research paper
Saeedeh Esmaeli; Katayoon Afzali
Abstract
Critical incidents are unanticipated and unplanned events which happen in the classrooms and may throw teachers into a state of disequilibrium which results in teachers’ losing their resilience. Therefore, when encountering critical incidents teachers are required to stop and reflect on the occurred ...
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Critical incidents are unanticipated and unplanned events which happen in the classrooms and may throw teachers into a state of disequilibrium which results in teachers’ losing their resilience. Therefore, when encountering critical incidents teachers are required to stop and reflect on the occurred event. However, teacher education programs do not prepare student teachers to cope with these situations appropriately. In view of this problem, the aim of the present study is to categorize critical incidents and provide a repertoire of teachers’ productive coping strategies. To this end, fifteen English teachers, eight females and seven males, were selected from three universities and three institutes in Isfahan, Iran. They were asked to narrate the critical incidents they faced in their English classrooms and their coping strategies they used in their classrooms throughout one semester. The three-stage coding process of grounded theory was utilized to analyze 49 narrated critical incidents and teachers’ coping strategies. Six categories and 14 subcategories of critical incidents were identified. The findings can have implications for teacher education programs. There should be educational programs to encourage teachers to reflect on the critical incidents and promote their resilience when encountering critical incidents in their classrooms. The programs could be used for pre- or in-service teachers. Critical incidents provide opportunities for reflection and challenges of teachers’ beliefs and values to promote and foster teacher development.
research paper
Zahra Asayesh; Seyyed Abdolmajid Tabatabaee Lotfi; Seyyed Amir Hossein Sarkeshikian
Abstract
More recently, technology-based settings such as Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) have developed amazing modern places for materials used to teach pragmatics. In terms of speech acts, one of the most fascinating conceptions of pragmatics (Eslamirasekh, 1993), no study has been focused on the ...
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More recently, technology-based settings such as Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) have developed amazing modern places for materials used to teach pragmatics. In terms of speech acts, one of the most fascinating conceptions of pragmatics (Eslamirasekh, 1993), no study has been focused on the presentation of speech acts in English language teaching software. This study aimed to analyze types, frequencies and distributions of speech acts presented in the dialogues of Tell Me More (version 10), a popular language learning software employed by a large number of academic institutions around the world, based on Searle’s (1976) speech act taxonomy. Using descriptive research including qualitative and quantitative investigations, the results revealed that interactive dialogues of entire 10 levels of Tell Me More totally provide learners with a noticeable number of speech acts along with numerous texts, pictures or movies to explain context. The results of chi-square test also showed inequality and variation in the distribution of present speech acts, namely assertive, directive, expressive and commissive in dialogues of each level and also entire 10 levels of software. Declaration speech act was absent in dialogues of Tell Me More. The research findings have some implications for CALL material designers, language teachers and learners.
research paper
Farzad Mashhadi; Reza Biria; Ahmadreza Lotfi
Abstract
The preparation of English teachers to teach is a complex and multitudinous undertaking. Traditionally, in line with positivist paradigm which has focused on notion of transfer, teacher education has been concerned with depositing bodies of pre-defined information to teachers and has considered teachers ...
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The preparation of English teachers to teach is a complex and multitudinous undertaking. Traditionally, in line with positivist paradigm which has focused on notion of transfer, teacher education has been concerned with depositing bodies of pre-defined information to teachers and has considered teachers as that of knowledge consumers. As an alternative to traditional, transmission-based view of teacher education, action research has emerged as a practical tool to enhance meaningful second language (L2) teacher education. In line with the current epistemological shift, this study set out to examine the utility of collaborative action research, as a viable means, to boost teachers’ professional development in a networked community of shared practice. To this end, 7 male and female Iranian English teachers, aged 22—35, were selected through convenient sampling from different universities in Iran. Having been added to a teacher training group in WhatsApp, the selected participants were exposed to online classes within which they learned to problematize a context-specific topic and were provided with relevant practical experiences through dialogic mediation. Having been taught to go through circles of action research throughout the treatment, the participants were required to complete an action research project. The data triangulated from four main sources (i.e., action research projects, teachers’ professional journals, reflective journals, and semi-structured interviews), revealed that EFL teachers engaged in a collaborative dialogue in a networked community of shared knowledge appeared to sustain L2 professional development, transforming their pedagogical practice and feeling empowered to move toward a more emancipatory perspective. The findings have important implications for language teachers in general, and EFL teachers and syllabus designers, in particular.
research paper
Monir Ghasemi Mighani; Massood Yazdanimoghaddam; Ahmad Mohseni
Abstract
Developing intercultural communicative competence in EFL learners is one of the most recent aspects of language competency that aims at equipping learners with appropriate attitudes and skills to be able to interact more effectively in culturally-diverse settings. The current study was an attempt to ...
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Developing intercultural communicative competence in EFL learners is one of the most recent aspects of language competency that aims at equipping learners with appropriate attitudes and skills to be able to interact more effectively in culturally-diverse settings. The current study was an attempt to explore the development of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) of a group of English majors and investigate what aspects of ICC explicit teaching could improve.Thus, an intercultural course was designed and implemented through an academic semester. A questionnaire of intercultural communicative competence was administered before and at the end of the semester to find out any possible significant change in the ICC level of the participants. The study also explored if there was any correlation between language proficiency of the participants and their level of ICC. The results of the study indicated that the overall ICC level of the learners increased significantly through the intervention of the intercultural course with the most significant rise in behavioral, cognitive and affective dimensions of the construct respectively. The results showed that there was not any significant correlation between language proficiency and the overall level of intercultural communicative competence; however, regarding the components of ICC some differences were found across two groups. The results of the study have implications in teacher education programs, teaching methodology, curriculum and materials development and the assessment of the ICC construct.
research paper
Hassan Soodmand Afshar; Shabnam Ghasemi
Abstract
As part of a large-scale study, the current study explored the barriers perceived by Iranian EFL teachers to impede their professional development. To this end, 200 EFL teachers teaching at various private foreign language institutes participated in the study. The study enjoyed a mixed-method design. ...
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As part of a large-scale study, the current study explored the barriers perceived by Iranian EFL teachers to impede their professional development. To this end, 200 EFL teachers teaching at various private foreign language institutes participated in the study. The study enjoyed a mixed-method design. That is, first, a semi-structured interview was conducted with 50 participants of the study on the basis of which the barriers to teachers’ PD questionnaire (BTPDQ) was developed and validated. The results of the interview content analysis and the findings of the descriptive statistics of BTPDQ revealed the barriers were attributed to three major factors including ‘teachers themselves’ (e.g., lack of motivation, lack of teamwork spirit, etc.), ‘managers of the language institutes’ (e.g., institutes’ not having organized plans for PD, low payments, etc.), and ‘educational policy-makers’ (e.g., curriculum developers’ top-to-down managerial behavior, etc.). The findings might prove fruitful and innovative for the managers of foreign language education centers, teachers, and policy makers. Foreign language education policy makers, curriculum developers and syllabus designers are thus suggested to plan such effective and durable PD activities as teacher study groups, peer observation, online teacher PD methods and social-media-based programs in order to interest and involve EFL teachers in up-to-date PD activities.
research paper
Masoud Geramipour
Abstract
Recent years have witnessed an increasing interest in providing new insights into modern language testing method targeting test bias. In this study, item-focused trees (IFT) approach was applied to identify uniform and non-uniform differential item functioning (DIF) of an English as a foreign language ...
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Recent years have witnessed an increasing interest in providing new insights into modern language testing method targeting test bias. In this study, item-focused trees (IFT) approach was applied to identify uniform and non-uniform differential item functioning (DIF) of an English as a foreign language (EFL) reading comprehension test. The multistage cluster sampling method was employed to randomly choose a large sample of 4937 students who took the entrance exam of MA program in English studies. The reading comprehension section of the general English test including 20 items was selected for the IFT analysis. Three categorical and continuous DIF source variables including gender and academic background were concomitantly taken into account for the IFT analysis, which is capable of handling more than one variable with both binary and continuous measurement. Then, in the final stage of IFT analysis within a logistic regression framework, uniform and non-uniform DIF was analyzed using DIF tree package of R. The results showed that 10 items had uniform DIF in which 2 items had 2 joint DIF predictor variables (2 splits) and 8 items had only one split. Additionally, 6 splits and 5 non-uniform DIF items were found in non-uniform DIF analysis in which only 1 item had 2 simultaneous DIF source variables. Furthermore, gender and background knowledge had significant relationships with EFL reading comprehension. This study promises practical implications for addressing gender and background knowledge differences in EFL reading comprehension studies on the one hand, and impacting language testing methodology on the other.
