mavadat saidi

The current study aimed to explore the generic organization of research article (RA) abstracts published in the Iranian local and international history journals. To this end, a corpus of 80 RA abstracts (40 local and 40 international) were scrutinized in terms of their constituent moves based on Hyland’s (2000) five-move model. Additionally, the study examined the interactional metadiscourse markers across various local and international abstract moves, using Hyland’s (2005) interpersonal metadiscourse model. The results of the genre analysis revealed a high frequency of introduction and purpose moves in local abstracts, as well as introduction, purpose, and product moves in the international corpus. The analysis of interactional metadiscourse markers revealed that boosters were the most frequently occurring category in the two groups of abstracts. Nevertheless, hedges were more frequently used by the local authors while the international researchers made a higher use of self-mentions. The results revealed the informed subjectivity and venue-based patterns of interaction at the service of presenting a persuasive account of the research objectives and outcomes in the field of history. The findings have pedagogical implications for EAP courses that aim to equip novice members of the history discourse community with the tools necessary to adhere to generic and interactional conventions.

English language teaching is considered as an anxiety-provoking profession for the novice members of the teaching community. Indeed, their perceptions and practices might be influenced by this variable. Despite the full attention allocated to the English learners’ anxiety, teachers’ anxiety seems to have remained untouched. The current study attempted to explore the pre-service and in-service English teachers’ language teaching anxiety to see whether these two groups differed in terms of this trait. The study further aimed to investigate the possible relationship between pre-service and in-service English teachers’ interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences and their language teaching anxiety. To this end, a convenient sample of 120 pre-service and 120 in-service English teachers were asked to complete Capel’s Teaching Anxiety Scale and answer the relevant items from McKenzie’s Multiple Intelligences Questionnaire. The results of descriptive statistical analysis indicated the participants’ seemingly high level of teaching anxiety. The analysis further demonstrated the significant negative correlation between the participants’ interpersonal intelligence and their language teaching anxiety while no significant link was found between their intrapersonal intelligence and anxiety level. Moreover, the results of the independent samples t-test revealed a significant difference between pre-service and in-service English teachers in terms of their language teaching anxiety. The findings pointed to the necessity of informed educational actions to lower pre-service teachers’ teaching anxiety and breed a more strategic generation of English teachers who are empowered to rise to the challenges in their teaching profession in order to achieve more desired outcomes.

The current study attempted to investigate and compare the perceptions of Iranian in-service hard disciplines, soft disciplines, and English teachers of their prognostic, formative, and summative assessment literacy. To this end, a total number of 282 high school teachers (94 teachers from each disciplinary groups) were asked to complete the modified and validated version of Rahimi and Rastgoo’s (2017) questionnaire. To enrich the quantitative phase, 90 teachers (30 ones in each group of disciplines) were also interviewed. The results of one-way ANOVA and multiple comparisons revealed a significant difference between hard disciplines and English teachers in terms of their prognostic and summative assessment literacy. However, no significant difference was found among the three groups in terms of their formative assessment literacy. The content analysis of the interviews cast light on the commonalities and discrepancies of assessment perceptions and practices depending on the teachers’ disciplines. The findings can be transferred to teacher education programs to enhance the teachers’ subject-specific assessment competencies.

The current study aimed to investigate the use of evaluative resources in academic and popular science articles published in Iranian scholarly journals and popular media in the field of nutrition in light of Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal theory. The corpus of the study consisted of 80 articles including 40 academic research articles and 40 popular science articles. The results of the analysis of two groups of articles in terms of Appraisal resources revealed that authors used more Attitude resources followed by Engagement resources and Graduation resources. Among Attitude markers, the authors of Persian academic research and popular science articles employed appreciation resources more frequently. Furthermore, the results of several Chi-Square tests also revealed a significant difference between Persian academic research and popular science articles considering the frequency of Attitude and Engagement resources but not Graduation resources of Appraisal Theory. The findings can be transferred to pedagogical grounds through embedding Appraisal resources in writing courses and employing them to enhance the quality and efficiency of the interaction between the writers- scientists and their intended readers- scholarly or non-scholarly.

Reading passages act as the locus of comprehensible input in the English language teaching materials and are mostly followed by a host of activities to ensure the learners’ comprehension. The current study aimed to carry out a comparative evaluation of Vision 3 and Learning to Read (i.e., English for Pre-university Students) in terms of the reading sections. To this end, Freeman’s taxonomy of reading comprehension questions was used. To enrich the quantitative data, thirty-two English teachers were also interviewed. The results revealed the prevalence of Language questions in both textbooks. However, the least common types of questions were Affect and Content in the old and new textbook, respectively. The results of Chi-square tests unfolded a significant difference between the two textbooks in terms of three categories of questions. The analysis of the teachers’ responses corroborated the findings of the quantitative phase. The teachers seemed satisfied with the inclusion of more Affect questions in Vision 3; nevertheless, they believed that the new English textbook needed to be revised in terms of the quantity and quality of reading texts and tasks in order to shape and expand the students’ reading comprehension skills. The findings carry pedagogical implications for the materials developers and English teachers.

The current study aimed to investigate the representation of critical thinking in English for the Students of Medicine (II) and the status of the EAP students’ critical thinking ability as its main users. Peterson’s model was used to identify different types of critical reading questions. Furthermore, 150 students of medicine, as the main users of the textbook, completed a critical thinking questionnaire. The results revealed that a large proportion of the exercises in this textbook reflected Vocabulary in Context and Literal Comprehension questions while Extended Reasoning questions, as the major category catering for critical reading, constituted only five percent of the whole items. The results of an independent sample t-test also indicated a moderate level of critical thinking ability among the EAP students of medicine regardless of their gender. The findings call for revisiting the English for Medical Purposes materials and incorporating more activities and exercises gearing to higher-order cognitive skills and critical thinking ability to empower the EAP students with the required set of skills to be successful in their academic and professional communities.

English for academic purposes materials primarily focus on developing and enhancing the university students’ reading skills. The current study aimed to evaluate and compare the reading comprehension questions in the old and new generations of EAP textbooks published by SAMT. To this end, the reading comprehension questions in ten EAP textbooks (five old and five new) were identified and categorized in light of Freeman’s (2014) taxonomy. The results indicated that almost half of the questions were related to the Content category in the old textbooks while the highest frequency in the new ones belonged to the Language questions. Moreover, Lexical and Implicit comprehension types were the most frequent questions in both old and new textbooks. With regard to the Affect category, the evaluation type was the most common one. The results of Chi-square tests also revealed a significant difference between old and new EAP textbooks in terms of the frequency of content and language questions while no significant difference was found considering the effect questions. The findings of the current study carry pedagogical implications for EAP course design and material development.

The current study aimed to explore the nature of discursive strategies academics would use to share their specialist knowledge to both specialists and non-specialists. To this end, a corpus of 40 academic research articles and 40 popular science articles were randomly selected from the archive of four English international peer-reviewed journals and four English popular magazines and newspapers in the field of Nutrition. Appraisal Theory (Martin & White, 2005), a discourse framework to examine evaluative and/or persuasive language, was used to analyze the data. The results revealed significant areas of similarity and difference in terms of certain discursive elements leading to discernible degrees of persuasion. The findings imply that in order to develop a scientifically literate society, scientists should appeal to diverse discourse resources to provide the public with their findings in an informative and entertaining way. The results of the study carry some pedagogical implications for EAP courses held in EFL settings since being able to both comprehend and produce scientific texts of different professional levels at international scale seems to be a requirement for the future scientists.

The current study strived to unfold the relationship between interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence types and classroom management strategies among the instructors of teaching English toward the students of medical sciences. The study further tried to see if there was any significant difference between language and content instructors in terms of their classroom management strategies in their classes.

A convenient sample of 80 EAP instructors from state universities of Tehran, Tabriz, Isfahan, and Mashhad provided responses to the excerpted items related to personal intelligences from McKenzie’s Multiple Intelligences Questionnaire and Behavior and Instructional Management Scale (BIMS). A Pearson product-moment correlation test was run to determine the possible link between the participants’ personal intelligences and their classroom management strategies. Moreover, an independent sample t-test was used to find out the possible difference between language and content instructors in terms of their classroom management strategies.

The results revealed a significant relationship between the instructors’ interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences and their classroom management strategies. Furthermore, a significant difference was found between language and content instructors in terms of their classroom management approaches in English for the students of medical science courses.

The findings can raise the EAP instructors’ consciousness to enhance their interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence types in order to improve and promote their classroom management strategies. In addition, the results may enhance the policymakers’ perception of the required considerations for in-service teacher training courses of English for medical science instructors.

Textbooks provide a framework for the English language teaching curriculum. Among different skills and components covered in the ELT materials, reading comprehension is conceived as an inalienable skill required to expand the students’ knowledge of the language. Reading passages are accompanied by a set of questions to check the students’ comprehension and enhance their reading efficiency. Focusing on the reading sections of the newly compiled English textbook for the 12th-grade students, the current study attempted to investigate reading comprehension questions accompanying the reading passages in Vision 3 and its workbook adopting Freeman’s (2014) taxonomy. Furthermore, it elicited 80 teachers’ perspectives on the reading sections utilizing the relevant items from an eclectic checklist. To deepen the results, eight teachers also provided their comments. First, the reading comprehension questions in Vision 3 and its workbook were analyzed and assigned to the categories and subcategories proposed in the taxonomy. The frequency and percentage values showed that Language questions were the most frequent category in Vision 3 while Content questions were the most prevalent of all in the workbook. Among the subcategories of reading comprehension questions, Form questions were the commonest type in the student book whereas both Forma and Personal Response questions were the most frequent of all in the workbook.  In addition, the results of the Kruskal Wallis test revealed a significant difference between the student book and its workbook in terms of the frequency of Content questions. The analysis of the teachers’ perspectives also demonstrated their discontent with the reading sections in that book that failed to provide the students authentic texts and challenging questions and activities. Notwithstanding the dramatic positive changes in Vision 3 concerning other skills and components, the findings showed that it needed to be revisited and revised considering the reading comprehension skills and sub-skills. The study raised the material developers’ consciousness about the existing reading comprehension questions in both the student book and its workbook. It further enabled the teachers to identify the missing types of questions and develop supplementary materials to enhance the students’ reading comprehension skills.

English instructors have faced numerous challenges following the COVID-19 outbreak and the sudden shift from inperson to online instruction. This vogue of alternative teaching practices is presently open to rigorous scrutiny. The current study attempted to shed light on the challenges facing the instructors of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) at medical universities, and their strategies in handling emergency remote teaching during the pandemic.

A qualitative content analysis was conducted to gather data from self-reflections and semi-structured interviews with 52 EAP instructors working at different Iranian medical universities in the spring and summer of 2020. The contents of the reflections and interviews were coded by the researchers based on the procedures of sequential explanatory strategy, and the major themes were extracted and categorized.

The findings point to the lack of required facilities and infrastructure, inadequate technological literacy, and poor internet quality as the major challenges facing the instructors. It was also revealed that the teachers viewed the enhancement of technological literacy and provision of required facilities as the main priorities in addressing the challenges.

It was found that the EAP instructors had different perceptions of emergency remote teaching and potential solutions to the associated challenges. The findings offer practical recommendations for enhancing English proficiency among medical students. The results also highlight the necessity of offering EAP teacher training courses focused on developing the technological literacy of the instructors. To continue this line of research, a more in-depth study of students’ perceptions and experiences of online EAP classes is recommended.

The current comparative study aimed to juxtapose the newly compiled English textbook for the students in the third grade of senior high school, Vision 3, and the previously taught English textbook for pre-university students. To this end, 130 experienced teachers, with the experience of teaching both textbooks, were asked to complete an eclectic checklist comprising 38 items and evaluating the book in terms of nine major criteria, namely general considerations, vocabulary, grammar, speaking, listening, reading, writing, pronunciation supplementary materials, tasks, and activities. Following that, 20 teachers were interviewed to enrich the results of the quantitative data. Overall, the results revealed the teachers’ contentment with the newly developed English textbook. In particular, the mean values indicated that English teachers rated the speaking and listening sections as the most satisfactory parts while they ranked the supplementary materials criterion as the least satisfactory one in Vision 3. Indeed, they believed that notwithstanding the dramatically positive changes in Vision 3, the book still requires undergoing major revisions to act as a rich source for enabling the EFL students to communicate fluently, accurately, and effectively. In this regard, the findings would benefit the materials developers to locate the areas for further modifications.

The implementation of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) in English for academic purposes courses has gained prominence within the last decades. It received particular attention after the worldwide spread of COVID-19 pandemic. The current study attempted to probe the medical sciences EAP instructors’ attitudes towards implementing CALL in teaching English to the students of medical sciences. The study further tried to inquire into the barriers to the implementation of online EAP classes for the students of medical sciences within the pandemic period.

Taking a mixed-method research design, the questionnaire and interview were used to gather the required data. Eighty EAP instructors completed the questionnaire and 25 instructors answered the interview questions. The participants were teaching English to the medical sciences students in Iranian state universities of medical sciences in Tehran, Yazd, Tabriz, and Mashhad in the academic year 2019-2020. Mean values were used to illustrate the results of the questionnaire items and interview responses were scrutinized to extract the constituent themes.

The results revealed that the medical sciences EAP instructors held positive attitudes towards the use of technology in their classes. Indeed, the mean values ranged from 3.16 to 4.79, which indicated the instructors’ positive inclination towards implementing CALL in EAP classes.They also pointed to the existing barriers to the successful implementation of CALL and the challenges they encounter in online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic period.

The findings highlighted the significance of revisiting the role of technology in EAP curriculum for medical sciences students. In this regard, the results carry implications for the policymakers, material developers, and instructors in universities of medical sciences.

The aim of the current study was to investigate frequencies of interactional metadiscourse markers in English academic research and popular science articles in nutrition. A total of 60 English articles published in three popular databases and four academic journals were analyzed for interactional metadiscourse markers, including hedges, boosters, attitude markers, engagement markers and self-mentions. Results of the analysis revealed nearly twice as many interactional metadiscourse markers in the academic research articles, indicating a higher level of explicit interaction in that genre. Results of the chi-square test (p ≤ 0.01) demonstrated that uses of metadiscourse markers differed significantly in the two genres. Findings showed that the authors of academic research and popular science articles tried to create balances between highlighting the significance and pinpointing the tentativeness of the claims and, thereby, they made interactive choices to approximate their readers’ world. Furthermore, results highlighted the high relevance of popular science articles to academic research articles since authors were inevitably involved in transforming and recovering scientific findings into more comprehensive accounts in popular science texts. Findings can be transferred to pedagogical grounds through raising students’ awareness in English writing courses about the way; through which, the authors of academic research and popular science articles use interactional resources to enhance quality and efficiency of their interactions with the readers.

The current study aimed to investigate the relationship among English for academic purposes instructors’ interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence types, language teaching anxiety, and classroom management beliefs taking a correlational research design. To this end, a convenient sample of 98 EAP instructors were asked to complete the excerpted sections of McKenzie’s Multiple Intelligences Questionnaire, Teacher Anxiety Scale, and Behavior and Instructional Management Scale. The results of Pearson product-moment tests revealed a significant negative relationship between interpersonal intelligence and classroom management beliefs while no significant link was observed between intrapersonal intelligence and classroom management beliefs. The same results were obtained for the possible relationship between these two intelligence types and language teaching anxiety. Furthermore, a significant negative relationship was found between EAP instructors’ language teaching anxiety and classroom management beliefs. The multiple regression analysis also showed that interpersonal intelligence could strongly predict EAP instructors’ classroom management beliefs. Furthermore, the two independent samples t-tests demonstrated that language and content instructors differed with regard to their language teaching anxiety and classroom management beliefs in EAP classes. The results were discussed in light of previously existing literature and some pedagogical implications were presented for EAP teacher training courses.

The learners’ ability to write a well-organized argumentative essay has gained prominence within the last decades. The multiple intelligences play a significant role in enhancing the precision of both language and thought during the writing process. The current study aimed at investigating the possible relationship between linguistic and logical intelligences and the frequency of informal fallacies and evidence types in Iranian EFL learners’ argumentative essays. To the end, a total of 110 upper-intermediate EFL learners were asked to respond to the relevant items of Multiple Intelligences Developmental Assessment Scale (MIDAS) and to write an argumentative essay. The informal fallacies and four categories of evidence were identified using two models of argumentation. Among several categories of informal fallacies and evidence, only statistical evidence was absent in argumentative essays. The results of Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient revealed a significant relationship between the participants’ linguistic and logical intelligences and the frequency of informal fallacies and evidence types in their argumentation. However, no significant difference was found between male and female EFL learners in terms of the frequency of informal fallacies and evidence types in their argumentative essays. The findings contribute to enhancing the efficiency of writing materials and courses by considering the learners’ individual differences.

Written Teacher Feedback (WTF) aims at improving the student's writing. Hence, the way in which it is provided for the learners should be taken into account as it makes an impact on the learner's comprehension of the presented comments (Ferris, 2003; Thonus, 2002). The current study was conducted to examine the possible effect of WTF directness types on Iranian EFL learner's ability to perceive the teacher's comments as praise or criticism and the required correction implied in them. To this end, three versions of the same essay, with direct, indirect and hedged comments indexed within them were distributed to 120 EFL learners. The results of ANOVA revealed that the directness type of the WTF would make no significant impact on Iranian EFL learner's ability to perceive the positive and negative comments and their required correction accurately. We might speculate from the findings that writing instructors should focus more on the quality of the WTF rather than its directness type in Iranian context. This would hopefully empower the learners to apply the teacher's comments to enhance the quality of their written products.

With the increasingly growing technological advances and their consequences for societies, the public has the right to be engaged in the outcomes of science. On the one hand, the public are interested in acquiring information about the results of scientists’ experiments. On the other hand, the scientists are willing to share their feelings about their discoveries with the public in order to achieve wider audience. These all have prompted popularizing of science within the last few decades. The current study aimed to explore the frequency of evaluative resources of Appraisal in English popular science articles (PSAs hereafter) in the field of Nutrition. A total of 40 English popularized articles published in four popular sources, WebMD, Better Nutrition, Science Daily, and New York Times, were analyzed in terms of three main categories and subcategories of Appraisal Theory. The results of the analysis revealed that authors used more Attitude resources followed by Graduation and Engagement resources. With regard to subcategories of three main categories, the authors of English PSAs included more cases of appreciation, force, and heterogloss resources. The findings indicated that the authors of PSAs tend to insert their feelings about their discoveries through employing Appraisal resources. The results might be used to embed Appraisal resources in EAP materials in order to equip the would-be scientists with a helpful tool to meet the expectations of another group of their intended audience, i.e. general public, in addition to fulfilling the requirements of their academic discourse community.

The current study attempted to cast light on the status quo of Iranian EFL teachers' perceptions of ICC. It further attempted to see if their experience would influence their conceptualizations of ICC. To this end, a total of 100 EFL teachers were asked to complete a questionnaire survey adapted from Han & Song's (2011) study. The results of both quantitative and qualitative analysis revealed a number of commonalities and discrepancies among the participants' conceptualizations of International Communication Competence (ICC) and its relevance to ELT considering their teaching experience. The findings point to the prominence of intercultural teacher education in the Iranian context.