EFL and Field Specialist Aviation English Teacher's Beliefs and Practices on Aviation English in Iran

Student pilots and flight engineers have to pass aviation English. In Army Aviation Training Center Academy (A.A.T.C. A), this course is taught by EFL instructors and field specialists or subject teachers. In this study, the cognitions and practices of these two groups of teachers were explored. Four EFL instructors and four subject teachers (two pilots and two flight engineers) teaching in A.A.T.C.A were surveyed. Semi-structured interviews, field notes, and unobtrusive classroom observations were employed in order to probe into their underlying cognitions and teaching practices. Analysis of the gathered data revealed substantial inconsistencies among the subject teachers and the EFL instructors. The divergence between the two is related to a number of factors. The results of a series of independent-samples t-tests indicated that there was a significant difference between the two groups of teachers as far as their durations of group/pair work activities, first language use, and TTT are concerned. To examine the practices of Aviation Field Specialist (AFS) and EFL teachers in terms of the frequency of using pair-group work, questioning, corrective feedback types and pre, during and post language skill activities, the researcher ran the normality test of Kolmogorov-Smirnov and found the distribution of scores far from normal. Therefore, Mann-Whitney U test was used. The findings demonstrated a significant difference among these teachers in all the investigated variables. Implications for EAP teacher education programs were discussed. Some new ideas for reflection in aviation English instruction are also suggested in this paper