Content Analysis of Iranian High School English Textbooks in terms of Politeness Markers, Speech Acts, and Language Functions

Considering the indispensable role pragmatic knowledge plays in not only comprehending L2 materials, but also in making and maintaining proper communication, and the fact that Iranian EFL learners are primarily exposed to the target language through textbooks, this research intended to discern how frequently and appropriately Politeness Markers (PMs), Speech Acts (SAs), and Language Functions (LFs) are being incorporated in newly-published Iranian high school English textbooks: Prospect and Vision Series. Furthermore, the study set out to investigate the possible relations between the level of the textbooks and the frequency of pragmatic components being included. To this end, 172 conversations of the aforementioned textbooks were thoroughly analyzed to determine the frequency of the PMs based on House and Kasper (1981) taxonomy, the frequency of SAs based on Searle's (1979) paradigm, and the frequency of LFs according to Halliday’s (1978) framework. Findings revealed that Committers were the most frequently-used PMs, Representatives and Directives were the most commonly-used SAs, and Informatives enjoyed the highest frequency among LFs. The results also indicated that these pragmatic components were not equally distributed throughout the conversations and no significant relationship existed between level of the textbooks and frequency of the pragmatic elements. In addition to the consciousness-raising dimension of the study, material developers might be able to appropriately represent and include pragmatic information into their materials. Moreover, teachers might also be able to amend and modify their adopted approaches to foreign language teaching and adjust them to accommodate potential learner styles and their preferences

Co-Teaching in an EFL Writing Class: A Mixed-Methods Probe into its Effects and Students' Perceptions

Recently, co-teaching has been employed as an instructional technique to accelerate and facilitate second or foreign language learning process. This study was set up to investigate the effectiveness of co-teaching on EFL students' writing ability and also to probe into their attitudes towards co-teaching. Two male Iranian EFL teachers with the same language experience and academic degree represented the writing co-teachers. Furthermore, two available classes of 20 students were utilized. Oxford Placement Test was first used to ensure the homogeneity of the participants in terms of language proficiency. Second, a writing pretest was run to assess the participants’ writing ability prior to the implantation of co-teaching. Third, the experimental group went through an eight-week instructional period with the two writing instructors while the control group was taught with a single teacher. Fourth, a writing posttest was administered to see how different the two groups were regarding their written performances. Finally, a semi-structured interview was also conducted to delve into the students’ overall attitudes towards the effectiveness of co-teaching. Regarding the qualitative phase, the researchers conducted the interviews and then transcribed them. Independent samples t-test results indicated that the experimental group outperformed their counterparts in the control group with regard to their written performances and participants in the experimental group held positive attitudes toward co-teaching. It behooves the stakeholders to delve into the potential pluses and minuses of co-instruction and determine how effective it can be for their intended audience under various pedagogic settings

Exploring the Relationship among EFL Teachers’ Critical Thinking, Autonomy and Experience in Public and Private Schools

The research delved into the connection between English Language instructors’ critical thinking, autonomy, and teaching experience among some public and private instructors. Two different sets of instructors including some private institute and high school instructors were selected from two major cities in Khorasan Razavi, Iran. The results from Path Analysis indicated that all subcomponents of instructors’ thinking critically except deduction could significantly predict instructors’ independence. Moreover, experience more effectively and remarkably predicted their independence. Accordingly, from among the five subcomponents of instructors’ CT, four sub-constituents were predicated by experience. Nevertheless, assessment and evaluation could not be properly predicted by experience. Findings also indicated that thinking critically could rightly and moderately be related to autonomy whereas there was a positively weak association between thinking critically and experience. Accordingly, findings pointed to a sizeable distinction between the two EFL settings regarding instructors’ autonomous behavior with non-public EFL instructors being more self-sufficient, selfdirected, and self-reliant than their counterparts in public high schools. In the same vein, there was no substantial distinction between the two settings concerning thinking critically

Willingness to Communicate, Learner Subjectivity, Anxiety, and EFL Learners' Pragmatic Competence

: Individual learner differences play an integral role in second language acquisition and interested researchers and practitioners cannot get a full appreciation of second language learning if they ignore these significant variables. This study investigated how willingness to communicate (WTC), learner subjectivity, and anxiety in learning the L2 correlate with Iranian students’ English pragmatic knowledge. To this end, a total of 140 participants received instruction on request strategy types and their internal and external modification devices for seven weeks through consciousness-raising tasks. The data were obtained through WTC questionnaire, learner subjectivity questionnaire, foreign language classroom anxiety scale, and discourse completion test. The findings indicated that WTC and learner subjectivity correlated positively with the participants’ L2 pragmatic competence. However, no relationship was observed between the learners’ anxiety and their pragmatic achievement. The results suggest that some personal characteristics such as WTC and learner subjectivity are significant contributors to success in acquiring L2 pragmatic knowledge. چکیده: تفاوت های فردی زبان آموزان نقش غیر قابل انکاری در یادگیری زبان دوم ایفا میکنند و محققان علاقه مند نخواهند توانست به درک کامل و درستی از یادگیری زبان دوم برسند اگر چنین متغیرهای مهمی را نادیده بگیرند. این مطالعه به بررسی چگونگی ارتباط تمایل به برقراری ارتباط کلامی (WTC)،  فردیت زبان آموز و اضطراب در یادگیری زبان دوم با دانش منظور شناسی زبان آموزان ایرانی می پردازد. برای این منظور، در مجموع 140 نفر در مورد انواع استراتژی های درخواست و ابزارهای اصلاحی داخلی و خارجی آنها برای هفت هفته از طریق وظایف آگاهی-دهنده (آگاهی برانگیز) مورد آموزش قرار گرفتند. داده ها با استفاده از پرسشنامه های تمایل به برقراری ارتباط کلامی، فردیت، مقیاس اضطراب در کلاس های زبان خارجی و آزمون تکمیل گفتمان جمع آوری گردیدند. یافته های تحقیق حاکی از این داشتند که تمایل به برقراری ارتباط کلامی و فردیت زبان آموزان به طور مثبت با توانایی منظور شناسی آنها در زبان دوم ارتباط داشت. با این وجود، بین اضطراب زبان آموزان و توانایی منظور شناسی آنها در زبان دوم ارتباطی مشاهده نشد. نتایج نشان می دهند که برخی ویژگی های شخصی مانند تمایل به برقراری ارتباط کلامی و فردیت زبان آموزان از اهمیت ویژه و نقش بسزایی درکسب موفقیت آمیز دانش منظور شناسی در زبان دوم برخوردار است.   واژگان کلیدی:تمایل به برقراری ارتباط کلامی، فردیت، اضطراب، درخواست، توانایی منظور شناس

Academic-Scholarly Publications in the Iranian Applied Linguistics Journals (2008-2019): A Comprehensive Review

The first step in the optimization of research is to analyze and review the conducted research to gain a comprehensive overview. Therefore, this study was set to delve into the contributions made to Iranian Applied Linguistics Journals approved by the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology from 2008 to 2019. To analyze the data, frequency analyses were run on 1419 publications. The findings indicated that TEFL-related topics received the most coverage (88%) compared to the other prevalent majors: Linguistics, Translation, and Literature. The study revealed that male contributions (63.7%) far outweighed those of females (34.4%). Furthermore, it came to light that co-authorship (59.95%) was more appreciated among contributors to Iranian applied linguistics journals. Moreover, Islamic Azad University collectively (25.34%) followed by University of Shiraz (11.3%) and University of Isfahan (10.25%) had the highest number of publications. Assistant (32.12%) and associate professors (21.86%) had the highest number of publications. It was also found that the US contributors (28.75%) followed by Australian and Malaysian contributors (13.75%) made the highest number of foreign contributions to the Iranian EFL journals.  Finally, it was revealed that writing-related topics was the most frequently-explored topic (n=164). Corpus-related studies (n=132) and teacher education (n=118) came second and third respectively. The study provides practitioners and researchers with relevant and missing information about the most frequently-explored topics, the most prolific authors, the most productive universities, and the number of foreign contributions