Journal of Applied Linguistics and Applied Literature: Dynamics and Advances
Volume:10 Issue: 2, Summer-Autumn 2022

Ali Derakhshan is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at the English Language and Literature Department, Golestan University, Gorgan, Iran. He gained his MA in TEFL from University of Tehran and his PhD in Applied Linguistics from Allameh Tabataba’i University, Iran. Dr. Derakhshan has been a member of the Iranian Elites Foundation since 2015. He has also been selected as a distinguished researcher by the Teaching English Language and Literature Society of Iran in 2021. His name appears in Stanford University’s list of world’s top 2% most influential scientists in 2021. He is the editor of Language Related Research, Associate editor of Frontiers in Psychology and Porta Linguarum and editorial member of System, Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, and Porta Linguarum. He has published in accredited international journals, including Computers and Education, Language Teaching Research, System, Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, ELT Journal, Current Psychology, Asia Pacific Education Researcher, Educational Studies, Porta Linguarum, Frontiers in Psychology, etc. His monograph The “5Cs” positive teacher interpersonal behaviors: Implications for learner empowerment and learning in an L2 context has appeared in 2022. His research interests are positive psychology, teacher education, learner individual differences, cross-cultural interpersonal factors in educational psychology, interlanguage pragmatics, and intercultural communication. He has joined an offline interview with Dr. Davoud Amini.

Substantial research has been done on assessment literacy (AL), and several questionnaires have been developed to measure AL. However, little (if any) research has attempted to provide a comprehensive assessment literacy questionnaire. To fill this gap, the present study attempted to develop an assessment literacy questionnaire which encompasses not only the areas identified by previous research, but also those not identified by those studies. Moreover, attempt was made to identify the components that were better predictors of Iranian EFL teachers’ assessment literacy. To this end, first previous AL questionnaires were explored and their main items were identified. Then, researchers-made items were added. Meanwhile, interviews were conducted with experts, who suggested some additional items. Then, 386 Iranian teachers of English were selected through convenience sampling on the basis of availability to fill in the first draft of the questionnaires that assessed different aspects of assessment literacy in order to validate it. Finally, a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was conducted, and a questionnaire with 35 items which evaluated nine components of assessment literacy was developed. In addition, the validated, final version of the AL questionnaire was distributed among 146 EFL teachers to identify the better predictor components of AL among Iranian EFL teachers. Multiple regression analysis revealed that “administering, rating, and interpreting test” was the best predictor of teachers’ AL in comparison to other components. The theoretical as well as practical implications of the findings are also discussed.

Teacher Enthusiasm (TE) and Learner Engagement (LE) have recently appealed to educational researchers. Nonetheless, their association and potential impacts have not been sufficiently dealt with in the field of second language (L2) research. The present mixed methods study sought to explore the intersection of perceived TE and LE in L2 classroom. To this end, 87 Iranian intermediate L2 learners completed a self-report questionnaire on perceived TE and their own engagement. Next, two focus-group interviews were conducted with a total of 12 respondents. The quantitative data were used in a correlational analysis to see if any relationship exists between perceived TE and LE. The qualitative interview data were analyzed through thematic coding analysis to extract the significant themes regarding how perceived TE may affect L2 learners’ engagement. Results demonstrated that the two variables are significantly correlated. Moreover, the qualitative data yielded three main themes indicating that perceived TE led to L2 learners’ enjoyment and excitement, positive appraisal of teacher quality, and feelings of security and confidence. Thus, emotional consequences seem to be dominant links between the two variables. Additionally, it was found that personal vision and self-set goals are significant antecedents of engagement that may even outdo perceived TE.

One of the necessities of learning foreign languages is reading comprehension, particularly for adult learners. Also, reading interest of learners would be developed considering the time spent to learn different literacy. The current research aimed at exploring it as a contributing factor when learners are engaged to comprehend and read. The present empirical work was conducted to describe the impact of reading interest and guided reading method on the learners’ reading comprehension. It was conducted in Bushehr province, Iran. In this study, there were 8 instructors and 140 EFL learners of oil and gas industry. The learners were placed into classes through Quick Placement Test. Research design was mixed method design. Quantitative and qualitative research methods were applied. To analyze the data, SPSS software was used and independent samples t-test was employed. The improvement of the experiment group’s post-test scores specified the effectiveness of guided reading method in comparison to explicit reading method. The unstructured interview characterized the instructors’ and learners’ experiences, discoveries, and feelings in using guided reading method. The findings could assist EFL instructors in selecting a method that can facilitate adult learners’ reading comprehension.

Teachers' psycho-affective state is important to the quality of their classroom performance. Self-efficacy and fluid intelligence are thought of as being protective in adverse conditions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlation among Iranian EFL teachers' self-efficacy, fluid intelligence, and burnout. To this end, a quantitative research was conducted, and 140 EFL teachers within the 20-40 age range in Mashhad, Iran, were selected through convenience sampling. They filled up three questionnaires of RAPM (Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices), OSTES (Ohio State Teacher Efficacy Scale), and MBI-ES (Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educator’s Survey) for fluid intelligence, self-efficacy, and burnout, respectively. Pearson correlation coefficient, Multiple Regression, and MANOVA were used for analyzing the data. The results showed a significant positive relationship between the male and female teachers’ self-efficacy and fluid intelligence. Findings also revealed a significant negative correlation between the male and female teachers’ self-efficacy and burnout. Moreover, the correlation between fluid intelligence and burnout for both male and female teachers was negative. It was also found that gender is not a determining factor in Iranian EFL teachers' burnout. The study finds it essential for educational policymakers in Iran to devise programs to enhance language teachers' self-efficacy and fluid intelligence as potential protectors against burnout.

Teachers play an important role in providing training and upbringing services for the educational community. However, burnout is rampant among teachers in professional contexts. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the factors that lead to burnout and to investigate approaches to reduce the impact of these factors on teachers’ burnout levels. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between burnout and foreign language teachers’ commitment to teaching service in Iran Language Institutes. In this study, we used observation, semi-structured interviews and Maslach burnout questionnaire (MBI), and Meyer and Allen's organizational and job commitment questionnaire (OOC) to assess the variance of teacher burnout and its relationship with teachers' commitment. English language teachers (N = 100) in Mazandaran province were invited to participate in this study. Data analysis showed that there was a negative relationship between teacher burnout and their commitment to teaching English. Descriptive statistics show that male teachers have more burnout than female teachers. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was performed for causal analysis. The concepts of organizational and job commitment and educational policy and burnout research were discussed. Accordingly, educational policymakers are suggested to provide programs to familiarize teachers with the syndrome and help them reduce burnout, which maximizes their performance in the classroom.

An awareness of one's own learning processes seems not to occur without language learners, engagement in SRL strategies in terms of behavioral, emotional, cognitive, metacognitive, and environmental aspects during learning procedures, which leads to high-quality planning for learning (Krause & Coates, 2008). This mixed method study was conducted to explore the effectiveness of self-regulated language learning in developing metacognitive awareness of grammar strategies and compared it with non-self-regulated groups. To this end, a total of 122 homogenized intermediate EFL learners were randomly allocated to one of three groups (two experimental and one control).  To collect data, all groups were subjected to three different treatments. The data analysis of non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis indicated that self-regulated language learning strategies instruction (cyclical & emotional regulation) had a significant effect on the EFL participants' metacognitive awareness of grammar strategies. Also, the SRL (C & ER) model improved the learners' metacognitive awareness more than the SRL (C) model and was followed by F on F method, which showed the lowest performance. For more evidence of learners’ engagement in SRL strategies during the learning process, an SRGL questionnaire was administered to EFL learners at the pre-test and post-test phases. A paired sample t-test data analysis revealed that the participants in both SRL models outperformed in the use of self-regulatory strategies. The result of the paired t-test of emotion regulation data also represented a large effect size. Regarding learners’ attitudes towards implementing SRL models, the frequency data and chi-square analysis of both experimental groups indicated that most students significantly held a positive perception of these techniques. Therefore, this study provides implications for teachers and syllabus designers to design SRL task modeling compatible with learners’ language levels.

Teacher engagement has been undertaken in various studies. However, most of the studies have disregarded the dearth of a practical framework to assess teachers' engagement in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. Therefore, the researchers of the present study designed and validated a questionnaire to assess the engagement of EFL teachers. To examine the reliability and validity of the final draft of the TEQ, it was administered to 234 Iranian EFL teachers who had been selected using non-probability convenience sampling. The results of Cronbach’s alpha indicated an appropriate reliability index and the factor analysis results revealed that items were loaded on 5 factors including 1) emotional, 2) social (colleagues), 3) social (students), 4) cognitive, and 5) agentic. Moreover, TEQ has the potential to be beneficial in assessing EFL teachers' engagement, according to the results of structural equation modeling (SEM), which revealed that the model enjoyed good psychometric features.

Adopting a qualitative design, the current study explored the usefulness of interculturally-laden tasks and intercultural training in improving the Iranian English learners’ intercultural competency in Anzali, Guilan province, Iran. To this objective, a group of 25 intermediate levels whose ages ranged from 21 to 30 participated in the study. The participants were required, initially, to complete seven intercultural tasks to assess their current level of intercultural competence. Then, they attended in eighteen sessions of intercultural training using Mirror and Window: an intercultural textbook and then completed the same seven intercultural tasks one again at the end of the course. Anchored in Byram's (1997) ICC theory, five components of the learners’ ICC enhancement, namely Savoir Comprendre, Savoire Etre, Savoire S’engager, Savoirs, and Savoire Apprendre / Faire were investigated throughout an intercultural training course. Two major sources of data were intercultural tasks, which were written by the participants per week as part of their assignments, focused-group interviews and self-report evaluation survey conducted at the end of the course to elicit the views they harbor toward the course. Drawing on the qualitative content analysis, findings indicated that interculturally-laden tasks could help the participants enhance their intercultural competence. Meanwhile, the analysis of the focused-group interviews and self-report evaluation survey revealed that learners evaluated most aspects of the tasks and textbook positively. Finally, the implications of the current study and suggestions for further research were discussed.

In the 1990s, the first wave of trauma theories was raised to extend the boundaries of psychological trauma studies into other fields, including literary theories and literature. Jeannette Walls (1960-), an American author and journalist, writes about her characters’ resistance to life’s adversities in her novels. Despite the existing studies on her most well-known novel The Glass Castle (2006), her other novel, The Silver Star (2013), has been marginalized since its publication. Thus, this study addresses The Silver Star and examines the “trauma and recovery” of the two main characters, Charlotte and Liz. It deploys Judith Herman’s trauma theory which focuses on the symptoms, effects, and recovery process of “post-traumatic stress disorder”. Following the experienced traumatic moments, Charlotte and Liz bear three main symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, including “hyperarousal”, “intrusion”, and “constriction”. As a primary effect of PTSD, they also disconnect themselves from their family and society while desperately seeking help to be recovered. The study argues that Walls represents social support as the most influential element in the “recovery” process of PTSD. The findings show that the recovery process varies according to the support that each character receives; Charlotte is not able to progress in the recovery process without receiving sufficient support from others while Liz recovers by getting enough support to construct a sense of safety.

The issue of “freedom” has been one of the core concepts in the history of literature and philosophy since classical times. This concept considerably contributes to the ongoing discussions of Iris Murdoch’s The Unicorn (first published in 1963). Unlike most of the previous studies of the novel, whose central focus is on the transcendent, moral, or biographical readings of the text, the present study draws on Gilles Deleuze’s Poststructuralist philosophy to address the immanent aspect of freedom, as the main thematic concept in the novel, as well as such related notions as power, love, desire, and becoming to determine the degrees of freedom achieved by the major characters, Hannah Crean-Smith and Effingham Cooper. The main objective of the study, therefore, is to see whether or not the two main characters can ultimately find proper lines of flight. The findings suggest that although Hannah is encoded and territorialized in the Gaze castle, she ultimately turns into a body without organs (BwO). However, Effingham fails to become an active body in his interaction with Hannah. While Hannah undergoes an absolute positive deterritorialization through her death, Effingham obtains only a relative negative deterritorialization because returning to the “real” life constantly threatens a body’s force and renders an absolute form of freedom impossible.

The 21st-century literature has experienced a shift of ideas reflected in metamodernism, introduced by Vermeulen and Akker in 2010. Although metamodernism is a critical approach in its naissance, it is observable in a large body of the 21st-century literature through certain narrative and thematic features which have proven to move in line with contemporary socio-cultural issues. Although metamodernism plays with and modifies specific elements of modernism and postmodernism, it is exclusive to the artworks of the last two decades in which certain terminologies such as the “infinite Real,” an aversion of the “Real” in former philosophical and psychological disciplines, suggest that truth and reality are infinite and that the past and the future are connected through a plastic connection. A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) by Jennifer Egan makes a good example of the metamodernist novel regarding the author’s network of characters in their approaches toward the reality of their lives as it is constantly redefined in association with their past. In this light, the novel is to thematically embed the concept of the “infinite Real” in the first decade of the third millennium.

The aim of this essay is to provide a political reading of Dasein that might result into tragedy of Dasein in A Song of Ice and Fire. Politics can be regarded as an element to reach existence and Dasein. The phenomenological methodology that Heidegger introduces rejects all the history of western philosophical tradition. Heidegger believes that the metaphysical thinking that has dominated western philosophy since Plato to Nietzsche is insufficient for the study of being. The western history is depicted in the story of A Song of Fire and Ice. Applying these assumptions to the context of Westeros, it becomes clear that ruling and domination over is the only way to appoint the matter of existence. In a realm where every lord and lady nurtures his or her own dream of sitting on the Iron Throne, the nation’s notion of unity and democracy degenerates into a sort of oligarchic dogma that treats the lives of ordinary people as dispensable means to the ultimate end: total power. In such a state, an idealistic politician would find little to no room for advocating purely positive values like equality or justice. Indeed, as he often finds out soon enough, the profits of the elite often rely directly on the losses of the public.

The historical trajectory of the field of translation studies has demonstrated the rapid expansion of this field in research methodology as well as in incorporating ideas from other disciplines in order to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomena of translation. Early studies in the field have limited themselves to comparing translated texts with their source texts. Even Zohar's (1979) poly-system theory as well as Toury’s (1995) idea of the centrality of the translated texts opened new horizons in the field, one of which is to find specific features of translated texts or ‘universals of translation’ as Baker (1992) puts it. Recent developments in linguistics as well as the introduction of corpus linguistics have helped translation scholars to study translated texts independent from their source texts in order to find unique features of translation language. This study intends to review the idea of explicitation as a translation universal and propose some controversial issues regarding its nature and definition.

New Materialist Explorations into Language Education explicates the influential role of social constructionist and new materialism in challenging equity in language education. The book reflects a critical and transformative perspective and fosters ontological-ethical grounding that implicates repositioning researchers for decentralizing them as human agents and focusing on materialities that often play a central role but under covered one. Post humanism encourages researchers to view the society as an ethical interplay between human and non-human assemblages that explore socio-materialities of language education.  The book is organized in five parts and ten chapters: an acceptable account of three concerns: a) the emerging and influential role of material agencies in language teaching contexts, b) the relation between materialities and educational choices we make, and c) human and non-human assemblages in language education contexts. Each chapter explores how agents other than humans enlighten agency in language education context.