Journal of Language Horizons
Volume:7 Issue: 4, Winter 2024

The present case study reports on an innovative teacher training course with 14 Iranian senior undergraduate student teachers majoring in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). The course was developed after a Competency Based Teacher Education theory (CBTE) to assess student teachers’ practicums via three sources (i.e. self, peer-group and teacher educator) and based on the Teacher Observation Instrument (TOI). The aim was primarily to see if there was congruence among the three sources in assessing student teachers’ performance and secondly to know what the attitude of the course participants was towards the course and three modes of assessment. Pearson Correlation showed peer group assessment relatively congruent with both teacher educator assessment and self-assessment. The results from semi-structured interviews with student teachers showed that they favored peer group and teacher educator assessment more than self-assessment and that the course made them teach more reflectively.

The current study aimed to explore the generic organization of research article (RA) abstracts published in the Iranian local and international history journals. To this end, a corpus of 80 RA abstracts (40 local and 40 international) were scrutinized in terms of their constituent moves based on Hyland’s (2000) five-move model. Additionally, the study examined the interactional metadiscourse markers across various local and international abstract moves, using Hyland’s (2005) interpersonal metadiscourse model. The results of the genre analysis revealed a high frequency of introduction and purpose moves in local abstracts, as well as introduction, purpose, and product moves in the international corpus. The analysis of interactional metadiscourse markers revealed that boosters were the most frequently occurring category in the two groups of abstracts. Nevertheless, hedges were more frequently used by the local authors while the international researchers made a higher use of self-mentions. The results revealed the informed subjectivity and venue-based patterns of interaction at the service of presenting a persuasive account of the research objectives and outcomes in the field of history. The findings have pedagogical implications for EAP courses that aim to equip novice members of the history discourse community with the tools necessary to adhere to generic and interactional conventions.

This study reports on an extended learner needs analysis carried out at different stages of course progress in the undergraduate course of Consecutive Interpreting. The participants were 32 undergraduate translation students. Two questionnaires were used to identify the initial- and final-stage lacks and wants, and learners’ reflective diaries served as a tool to gain ongoing insight into their lacks. At each stage, after the identification of lacks and/or wants, the required adaptations were decided on and implemented, and their effect was traced on learners’ views. The ongoing lacks were mainly related to L2 listening comprehension and note-taking from L2. The final stage investigation of the lacks revealed that although the majority of the learners reported progress in note-taking, listening comprehension, and consecutive interpreting, almost half of them did not feel confident to be active members in class. Moreover, the investigation of wants revealed that a high percentage of the learners believed the class materials and activities were effective regarding their progress. However, activities in which interaction and cooperation were essential were least preferred. This together with the final-stage investigation of lacks revealed that the course curriculum needed to work more toward creating a non-threatening atmosphere for interaction. Although the study was conducted in a specific setting, it bears implications for different settings since it is a practical example of how an extended needs analysis could be done. Besides, the nature of the problems the learners reported and the measures taken to address them could be very similar in other contexts.

Discourse is monitored through the employment of discourse markers in the process of human communication. The present article investigated two translations of the most frequent, complex, and ambiguous Qur’anic discourse marker wa into the Persian language. Two theories of coherence and translation spotting shaped the foundation of this research. Two Persian translations were selected based on purposive sampling. The analysis of the Persian parallel corpora revealed that the translation of this elaborative discourse marker was performed innovatively and dynamically by resorting to four categories of contrastive, elaborative, temporal, and inferential discourse markers and their various combinations. The creative, flexible, and dynamic approach observed in the analysis of the parallel corpora indicated that translation is complex pragmatic, culture-based, and discourse-oriented phenomenon. It is a dynamic discourse construction system underpinned by the invocation of different theoretical perspectives in discourse and the pragmatic enrichment of linguistic elements between languages, cultures, and discourses. As these creative and flexible approaches applied by translators are not put into practice in the areas of lexicography, curriculum development, and other areas of translation education, researchers, teachers, and other authorities are recommended to revise their approaches based on research findings and the relevant implications arising from parallel data analyses.

Motivational development can no longer be considered as the stable phenomenon as it was considered in the past. It is now an element of individual difference which is constantly influenced by contextual factors. This study applied a dynamic system perspective and drew upon Dörnyei’s (2005) L2 Motivational Self-System to examine both male and female Iranian EFL learners’ motivational and behavioral variability over time with different levels of proficiency. To this end, 590 beginner to upper intermediate male and female students completed the Motivational Factors Questionnaire at one-month intervals during the semester. The results indicated that the students’ motivation could possibly be explored under dynamic systems’ principles. The findings demonstrated how students’ motivation changed over time and how it could be predicted in a moderately stable manner. The outcomes also showed that students’ motivational and behavioral developments were mediated by their proficiency levels and gender. Implications and directions for further research were also stated.

Reducing anxiety in foreign language learning has long been a concern for many teachers. This study focused on exploring the effects of three dynamic assessment models on L2 speaking and listening anxiety. The participants were 120 pre-intermediate Iranian learners of English at a language institute in Qazvin, Iran. The learners were randomly assigned to four groups (three experimental groups and one control group). Before the treatment, the students’ homogeneity was checked using Oxford Placement Test (OPT). Then, all the groups were given listening and speaking anxiety questionnaires as pretests. During 10 sessions, the first group received listening and speaking instruction using Buddof’s Learning Potential Measurement Approach (LPM); the second group was treated with Guthke’s Lerntest Approach; the third group was treated with Testing-the-Limits Approach.  Lastly, the control group was taught conventionally in a teacher-fronted way.  The same questionnaires were given to the participants in the twelfth session as posttests. Data were analyzed using two one-way analysis of covariance procedures. Significant differences were found among the groups’ listening and speaking anxiety mean scores on the posttests after controlling for the initial differences. Those experimental groups that received testing-the-limits and Lerntest approaches had a lower level of listening and speaking anxiety on the posttest. It was concluded that employing dynamic assessment models can decrease speaking and listening anxiety among EFL learners and enhance their productivity. The findings can have important implications for students, teachers and materials designers.