Journal of Language Horizons
Volume:8 Issue: 2, Summer 2024

This mixed-methods study, adopting a sequential explanatory design, aimed to (a) investigate the effect of situation comedies (sitcoms) on Iranian EFL learners’ critical reasoning as well as action and (b) explore learners’ attitudes about the way sitcoms could influence their critical reasoning and action. In this mixed-methods study, sixty learners were randomly selected and assigned to a control and an experimental group. While the control group participated in regular classes, the experimental group watched sitcoms. Before and after the treatment, the Persian version of the California Critical Thinking Skills Test, Form B (CCTST) (Khalili & Hossein Zadeh, 2003) was utilized to measure participants’ reasoning skills.  To assess critical action, the Activism Orientation Scale (Corning & Myers, 2002) was used. Quantitative data were analyzed using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). Some of the participants in the experimental group were interviewed about the way sitcoms affected their criticality. Qualitative data were analyzed using content analysis. The result of ANCOVA tests showed a significant difference between the two groups regarding their criticality. In support of quantitative results, the analysis of the interviews confirmed the effectiveness of sitcoms in improving learners’ criticality. Qualitative findings showed that sitcoms enhanced learners’ critical reasoning through inference and evaluation and raised their awareness of social issues and their eagerness to participate in life-changing activities. Integrating findings from the two phases confirmed that sitcoms increased learners’ awareness of the world and deepened their understanding of diversities.

This study was an attempt to investigate the effect of choice theory-based instruction and clinical supervision for EFL teachers on their students’ autonomy and reading comprehension. To this end, a sample of 30 Iranian EFL teachers, selected based on their willingness to participate, were divided into two groups of 15: one group participated in a choice theory-based instruction program while the other underwent a clinical supervision program. In addition to the teachers, a sample of 445 intermediate EFL learners taught by the teachers participated in the study – 225 learners were taught by the teachers who underwent the choice theory-based instruction while the other 220 learners sat in the classes of the teachers undergoing clinical supervision. The Learner Autonomy Questionnaire (LAQ) was used both as a pretest and posttest to measure the autonomy of the 445 learners before and after they were taught by the 30 teachers. In addition, a sample Preliminary English Test reading paper was administered to the learners prior to their classes (i.e., a general English class instructed through a commonplace task-based procedure) as a pretest and they also took another sample reading test as the posttest. The inferential statistics run in this study comprised two ANCOVAs with the results revealing that the learners being taught by the teachers who underwent the choice theory-based instruction outperformed the learners taught by those teachers who participated in the clinical supervision program in terms of both their autonomy and reading comprehension. The pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed in this paper

This study investigated the interrelationship among EFL learners' goal orientations, willingness to communicate (WTC), listening anxiety, and listening comprehension. Two-hundred participants, selected through convenience sampling procedure from private language institutes, completed the following questionnaires: Goal Orientation Questionnaire section of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Pintrich et al., 1991), WTC Questionnaire (Cao & Philip, 2006), and Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale (Kim, 2000). The listening section of the IELTS exam was also utilized for measuring the participants’ listening comprehension ability. First, a hypothesized model was tested through the AMOS program. The results revealed that all the variables in the study were positively correlated with L2 listening comprehension except for L2 listening anxiety and performance goal orientation, which were negatively correlated with L2 listening comprehension. Moreover, it was found that mastery goal orientation was the strongest predictor of the dependent variable. Then, the revised model for the interrelationship among the variables was presented. The results showed that both psychological and cognitive variables could have crucial roles in EFL learners’ success in learning listening comprehension ability. The implications of the study are discussed in the text.

Despite the abundance of research on the link between teachers’ beliefs and practices, little research has been conducted investigating the relationship between the beliefs of teachers with specific individual attributes and corrective feedback practices. Thus, this study aims to investigate whether growth mindset teachers’ oral corrective feedback (OCF, henceforth) practices are aligned with their beliefs. Eight in-service growth mindset EFL teachers participated in the study. Having collected the data via two questionnaires and a set of classroom observations, MAXQDA software was used to code and quantify the data. The findings showed that growth mindset teachers’ OCF beliefs and their actual OCF practices were aligned in terms of OCF timing. Regarding OCF types, female teachers’ practices were aligned with their beliefs, but male teachers’ beliefs were more incongruent with their practices. Teachers’ beliefs and practices, however, were inconsistent regarding OCF amount and frequency, which can be due to contextual factors, such as occasional time limit. The implications and suggestions for further research are suggested.

In recent years, online education has become a significant part of teachers’ professional career. Moreover, it has been argued that contexts of teaching are significantly influential in EAP teachers’ practices and identities. Despite these points, little research has examined EAP teachers’ identity construction in online contexts. The present study addressed this gap by exploring the impacts of online education on 20 Iranian EAP teachers’ identity construction. The participants were interviewed and thematic analysis was run to analyze the data. The findings revealed that online education influenced the teachers’ personal, pedagogical, and social identities. More specifically, it was found that the teachers could reconstruct their identities in light of the challenges and affordances of online teaching and adopt new identities that featured concerns with both their EAP and educator responsibilities. These findings are then discussed and implications for teacher educators are offered so that they could help EAP teachers construct their identities in online settings effectively.

Despite the importance of the perception behind teachers' feedback, it is astonishing to note that there are not many studies regarding how teachers provide feedback. Drawing upon Ellis’ (2009) typology of written Corrective Feedback (CF), this study explored the most common feedback types provided by EFL teachers. Moreover, the study aimed at finding out whether teachers’ teaching experience and learners’ proficiency level had any bearing on the type of feedback the teachers provided. Eleven teachers provided feedback on 301 descriptive essays written by EFL students in English. The findings revealed that teachers mostly tended to employ direct CF to correct their students’ linguistic errors. This was followed by indirect CF and metalinguistic CF, respectively. It came to light that focused CF, electronic feedback, and reformulation had no popularity among Iranian EFL teachers. The experienced teachers opted more for indirect feedback while the inexperienced ones preferred direct feedback.  Teachers were more inclined to provide intermediate students with direct CF whereas they provided more indirect CF to the upper intermediate students. The results suggest that not all teachers’ perceptions about feedback can necessarily be rendered into classroom practices and various factors, including culture, society, learners and teachers themselves impact teachers’ beliefs and practices.