Journal of English Language Pedagogy and Practice
Volume:15 Issue: 30, Spring - Summer 2022

The present study investigated the interplay between language anxiety, locus of control, and language proficiency of EFL students in online classes. The participants of the study were 67 upper-intermediate students between 18 to 30 years old and were selected randomly from a few language institutes in Shiraz. Two questionnaires and a proficiency test were used: Chametzky’s Online World Language Anxiety Scale, Rotter’s Locus of control questionnaire, and The Examination for the Certificate of Proficiency in English. Pearson-product-moment correlation, multiple regression analysis, and independent-samples t-test were run to answer the research questions. The results of the study revealed a strong negative correlation between locus of control and language proficiency, meaning that those who had higher scores on the proficiency test were internal. In addition, a strong negative correlation was found between language anxiety and language proficiency, indicating that anxiety has adverse effects on language proficiency. Thirdly, both locus of control and language anxiety could predict language proficiency, but the former was a better predictor. This means that the effect of locus of control is much higher than anxiety on the language proficiency of Iranian EFL learners in online classes. This research can help students and teachers to recognize individual differences better.

Error analysis is considered as an invaluable pedagogical tool in teaching English as a foreign/second language (EFL/ESL). Despite abundant research, there are still lacunae in studies investigating the written grammatical errors among monolingual and bilingual male and female Persian and Turkmen EFL learners. To fill the gap, 158 Persian and Turkmen EFL learners from Golestan Province wrote two descriptive scripts that were examined for their most recurrent written grammatical errors. The errors were then analyzed and compared based on the framework of the study. Statistical analyses indicated significant relationships between Persian and Turkmens’ written grammatical errors and their gender. The frequency of monolingual Persians’ errors was significantly lower than that of bilingual Turkmens. These findings might interest EFL teachers, syllabus designers, and materials developers. Moreover, they could be a prerequisite to corrective feedback research while opening doors to further pertinent studies.

This study was an attempt to investigate the perception of Iranian senior high school teachers toward critical cultural awareness. The participants of the study comprised of 307 teachers in different high schools in Qazvin. All the participants filled in the Critical Cultural Awareness Questionnaire. The data were then fed into SPSS software and were subjected to Principal Components Analysis. Three factors were extracted and named as CCA in ELT Programs, CCA in ELT Textbooks and Materials, and CCA in General Terms, and the participants’ responses were analyzed based on these factors. The results indicated that the teachers’ critical awareness perception toward ELT Textbooks and Materials was the highest factor. The results of the item analysis revealed that teachers indicate all cultures should have an equal status in ELT textbooks and materials. It was concluded that the teachers’ cultural awareness regarding the integration of culture into mainstream teaching should be raised and they should pay more attention to culture in their classes. One significant implication of this study for EFL teachers and also syllabus designers is that an intercultural curriculum can enable learners to have a better understanding of the target materials.

Given the prevalence of COVID-19 pandemic and consequently the emergence of more online courses throughout the world, exploring teachers’ views about the shift from face-to-face to online environments seems significant. The objective of this study was thus twofold: (a) to investigate the roles EFL teachers take and (b) to determine competencies required to teach online English language courses. Mixed-methods research was conducted, and the participants were 100 MA students of TEFL at Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST). The required data were collected through administering two questionnaires, adapted by the researchers, on online teacher roles and competencies along with two open-ended questions. After carrying out descriptive statistics for the quantitative data and theme-based analysis for the qualitative ones, the results indicated that online teaching roles could be hierarchically ranked as pedagogical, professional, administrative, social, assessment, technological, and researcher. With regard to online teacher competencies, pedagogical, professional, and technological role competencies received the highest mean, while the researcher role competencies gained the lowest one. Pre-service EFL teachers held the view that having knowledge of technology and its use, knowledge of course/content, ability to sustain learners' motivation, online teaching skills, and ability to communicate were other competencies teachers require to fulfill their roles in online English language courses. The findings can provide more insights into how to redesign and map online teacher professional development courses to better prepare potential EFL teachers and boost their quality as online EFL teachers.

This study was conducted to examine the effect of asynchronous computer-mediated condition on L2 learners' speaking ability, speaking apprehension, L2 self-confidence, and willingness to communicate. The participants of this study included 40 intermediate undergraduate students of English language teaching at an Iranian university. The participants were assigned to two experimental (asynchronous computer-mediated) and control (face-to-face) conditions randomly. In the experimental group, the participants practiced speaking in an asynchronous online environment, and in the control group, the students spent a part of their class time accomplishing monologue tasks. Using questionnaires, the participants' speaking ability, speaking apprehension, L2 self-confidence, and willingness to communicate were measured at the beginning and at the end of the term. The findings showed that the monologue speaking ability mean score of those in the computer-mediated group improved significantly more than that of the face-to-face group. Another finding of this study was the superiority of the computer-mediated condition with regard to the participants' speaking self-confidence, speaking apprehension, and willingness to communicate. Overall, the results suggest that asynchronous computer-mediated condition can provide learners with a less-threatening condition that can improve the chances of their L2 monologue speaking ability.

This qualitative study aims to investigate the sources of burnout from Iranian EFL teachers’ perspectives. To this end, thirty-four Iranian male and female EFL teachers participated in the semi-structured interview to comment on the burnout sources and then rank them in terms of priority. Also, one hundred teachers responded to an online open-ended questionnaire. The coding scheme revealed two external and internal nodes, five themes, and fifteen subthemes. Under the external node lay financial, organizational, and teacher training problems. The internal node involved teachers’ psycho-affective traits and personal life affairs. The results showed that external sources outweighed the internal ones. Among the external sources, teachers’ low pay, the supervisor’s maltreatment, and workload, and among the internal ones, teachers’ low problem-solving abilities, low motivation and self-efficacy held high ranks. No one attributed burnout to teachers’ gender and age, and almost all participants unanimously criticized the educational administration system of Iran for not providing teachers with the necessary means of burnout recognition and prevention. The study has implications for educational policymakers and practitioners.

This study aimed at investigating the effect of reading-based vs. discussion-based pre-writing activities on the writing ability of Iranian EFL learners. To this end, a quasi-experimental study was conducted with 40 Iranian intermediate EFL learners within16 to 20 age range who were selected based on their performance on an Oxford Solution Proficiency Test. They were divided into two experimental groups: Reading Group and Discussion Group. The former group was made to involve in some reading activity prior to doing the main writing task, and the latter group was made to participate in a discussion activity before the main writing task. After the treatment for 10 sessions, both groups were post-tested. The pre-test and post-test involved free compositions, which were scored analytically. The findings indicated that both groups’ writing ability improved over the course of the study, but the difference between the performances of the groups on the post-test was not statistically significant, although the Reading group’s mean score was greater than the Discussion group. The results of this study have some implications for students, language teachers, syllabus designers and material developers.

This study aimed at investigating the effect of process-based and genre- based approaches to writing instruction on Iranian EFL learners’ writing performance across high and low creativity levels. The study followed a quasi-experimental design and it was conducted with a homogenous sample of 72 learners who were selected from an initial group of 90 participants from a private language institute in Urmia, Iran. Based on the results of an English proficiency test known as Oxford Placement Test and a test of creativity known as Abedi-Schumacher Creativity Test, the participants were assigned into four groups of 18. The treatment period lasted for 10 sessions including pretest and posttest sessions. The results of ANCOVA statistics showed that the type of instruction had statistically significant effect on the learners’ writing performance, with the higher performance of genre-based over the process-based writing instruction, while the level of creativity had no significant effect on the participants’ writing scores. Furthermore, a significant interaction was observed between instruction type and the learners’ creativity level. The findings of this study have pedagogical implications for teachers, syllabus designers, and practitioners to use appropriate instructional methods in ELT with special attention on learners’ creativity levels.

The present mixed-method study examines the effect of Iranian EFL teachers’ teaching experience and academic degree on five dimensions of reflective teaching. In this line, a 29-item Likert scale Reflective Teaching Questionnaire composed of practical, metacognitive, critical, cognitive, and affective dimensions was administered to a convenient sample of 142 male/female B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. EFL teachers with 4-30 years of teaching experience. Moreover, a semi-structured interview was conducted with 16 EFL teachers yielding more in-depth triangulated data on their reflection levels and the related problems. The MANOVA results indicated the significant effect of teachers’ experience and academic degree on their reflective teaching with the least effect reported on the affective dimension. The results indicated significant interaction of the two research variables with the dimensions of reflective teaching. Moreover, the interview results indicated that lack of time, prescribed syllabi, and ineffective teacher training programs were the main obstacles of reflective teaching. The findings may bear implications for Iranian curriculum developers, materials writers, teacher trainers, administrators, and EFL instructors.

The well-established affiliation of metadiscourse research tradition to the philosophy of ESP raises some inevitable expectations on how much and how well the concept has been geared to meet the practical necessities of academic writing pedagogy. In light of such an expectation, a corpus of 35 academic writing coursebooks published during the last three decades were evaluated in terms of the possible realizations of key resources of interaction in pedagogical tasks. Due to its theoretical rigor and analytically operationalized nature, Hyland’s model of metadiscourse (2005a) was taken as the guiding framework for the current evaluation. The quantitative findings emerging from the analysis of the corpus did not sound sufficiently promising, suggesting that that theoretical developments have not yet been ideally translated into pedagogical designs; however, the rich range of resources identified in the tasks (i.e. the fifty five categories emerging from the evaluation of the corpus) suggest that the rigorous tradition of research in metadiscourse has contributed to the effective operationalization of the concept for pedagogical objectives. It has been argued that through the effective introduction of the concept of metadiscourse into pedagogical designs and its appropriate operationalization, novice participants of academic/scientific discourse communities would be enabled to redefine the nature of academic communication and get rid of a large number of misconceptions which have become fossilized through long years of the dominance of a positivistic thinking.

In recent years, the personal characteristics and attitudes of teachers have attracted the attention of various scholars. The teacher’s immunity level is one of the newly proposed concepts in this area. The present study aimed at exploring the difference between the immunity level of the Iranian EFL teachers at language centers and public schools. In order to achieve this objective, one hundred EFL teachers teaching in public schools (N = 50) and language centers (N = 50), in Isfahan, were selected through convenience sampling to participate in this study. Then, the Teachers’ Immunity Level questionnaire was administered to them, and they were interviewed as well.  The obtained results revealed that teachers working in public schools have higher levels of immunity compared to the ones working in language centers. This finding can have some implications for the decision-makers in the Iranian Ministry of Education to provide adequate amenities to improve teachers’ immunity in language centers.

Formative Assessment plays a significant role in classrooms in understanding how students progress in their learning activities. The attitudes of teachers towards application of Alternative Assessment (AA) strategies in English language classroom are considered important as they can affect the teachers’ overall performance in the classroom. The aim of the current study was to examine EFL teachers’ perceptions regarding alternative assessment strategies and their relationship while correlated with teacher reflections and perceptions. In order to conduct this study, a mixed-methods design was adopted. The participants who attended the quantitative and qualitative phases were 81 students and 30 EFL teachers, respectively. In order to collect the research data, two research instruments were used: the teacher reflection questionnaire (Akbari et al., 2010) and the teachers’ perceptions of alternative assessment questionnaire (Elharrar, 2006). The Pearson correlation coefficient statistical test was run for the quantitative data, and the data of the qualitative nature was processed through content-analysis procedure. The findings from the qualitative data were presented using frequency and percentage. Further discussions were provided using the findings from the quantitative data analysis. The results from this phase of analysis illustrated that there was a significant positive relationship between EFL teachers’ reflection and their experience of implementing alternative assessment strategies. The findings of this study may render implications for EFL teachers, teacher trainers, and the assessment administrates.