determined to be affected by age and years of studying English. Females’ identity was dominantly reported to have higher ties with the sub-constructs of the L2 Quadripolar Model.

Adopting a qualitative design, the present study investigated Iranian EFL teachers’ attitudes toward critical thinking as well as its role in language teaching. To meet these objectives, 36 EFL teachers were selected through purposeful sampling as the participants of the study. For the purpose of the data collection, in-depth interviews, focus group interviews, and teachers’ narratives were utilized. To assure the trustworthiness of the data, several measures have been taken. The lead author conducted the in-depth as well as focus group interviews and elicited teachers’ narratives. The interviews were conducted in Persian language and the whole procedures were audiotaped. The data were transcribed verbatim and after member checking the data with the participants, they were translated into English. The data were analyzed through thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). To assure inter coder reliability, coding the data was done by the second and third authors independently. The third and fourth authors were involved in finding the potential themes and sub-themes. Finally, five themes of efficiency, intelligence, change, success and initiation were generated as a result of the data analysis. The present study revealed that the participants emphasized some fundamental building blocks of critical thinking. The participant teachers also advocated critical thinking - focused programs in teacher education as well as its application in language teaching. The study has a number of implications for language pedagogy, teacher education and policy makers.

Pragmatic Listening Comprehension (PLC), as a complex process, is influenced by various cognitive, psychological, contextual, social, cultural, and linguistic factors. To make a stride toward understanding the role of such factors in PLC, the present study sought not only to scrutinize to what extent PLC was associated with language proficiency, Self-Regulated Learning in Listening (SRLL), and Willingness to Communicate (WTC) but also to examine an empirical path analysis model to predict PLC through language proficiency, SRLL, and WTC. To this aim, a group of 269 upper-intermediate and advanced level Iranian EFL learners, whose ages ranged from 19 to 34, participated in the study by answering the 40-item pragmatic multiple-choice discourse completion test (MDCT),  as well as the valid and reliable questionnaires of SRLL and WTC. The results of correlational analyses revealed that PLC was significantly and positively associated with language proficiency, SRLL, and WTC. These findings were further approved in the path analysis model; language proficiency, SRLL, and WTC were significant positive predictors of PLC. The path model disclosed the significant prediction of PLC in terms of the three independent variables of the study. Based on these results, relevant pedagogical implications were proposed with the aim of enhancing the pedagogical knowledge and practice of key educational stakeholders.

Although supervision is an integral component of EFL teacher professional development, there have not been enough studies on language teacher supervision and EFL teachers’ attitudes toward supervision. The present study investigated EFL teachers’ attitudes toward supervision in Iranian language schools. To this end, 218 EFL teachers who received supervision were selected and asked to complete a teacher supervision questionnaire (Moradi, Sepehrifar, & Khadiv, 2014) to elicit their attitudes, feelings, and experiences toward supervision. The questionnaire consisted of five subcategories: teachers’ evaluation of supervision, their attitudes toward the mode of supervision, the contributions of teacher-supervision to their development, and the process before, during, and after supervision. The findings revealed that a great number of the participants harbored this view that the current supervision is useful for them and necessary for novice teachers. However, some held negative attitudes toward supervision as it puts them under pressure, creates anxiety, and damages their confidence and motivation. They found their supervisors’ feedback unsatisfactory mainly done for paperwork formalities. To improve the ongoing supervisory practices, they suggested the need for the development of transparent criteria and rubrics for supervision and called for discontinuation of unannounced and sudden supervisory observations.

Problem-based Learning (PBL) is considered one of the instructional models of learning with many pedagogical advantages that can bridge the current traditional learning systems’ gaps. It is a method of learning in which the students start with a problem rather than the input provided by the teacher. The current study set out to investigate the major underlying factors of PBL from the Iranian English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students’ point of view. It also aimed at identifying their attitudes toward the different elements of PBL. The data were collected through a validated and piloted questionnaire based on Likert scale (Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.73) from among 379 Iranian EAP university students (196 male and 183 female) from soft and hard science fields of studies. The results of Exploratory Factor Analysis (EAP) showed that the students considered four different factors, namely (1) Project-Based Learning, (2) Collaborative Learning, (3) Use of Technology in Learning, and (4) Autonomous Learning. Moreover, the results of descriptive statistics also indicated that the Iranian students had a generally positive attitude toward PBL and believed that it would assist them in the process of language learning. Our findings can hold important implications for EFL teachers and materials developers and remind them to consider the students’ socio-cultural background and previous educational experiences and accordingly plan an apt curriculum based on the students’ needs and preferences.

The study attempted to investigate the relationship between male Iranian EFL learners’ international posture (IP) and willingness to communicate (WTC) across two proficiency levels. The study was carried out with 106 participants from selected universities in Tabriz and Sarab, Northwest Iran, who were divided into two groups of high and low proficiency based on a Preliminary English Test (PET). The data were collected by the administration of WTC Scale (McCroskey & Richmond, 1990) and IP questionnaire (Yashima, 2000). The collected data were analyzed through Pearson correlation and independent samples t-test. The results showed that there was positive correlation between WTC and IP in the high-proficiency group while the correlation in the low proficiency-group was not statistically significant. It was also found that high proficiency learners had higher levels of both IP and WTC compared to their lower level counterparts. The findings of the study offer pedagogical implications for EFL learners, teachers, and syllabus designers.

Culture is regarded as a part of English language teaching (ELT). Also, ELT textbooks are a main source of intercultural teaching / learning in most English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning contexts. Thus, representation of cultural content and development of (inter)cultural aspects are important issues in ELT textbooks, particularly in EFL contexts. This study analyzed the representation of culture in the Vision series, a recently developed ELT series used nationwide in Iranian high schools, and examined how multimodality in these local textbooks would provide context to develop (inter)cultural aspects. To collect the data, an adapted version of Cortazzi and Jin’s (1999) classification of culture (source, target, international, and globally-shared) was used to analyze the content of the Vision series to see which culture was reflected in these high school textbooks. Additionally, the Wenninger and Kiss’s (2013) semiotic framework was used to examine how multimodality would serve cultural contents through analyzing image-text relationship. The content analysis demonstrated the domination of source (i.e., Iranian) and globally-shared cultural elements with less attention to the target and international cultures. Furthermore, the results showed that multimodality in these textbooks could provide the opportunity for critical cultural reflection, though it was limited to source and globally-shared cultures. By implication, ELT material developers in Iran should incorporate more appropriate materials and culturally engaging visuals associated with diverse cultures into local ELT textbooks to promote Iranian EFL students’ cultural reflection, and, subsequently, their intercultural competence.

Conversational turns have long snatched the attention of discourse analysts. Despite this fact, and to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, intergenerational conversations made by females have never been investigated through the lens of turn-taking and interruptions. Accordingly, this study aimed at scrutinizing the differences between female Persian-speaking adults and adolescents engaged in casual conversations in terms of turn-taking organization, and interruption patterns. To this end, the casual Persian conversations of 5 adult and 5 adolescent females attending a private reunion were analyzed based upon the turn-taking model proposed by Sacks et al. (1974), along with interruption syntactic criteria introduced by West and Zimmerman (1983). The turn-taking model comprises two techniques (self-selection or selection by the next speaker) leading to gaining or allocating turns, and the interruption criteria emphasize deep intrusion of the last two or more syllables of the current speaker. The analysis of the recorded three-hour conversation revealed 1302 uses of the turn-taking techniques and 302 interruptions. The adults used approximately 86.01% of the turn-taking techniques while the counterpart group only used around 13.97%. Moreover, 93.37% of the interruptions were initiated by the adults compared with only 6.62 % initiated by the adolescents. Accordingly, the adult females were far more dominant speakers, adopted a much larger proportion of turn-taking techniques, and were considerably more inclined to use interruptions. The subsequent interview with the adolescents demonstrated that the dramatic between-group differences originated from some paralinguistic elements namely social, psychological, cultural, and power-related factors.

Works of poetry are characterized by specific elements (e.g. symbols, images, concepts) that help interpret and thematize such works. The principle of “holism” in hermeneutics is concerned with analyzing how part-whole relationships are established in a text and how they may give rise to a particular reading of it. A problem, however, is analytical frameworks / models are rarely used for hermeneutic textual analysis and most studies are very subjective / abstract in this area. This study explores the English translations of Rumi’s prelude to his masterpiece Masnavi to analyze how they represent the “mystical” reading of the work. The study draws on a hermeneutical model of poetry translation, which is regulated by two sub-components: cultural-linguistic complexity rate and hermeneutical complexity rate. To identify the characterizing elements, the study considers the keywords in the original and tries to analyze how they are rendered into English by focusing on holistic relationships between the sub-components of the model. The study then compares the choices and suggests which ones could thematically contribute to the mystical reading. Besides confirming the practicality of the model, the findings show that the mystical reading is scattered across the translations and no single one tries to reflect the mystical interpretation.

The history of feminism and gender studies is fraught with constant struggles to find applicable definitions for sex, gender, and sexuality, and understand their relationships and differences. This paper attempts to go through various theories in this regard, tracing their variations and evolutions through time, with a particular focus on gender elimination and discrimination. Some important issues explored in this research include experimentation with language, scientific investigations, and sociological research in the hope of defining and combating gender. Moreover, some manifestation of gender-neutrality patterns in literary works throughout ages and among nations have been represented in various degrees. The survey at hand, drawing on Foucault and Butler’s theories on power and gender performativity, asserts the relative independence of sex, sexuality, and gender from each other as well as the nonessential role of them in the game of discrimination, relegating this role instead to power relations and personal perceptions. Literature, with its vast imaginative capacities and persuasive force, has been introduced as the site where all these intellectual endeavors of various fields about gender have converged, creating metaphors for a possible discrimination-free world, and effecting inevitable changes in the perceptions of their readers.

There have always been many controversies with regards to the existing gaps between human beings and Nature, most of which have come into notice in particular at the current age of fragmentation and uncertainty. While we postmodern individuals take pride in our access to better means of living through technological advances, there have been times we have not been able to live a concordant life on this vast planet. However, postmodernism’s backing up the issue of decentralization has come in handy in literary studies on the one hand and has been influential in Nature-oriented studies on the other. That said, the present paper aims to examine the selected poems chosen out of Mary Oliver’s Truro Bear and Other Adventures: Poems and Essays in order to show the significant role of the poetic language in bringing about some sort of ecological symbiosis, made possible through enriching the internal bond between the speaking human agents and non-speaking, non-human individuals.

Second language (L2) teacher education has witnessed a substantial shift of attention and orientation with regard to the way it looks at teaching, teachers, and various teacher-related factors. This consequential drift began to occur in the 1970s, a decade branded by Freeman (2002) as the decade of change where teacher education was in the van of the quest for a cognitive paradigm, in lieu of the behaviorist tradition, in which the mental lives of teachers were also taken into account. The shift has continued in an evolutionary fashion, and teachers, couched within the new tradition, are deemed to be both cognitive actors and reflective practitioners. As a reflective being, a teacher is also viewed as “an agentic social ‘subject’: individuals with identities, knowledges, and experiences who are themselves engaged in an evolving trajectory of professional development” (Cross, 2020, p. 38). As a corollary of this teacher repositioning, the notions of agency and, by implication, language teacher agency (LTA) have become a regular fixture of inquiry in both mainstream and L2 teacher education. To be sure, in terms of theorization, the construct is still in need of clarification as there is no univocal consensus on what exactly constitutes agency (Mansouri, et al., 2021). Moreover, it is sensible to consider whether agency is merely another fashionable concept in the language teaching enterprise with no positive and useful contribution to the realities of the teaching practice, or whether teachers’ involvement with agency will lead to the betterment of their professional development practices. Language Teacher Agency is a well-timed publication making a crucial contribution to these concerns.