The Effects of Professional Development Initiatives on EFL Teachers’ Degree of Self Efficacy

Despite the importance of teacher efficacy, there has been little research on the effects of interventions intended to increase it. Thus, the present study considered the potential of Professional Development (PD) in enhancing teachers’ beliefs about their teaching ability. The study was quantitative in nature and utilized the reliable survey instrument known as “Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale”. Two groups of English as a Foreign language EFL teachers (an experimental group and a convenience sample of control teachers) were surveyed in the study in a Pre-test Post-test (and delayed Post-test) Control Group Design. After administering a Pre-test on self-efficacy which indicated no significant difference between the two groups, the treatment teachers received three 16-session courses during which they were provided with opportunities for PD using five PD models including In-service Training, Fellow Observation/Assessment, Development/Improvement Process, Mentoring, and Study Groups. The two groups were then compared on the post- and delayed post-tests which showed that the treatment teachers obtained significantly higher efficacy scores than the control group of teachers

Communication Strategies in the Written Medium: The Effect of Language Proficiency

Although much has been written on 'communication strategies' (CS), in the sense of potentially conscious plans for solving problems encountered in reaching particular communicative goals, there still remain large gaps in our knowledge in this respect. One area worthy of attention, and not totally clarified, is whether these strategies are applied and workable in writing as frequently as they are in speaking tasks. Accordingly, the present study aimed at pitting the use of CS against language proficiency level in argumentative writing of Iranian university students. The results of the Chi-Square tests run for the purpose of investigating the hypotheses showed that language proficiency was highly related with the use of more Reconceptualization Strategies which are thought to be psycho linguistically more demanding compared with Substitution Strategies