Iranian Journal of Applied Linguistics
Volume:24 Issue: 2, Sep 2021

With the rapid growth of online education, many language teachers are seeking to gain the necessary skills and knowledge to teach English language courses online. This study investigates the effectiveness of an online training program designed to enhance the pedagogical competencies of teacher trainees in online environments. A qualitative approach was adopted, and four experienced teacher trainers and 25 student-teachers who participated in the program during different semesters were selected as participants for in-depth, semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal that while both trainers and student-teachers expressed some level of satisfaction with the program's quality, some areas required improvement. The program's strengths included its well-organized course structure, comprehensive training on online platforms, and effective development of online teaching materials. However, participants reported a lack of training on different teaching methods, writing skill, and adequate real teaching practice for future online teachers. These results have significant implications for online teacher training programs in general. Although the online format has numerous advantages, it also poses particular challenges for teacher education. To better prepare teachers for the unique demands of online teaching, future online language teacher training programs should address these challenges. The insights gained from this study can inform the development of more effective online training programs and contribute to the advancement of online educational policies and reforms.

Supervising teachers, as a basic component of an  educational plan,  has positive effects on teachers’ classroom behaviors. Following the tenets of  Sociocultural theory of mind, this qualitative  study  delvd into  the perception of EFL teachers regarding their worldviews of what supervision is and what it must be like. For this purpose, 25 participants (10 supervisors,10 in-service teachers, and 5 pre-service teachers) were recruited and interviewed. Their responses to a semi-structured interview were recorded by mobile phone, transcribed, and then translated into English for ease of interpretation. To analyze the data, thematic analysis was used. The emerged themes showed that the participants preferred supervision with feedback which is constructive, timely, with effective solution in challenging situations, effective in identifying tecaher’s strengths and weaknesses, suggestive and non-judgemental. They also believed that supervision must be with no imposition, with prior notice, with a checklist, in a relaxed atmosphere, with a competent supervisor and without supervisor presence.  Criticizing the running model of supervision, they believed that the feedback offered is judgemental and inappropriate, offers no solution to the problems, and has no purpose for improvement.  Finally, some valuable implications for TTC holders, supervisors, and on-the-job mentors, and also several recommendations for further research are presented.

Authorial identity is a notion refers to the way an author expresses their sense of self, employs their agency, and develops their academic discourse. Following a transformative mixed-method design, and by adopting Fairclough's (1992) Discourse as Text, Interaction, and Context framework, authorial identity option was investigated among university students. To this end, 540 essays written by university students were examined in terms of identity-related factors, i.e. social factors", "agency", "knowledge & discourses", "gender", "group", "education", as well as "disciplinary group" and "presentation or non-presentation of authorial identity". The results of the study showed that authorial identity is a complex process restructured through the process of negotiation with various individual, discoursal, sociocultural, and demographic characteristics. It was concluded that those identity-related factors may develop individuals to consider self-legitimacy in employing authorial identity, though it is also rooted in epistemological preferences of their disciplines.

New generation of English textbooks, Vision Series, has been introduced and taught in Iranian high schools since 2017. This study aimed to scrutinize the correspondence between the recommendations suggested in the English teachers’ guides (TGs) of Vision Series and the actual teaching practices of Iranian high school English teachers. It follows a descriptive and correlational design, enjoying both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Participants of the present study included three groups: English teachers, high school students, and supervisors of English teachers in Iranian Ministry of Education. A total number of 100 high school English teachers, teaching in Sistan and Balouchestan Province, filled out a researcher-made piloted questionnaire. Out of them, 3 male and 3 female English teachers were later invited for an oral semi-structured interview. The second group of participants were 48 high school students. The last group of participants were 2 supervisors of English teachers in Iranian Ministry of Education. The researchers also participated in and observed two female teachers' English classes. By and large, the results of supervisors’ interviews and class observations were negative about the correspondence between actual teaching of Vision Series and recommendations of TG for most sections of the book. By contrast, the results of teachers' and students' questionnaires demonstrated that English teachers' teaching was perceived to be consistent with the recommendations of TG in more than half of the cases. The interviews with teachers indicated that half of the interviewees believed that they followed the suggestions of the TG. The implications of findings, especially for English teachers, are also discussed.

Considering globalization, advertisement translation has turned into an important issue in the field of translation studies, yet it is a rather difficult and challenging job for translators to overcome cultural, social, and ideological differences present in advertisements. With regards to this fact, the present study is designed with the aim of investigating advertisement translation from the perspective of Relevance Theory, an uprising pragmatic theory that provides a unified account of translation. For this purpose, a sample of 10 English advertising slogans, along with their Persian translations were selected from among the slogans available on the Internet. The collected sample was analyzed critically on the grounds of Relevance Theory’s concepts and principles, proposed by Sperber and Wilson (1995). In the process of analyzing the data, Gutt’s (2000) theory of translation, which is based on the application of Relevance Theory to translation, was also brought into focus. Hence, the translators’ choices were justified based on the main tenets of Relevance Theory, and it was observed that in most of the examples, the translations adhered to the principles of Relevance Theory; in Gutt’s terms, the translated slogans interpretively resembled the originals. So, most of the translations were successful advertisements in appealing to the target audience. The findings of the present study gave evidence for the fact that Relevance Theory can be an appropriate approach for evaluating translations, especially in the realm of advertisement translation.

To explore the characteristics of the items of the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) MA Admission Test (henceforth TMAAT) as a high-stakes test in Iran, the current research utilized a three-parameter logistic Item Response Theory (IRT) calibration of the test items. The three-parameter logistic IRT model is the most comprehensive among the three models of IRT for it takes into account all the three effective parameters of item difficulty, item discrimination, and guessing simultaneously. The data were a random selection of 1000 TMAAT candidates taking the test in 2020 collected from Iran’s National Organization of Educational Testing (NOET). The software used to analyze the data was jMetrik (Version 4.1.1), which is the newest version so far. As the results indicated, the TMAAT worked well in discriminating the higher and lower ability candidates and preventing the candidates from guessing the responses by chance, but it was not much acceptable regarding the difficulty level of the items as the items were far too difficult for the test-takers. The most important beneficiaries of the present investigation are test developers, testing experts, and policy-makers in Iran since they are responsible to improve the quality of the items in such a high-stakes test.