Principals’ Leadership Styles and Strategies Employed to Motivate Teachers in Ronaki Hawler Educational Institutions, Erbil, Iraq

Effective management is one of the determining factors that play a critical role in teacher motivation. It is also the main factor behind a successful educational institution. Moreover, effective management is necessary to motivate people into action and propel an institution to reach its established objectives. In an educational institution, where managerial structure fails to function well, teachers obviously lose their motivation to teach as well as their commitment to the organization. Therefore, administrators’ leadership styles can affect teacher motivation which will eventually affect learners’ performance. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the administrators’ leadership styles, their awareness of teacher motivation peculiarities and strategies they use to motivate the teaching staff at Ronaki Educational Institutions in Erbil, Iraq. It further aims to investigate what makes an effective administrator. To achieve the research goal, the study firstly uses the theoretical analysis of the scientific and methodological literature on the research problem and makes use of a semi-structured interview with Ronaki Hawler Educational Institutions’ administrators. In the interview with 24 administrators, the information on organizational practices and their frequencies, employed by administrators, was obtained. It included elements such as; whether/how often advancement opportunities, promotion, autonomy, bonuses were granted to the teaching staff, what sort of responsibility they possessed, how their recognition as teachers was expressed, and how secure they felt their jobs were. The findings were analyzed and discussed in the discussion part of this research study

Pragmatic Competence as an Integral Part of EFL Teaching

In many recent studies teachers and other professional educators in EFL circles highlight the importance of teaching pragmatic competence as a vital part of language teaching curriculum. This probably was the result of generations of learners of English language who completed their studies in the foreign language with a relatively good general language proficiency but weaker skills to interpret the messages and intentions that are conveyed in conversations, correctly. This particular competence is referred to as pragmatic competence. This paper aims to overview most widely used techniques to teach pragmatic competence in an EFL classroom as well as provide theoretical background for the concept and closely related notions such as speech acts and politeness strategies

Classroom Management and School Science Labs: A Review of Literature on Classroom Management Strategies

Effective learning refers to the extent to which educational institutions are effective in achieving their educational objectives. Effective teaching/learning cannot simply happen in a classroom where teachers fail to manage classrooms effectively. Therefore, classroom management happens in a positive classroom environment where positive teacher-student rapport is established. As for science laboratory, learning in the labs has been long considered as a crucial part of science education. Effective management strategies not only in the classrooms, but also in science labs support and enhance effective teaching and learning. Classroom management in science labs is a standout amongst the most central roles played by teachers because it determines the achievements of students. Effective science teachers are the ones who understand the peculiarities of students’ behavior in science labs and use preventive and reactive classroom management strategies to prevent or react to problem behavior of students. Emphasizing the knowledge and the practice of classroom management strategies, this study will illuminate effective techniques for management in the classrooms and consider this from the perspective of teacher effectiveness, particularly in science labs, and consequently suggest some implications for practice

Teaching sociolinguistic competence in an EFL classroom.

In order to be considered fully proficient in the target language, an EFL learner needs to acquire the cultural aspect of the language as well, that is sociolinguistic competence. Otherwise, learners will be able to produce sentences that are grammatically correct but sound awkward, unnatural and inappropriate. Sociolinguistic competence is one of the main components of the broader concept of communicative competence and is directly relevant to foreign language teaching. This paper overviews some of the methods for teaching it to EFL learners

Assessment of EFL learners’ Sociolinguistic and Pragmatic Competence and Performance

Communicative competence has been a fundamental issue for foreign/second language teaching methodology and a cornerstone of language classrooms for about four decades. Its two essential components - sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences, though ubiquitously acknowledged as crucial for language teaching/learning, are not adequately, according to modern methodological requirements, taught and learned. The present article aimed to succinctly review the main aspects of the two competences as presented by linguists and educators, to draw a line between language performance and competence, to revisit the major forms of testing and assessing language learners’ sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences, corresponding performance and oral proficiency. It was intended to test sociolinguistic and pragmatic knowledge and performance of L2 learners; to assess the learners’ overall oral proficiency in the target language and to compare the results of the two above procedures. The aim of the undertaking was to define what relationship exists between the three tested and assessed phenomena, i.e., whether or not acquiring the competence in the target language entails performance and enhances learners’ fluency. Implementing all the tasks scheduled enabled the researcher to elicit the necessary data and to draw conclusions concerning the interdependence between language competence and performance/proficiency; to suggest recommendations for refinement of L2 learner evaluation practice, for improving language programs in terms of teaching/ learning communicative competence and its components and for better understanding of cognitive processes which take place in L2 learners when dealing with performance and competence in the target language