DEMYSTIFYING STUDENT-UNIVERSITY IDENTIFICATION AMONG VIRTUAL TEFL CANDIDATES: THE CASE OF IRAN

Student-University Identification (SUI) of virtual students in higher education is one area of identity that receives less attention. This study aimed to explore the SUI of a purposive sample of five virtual students studying Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) at the Ph.D. level in Iran. Investigating SUI in higher education among virtual TEFL Ph.D. candidates potentially contributes to demystifying a complex relationship of factors, such as cultural experiences, linguistic backgrounds, and online environment challenges. Using phenomenology, the study investigated the identities of the participants by thematically analyzing semi-structured interview data. The findings revealed the participants’ various ways of identifying with a university, the subsequent consequences of identification, and the obstacles preventing them to develop SUI. The findings indicated that several factors at play are unique to doctoral candidates. The faculty prestige, research-based concerns, and nature of online media were identified to be crucial aspects of SUI for the TEFL Ph.D. students. Universities are thus advised to provide appropriate direction for virtual candidates. The study also found that some students perceived a lack of competence in TEFL, which, in turn, acted as a barrier to their SUI. To alleviate this problem, further research needs to identify what is lacking in teacher education university programs and what initiatives are required to improve TEFL students’ professional development and help them become confident English teachers

Probing into EFL Teachers’ Assessment Literacy and Teaching Experience: The Case of Native ESL and Non-native EFL Teachers

The present study was an attempt to extend our knowledge on the perspectives of English language native and non-native teachers about assessment literacy. Furthermore, it was intended to find if there was any significant relationship between native and non-native English language teachers’ perceptions regarding assessment literacy and their experience. To achieve such goals, a mixed methods design was utilized. In the quantitative phase, Classroom Assessment Literacy Inventory developed by Campbell and Mertler (2004) was utilized which consisted of five scenarios. Through a combination of availability sampling and snowball sampling procedures, the researcher either distributed the questionnaire among 100 native and non-native English teachers or sent it by E-mail to them. In the qualitative phase, a semi-structured interview was selected as a qualitative tool for collecting data. To this end, 10 teachers volunteered to take part. Based on the quantitative findings, there was a positive relationship between native English language teachers’ perceptions regarding assessment literacy and their experience. However, there was not any significant relationship between non-native English language teachers’ perceptions regarding assessment literacy and their experience. Based on the qualitative results, seven codes were classified according to three themes, namely, assessment assumptions, assessment targets, and professional development. These seven codes were classroom observations, assessment consistency, formative assessments, summative assessment, higher-order thinking skills, lack of assessment literacy of coursework, and lack of technology assessment literacy. Thus, it is concluded that teachers should assume the role of classroom observation and consistency of the assessment as two major assumptions of assessment

An Investigation of Assessment Literacy Among Native and Non-Native English Teachers

The current study aimed at examining the relationship between English language teachers’ assessment literacy and their teaching experience. In other words, it intended to inspect the relationship between native and non-native English language teachers’ assessment literacy and their teaching experience. To achieve such goals, 100 native and non-native English teachers from ESL and EFL contexts were picked out on the basis of a combination of availability sampling and snowball sampling procedures. They were asked to take part in the study by filling out Classroom Assessment Literacy Inventory developed by Cynthia Campbell and Craig Mertler (2004). The results revealed that there was a positive relationship between native English language teachers’ perspectives regarding assessment literacy and their experience. Besides, 32 percent of shared variances between native teachers’ perspectives regarding assessment literacy and their experiences. However, there was not any significant relationship between non-native English language teachers’ perspectives regarding assessment literacy and their experience.Keywords: Assessment Literacy, Native Teachers, Non- Native Teachers, Teaching Experienc

Pragmatic Competence Development: Demystifying the Impact of Task Types and EFL Students' Perceptions

Interlanguage pragmatics, as an inseparable part of communicative competence, has been emphasized as an ultimate objective in language learning. This study explored the perceptions of Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) students regarding interlanguage pragmatics and the impact of textbooks tasks on shaping their pragmatic competence. To accomplish this objective, 137 senior EFL students from 12 state universities, ranging from 23 to 28 years, were selected based on convenience sampling procedures. The researcher utilized teachers' perception questionnaires, first used by Jandt (2011), to investigate the students' perceptions. A semi-structured interview as well as a document analysis of the university English textbooks were applied. Moreover, thematic analysis was carried out regarding the interview. Themes were identified for meaningful interpretations based on a document analysis to investigate if they were either linguistically or pragmatically oriented. Results from quantitative analysis revealed that university English students specified a perception that pragmatic knowledge is as imperative as linguistic knowledge. Besides, by analyzing the qualitative data via the participants’ interviews, the researcher extracted three codes, including the inadequacy or the quantity of pragmatic information, the suitability or the quality of pragmatic information, and also cross-cultural diversities. Moreover, students acknowledged that meta-pragmatic information is lacking in ELT textbooks, and the textbooks provide learners with more linguistic resources. The findings of the study suggest that university English teachers need to provide more pragmatic knowledge and design more pragmatically oriented tasks for students in their classroom teaching to help students become pragmatically competent

Incorporating Cognitive Linguistic Insights into Classrooms: The Case of Iranian Learners' Acquisition of If-Clauses

Abstract Cognitive linguistics gives the most inclusive, consistent descriptions of how language is organized, used and learned. Cognitive linguistics contains a great number of concepts that are useful to second language learners. If-clauses in English, on the other hand, remain intriguing for foreign language learners to struggle with, due to their intrinsic intricacies. EFL grammar books are paying focal attention to present explanations of if-clauses in terms of their form not meaning; hence, not giving attention to their contextual meaning usage. Cognitive linguistic insights on if-clauses discuss their complexity in such a way that they could be very beneficial for L2 learners. This study aims to investigate the effect of two different ways of teaching (cognitively-oriented and task-oriented) on learning English if-clauses. A sample of 60 non-English postgraduate students in three groups, two experimental groups (cognitivelyoriented and task-oriented) and one control group participated in the study. The results indicated that participants from the cognitively-oriented group performed better than those in task-oriented and control groups and proved a higher degree of comprehending English if-clauses in different contexts. The findings have implications for curriculum and materials developers, as well as the English language teachers in incorporating insights from cognitive linguistics in second language materials

Impoliteness in Twitter Discourse: a Case Study of Replies to Donald Trump and Greta Thunberg

Twitter (X) is a popular social media platform that allows users to express their opinions and interact on various topics, including politics. However, Twitter can provide a space for impolite and aggressive language use, especially when the issues are controversial or polarizing. This study analyzes the replies to two controversial and similar tweets, namely Donald Trump’s tweet to Greta Thunberg and Greta Thunberg’s tweet to Donald Trump. Ninety-seven tweets that impolitely took issue with the original tweets were collected and coded for their moral order themes and pragmatic functions. Culpeper’s (2011) impoliteness framework was consulted as a threshold to include or exclude reply tweets in the data analysis. The results show that the replies invoked moral order expectations in three overarching categories in the responses to both parties: age-appropriate behavior, respect and manners, and concern for the common good. As far as the pragmatic functions were concerned, criticism of personal characteristics, criticism of supporters, criticism of relatives (to Trump only), praise of the opposing party, directing, mockery, and ideology denial (to Thunberg only) were performed. The study discusses how users took offense through language in a highly polarized political context

The Impact of Traditional vs. E-learning In-service Programs on EFL Teachers’ Educational Empowerment

Language teaching and language training are integral parts of the educational curriculum in every language centers around the world. Offices, companies, and educational centers should update themselves to keep the current progression and try to help their employees to refresh their minds based on educational development. Hence, this study explored the effectiveness of different in-service training programs on EFL teachers' empowerment concerning two factors: self-efficacy and innovation and creativity held in Khuzestan- Iran. To this end, 30 EFL teachers were selected through convenient sampling related to their experiences in each of the programs- E-learning, Class-based, and Blended ones. The participants were divided into three groups of 10 – Class-based, group A., E-learning, group B., and the experiences of the two classes (A & B), group C.  An interview with 8 open-ended questions was conducted. First, all interviews were transcribed, summarized, categorized, and analyzed. Then, the derived themes were coded and analyzed through content analysis. The findings uncovered that about 80% of the participants leaned to participate in Traditional in-service class (class-based) since it had a great impact on teachers to develop and fortify their educational empowerment. Therefore, policymakers and educational centers should raise their awareness on the notion of teachers' empowerment while emphasizing on, at least, Traditional programs instead of the current E-learning and the blended ones

Demystifying Problems and Opportunities of the Persianophone Physical Education Ph.D. Academic Writers in Writing English Research Article Abstracts for International Journal Publication

Writing effective and persuasive manuscripts for submission to the high-indexed Iranian and international English-medium journals for the purpose of publication deserves having to-the-point knowledge and proficiency, which the Non-Native English writers of the non-English speaking countries seem to be lacking. Therefore, researchers need to identify problems and challenges that the group of writers encounter in the field of English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP). Therefore, this study aims to identify the ERPP needs of the Physical Education Ph.D. students and writers. Hence, interviews were conducted with a group of Physical Education content experts and Ph.D. students to identify the writers’ problems and challenges. The interviews were tape recorded as the participants had already been informed of the recordings and research aim. The tape recordings were then transcribed and analyzed in the thematic analysis and the grounded theory methods. The data analysis came up with four major themes (gained in the selective coding stage), 20 sub-themes (gained in the axial coding stage) and 83 themes (gained in the initial/open coding stage). The four major themes were `problem with language,’ `problem with content,’ `problem with journals,’ and `the demotivating factors.’ The fourth major theme, i.e., `the demotivating factors’, consisted of the sub-heading the technological illiteracy problem, which should be regarded as the novelty feature of this paper. The research is useful for material designers and instructors of the English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) and others to offer tailor-made education to the tertiary level Physical Education students

Nurturing multiculturalism in Iranian EFL teacher education: an in-depth scrutiny of experts’ and teachers’ perceptions

Abstract Given that Iran is the host of a variety of cultures characterized with diverse languages, viewpoints, and customs, the empty place of multiculturalism in its ELT system is deeply felt. The present study sought to tackle multiculturalism in EFL teacher education in the context of Iran by exploring Iranian EFL experts’ and teachers’ perceptions. The participants of this study consisted of the two groups. The first group included 15 male and female multicultural education experts. The second group of the participants included of 60 (30 males and 30 females) Iranian EFL teachers. To collect the required data, a demographic information scale, two semi-structured interviews and an audio-reflective journal were used. Data analysis was done via qualitative thematic analysis by MAXQDA. As revealed by the results, several themes were extracted as the components of the multicultural EFL teacher education, as uncovered by the experts’ views some of which include Eliminating Race-Related Inequalities, Eliminating Gender-Related Inequalities, and Eliminating Social Class-Related Inequalities. Moreover, the Necessary Communicative Skills, Positive Thinking, Difference Acceptance, and Multicultural Content, Various Evaluation Methods were found as some of the extracted EFL teachers’ perceptions of multicultural EFL teacher education. The findings have some implications for different groups of stakeholders including EFL teachers, teacher educators and teacher education material developers who can take useful insights from the findings in teaching EFL, educating student-teachers and developing future curricula, respectively