mohammad zohrabi

This study examined the degree to which metalinguistic, direct, and indirect written corrective feedback strategies influenced Iraqi nursing students’ nursing report writing task performance in ESP courses. Moreover, it investigated these students’ perspectives on these feedback strategies. Consequently, the study was carried out using a mixed-methods design. To this end, in the quantitative phase, the researchers used convenience sampling to select 112 nursing students from four classes of a public university in Iraq as the participants and randomly assigned these classes to three experimental groups and one control group. Moreover, they used a nursing report pretest, 14 treatment sessions, and a nursing report posttest to gather the data. Furthermore, in the qualitative phase, the researchers randomly selected 10 nursing students in each of the experimental groups and probed their attitudes toward their feedback strategy using an interview protocol. The results showed that all of these feedback strategies had significant positive impacts on the participants’ ESP writing ability. Nonetheless, the metalinguistic and direct strategies proved to be more advantageous than the indirect strategy. In addition, the nursing students indicated a strong preference for metalinguistic and direct strategies in their writing tasks. The results can have practical implications in Iraqi context.

Positive psychology constitutes an approach to the study of human behavior that examines the extent to which individuals’ affective factors are likely to ameliorate their life conditions and their performance in diverse academic and occupational settings. The present study strived to determine the degree to which university learners’ psychological well-being, as their main positive psychology factor, was influenced by their grit, emotion regulation, and academic engagement. To this end, the researchers used convenience sampling to select 221 English Language and Literature learners and 178 Persian Language and Literature learners from among the learners of a university in Tabriz (Iran) as the participants. Second, they administered the English and Persian versions of the psychological well-being scale, grit scale, emotion regulation scale, and academic engagement scale of the study to the learners of English and Persian respectively. Finally, the researchers utilized SPSS 25 and Amos 24 to analyze the obtained data. Based on the results, while English learners’ grit, emotion, regulation, and academic engagement significantly predicted their psychological well-being, Persian learners’ grit, and academic engagement constituted significant predictors of their psychological well-being in their academic setting. Moreover, English learners’ psychological well-being was significantly higher than that of Persian learners. The results may have certain implications for professor educators, syllabus designers, and professors in the context of Iran.

This study strived to specify and particularize Iranian medical field specialists and EFL teachers’ predominant and overriding textual interventions, which fall within the ambit of convenience editing. To this end, we required 20 field specialists and 20 EFL instructors to edit the unedited versions of 80 published medical research articles in a way that rendered them apt for publication in quality medical journals. We categorized the obtained data of the edited articles using an editing strategy framework that distinguished four editing micro-strategies and five macro-strategies. The findings revealed that medical specialists and EFL teachers’ micro-editing strategies outnumbered their macro-editing ones. Furthermore, there were significant differences between the editing micro-strategy uses of the above-mentioned groups of the participants. The results highlighted the need for a synergic collaboration between the medical field specialists and the EFL teachers to ameliorate medical articles’ formal, stylistic, and genre-related features and to expedite their publication process.

This study strived to determine the main factors contributing to the New Zealander and Iranian English instructors’ productive and maladaptive teacher immunity. Moreover, it examined the differences between the productive and maladaptive teacher immunity types of these groups of teachers. To this end, first, the researchers used convenience sampling for selecting 294 male and female New Zealander English instructors and 286 male and female Iranian English instructors at language institute settings as participants. Second, they used Google Forms to administer the teacher immunity, emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence, perfectionism, and demographic information questionnaires of the study to New Zealander and Iranian participants. New Zealander and Iranian teachers completed and returned these questionnaires to the researchers in a one-month and seventy-day periods of time, respectively. Third, the researchers used logistic regression and chi-square tests to perform the data analysis. The results indicated that New Zealander teachers’ emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence, and experience were the major factors in their productive and maladaptive teacher immunity.  On the other hand, Iranian teachers’ income, age, and emotional intelligence constituted the main factors in their teacher immunity types. Lastly, New Zealander teachers’ teacher immunity was more productive than Iranian instructors’ teacher immunity. The results were ascribed to the context-sensitive nature of English teachers’ productive and maladaptive teacher immunity. These results may have practical implications for the teacher education and supervisor education courses in foreign language contexts.

Misuse of technology and lack of enough skill and knowledge about using technological devices may lead to several complications; thus, it could appear mandatory to offer citizenship education and digital knowledge. Hence, individuals are expected to gain the knowledge about their position in the world as global citizens and be able to understand intercultural issues. The aim of the current study is to inspect the effect of global digital citizenship on EFL learner’s intercultural communicative competence and examine their perceptions toward the applicability of global digital citizenship. The participants of the quantitative phase comprised 60 female EFL learners classified randomly into one experimental group and one control group. For the qualitative phase, 20 learners were interviewed. The instruments included the Oxford Quick Placement Test to ensure the homogeneity, Intercultural Communicative Competence questionnaire, and a researcher-made questionnaire to provide qualitative data. Cronbach’s alpha was used ensure the reliability. The validity of the questionnaires was ensured through content validity. The quantitative data was analyzed through MANCOVA test. The results revealed that global digital citizenship has significant effect on EFL learner’s intercultural communicative competence. The results of semi-structured interview revealed five main themes including the most important qualities of global digital citizenship, the general advantages and disadvantages of global digital citizenship, the benefits and shortcomings of digital literacy, strategies to stay safe in social media environments, and the popular applications used for learning English. The findings have significant theoretical and practical significance for teachers, teacher educators, curriculum designers and researchers.

Most EFL schools, both government-run and private, use materials developed based on the curriculum developed by the Ministry of Education. The Ministry of Education in Iran started to update English textbooks for junior and senior high schools to enhance students’ communicative competence. To achieve this, there is a need for changes both in methodology and content of the textbooks in assessment methods. This study aimed to investigate whether teachers’ tests align with the changes in textbooks or assess students' knowledge of grammar and vocabulary, regardless of their communicative competence. A mixed-methods design was employed, combining quantitative data collected through questionnaires, teacher-made tests, textbooks, and qualitative interview data to provide a comprehensive understanding of the match. Thirty Iranian English teachers from different provinces participated in the study and 100 teacher-made tests were compared with the content and purpose of the updated textbooks. The results analyzed through chi-square test and thematic analysis showed no match between the theory of the tests and the textbooks and revealed that teachers' attitudes towards change of assessment tools contribute to the development of communicative skills.

The Facilitate-Listen-Engage (FLE) strategy emphasizes the critical role of communication and responsiveness in establishing a cohesive classroom community. By promoting a horizontal plane of communication, where teachers and learners engage as equals, the model seeks to demonstrate active listening and foster a culture that values diverse thoughts and opinions. This study investigates the impact of the Facilitate-Listen-Engage (FLE) model on the willingness to communicate among intermediate EFL learners. Sixty learners (30 in each group) enrolled in EFL perpetration courses in Tabriz university, Iran participated in the study. They were chosen according to their availability and performance in proficiency tests, then allocated randomly to experimental and control groups. The control group underwent conventional teaching methods, where the class environment was teacher-centered, lacking the emphasis on active student engagement seen in the Facilitate-Listen-Engage (FLE) model. On the other hand, the experimental group engaged with the Facilitate-Listen-Engage (FLE) model. Both groups underwent a pretest, taking Willingness to Communicate Questionnaire, and after ten instructional sessions, a posttest was administered. The WTC questionnaire employed in the study was developed by MacIntyre et al. (2001) to assess the participants’ willingness to communicate in classrooms. Analysis of pretest and posttest scores revealed that the Facilitate-Listen-Engage (FLE) model significantly enhanced the willingness to communicate among Iranian intermediate EFL learners. The normality of pretest and posttest data was confirmed through Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests, with all significance values exceeding 0.05, indicating normal distributions. This finding offers practical insights for educators, curriculum designers and contribute valuable information for researchers interested in language teaching strategies, materials, and syllabus design.

Reading skill entails the employment of specific skills and strategies. The use of post-reading and pre-reading activities, considering the importance of individual differences of the learners, have been reported to be successful techniques in improving reading comprehension. Thus, the objective of the current study is to scrutinize the influence of pre- and post-reading activities in developing EFL learners’ reading motivation, self-regulation, and reading comprehension. The participants were 111 male and female B.A. students at the intermediate proficiency level selected through random sampling method. The instruments included Motivation for Reading Questionnaire by Mori (2002) and Self-Regulation Questionnaire by Brown et al., (1999). Reading comprehension is assessed founded on the learners’ scores in the reading section of PET. The collected data was analyzed by ANCOVA. The findings revealed that pre-reading and post-reading activities were effective in improving learners’ self-regulation, reading motivation, and reading comprehension. Additionally, it can be claimed that the effectiveness of pre-reading and post-reading activities on developing self-regulation and reading motivation can ultimately enhance learners’ reading comprehension. The outcomes of the study could be beneficial for EFL learners and teachers.

Mounting attention has recently been paid to authorial stance in academic writing due to its important role in the interpersonal aspect of writing, encompassing the ways in which authors establish connections, convey attitudes, and engage with an audience. This study was an attempt to explore how native and non-native authors of Applied Linguistics deploy linguistic features to project their authorial stance. To this end, a corpus of 100 research articles authored by native and non-native researchers was collected from journals in the field of ELT. Hyland's Interpersonal Model of Metadiscourse (2005) was employed to differentiate the features produced and figure out how authors navigate the complexities of expressing their meaning while considering the ELT community expectations, and SPSS was used to analyze the data. Based on the results, the proportion of interactive resources was found to surpass that of interactional resources in both native and non-native writings, with transitions being the leading feature, followed by evidentials; and regarding the interactional resources, boosters, and hedges were the most dominant features employed by native and non-native authors, respectively. Overall, no tendency was found towards textuality through which authors consider the target audience (engagement markers), signal their confidence through the portrayal of authors' feelings (attitude markers), and take credit for their findings (self-mentions) throughout the whole corpus, particularly non-native writings. It seems that writing courses offered in non-native contexts require improvements to meet the standards of academic writing. Therefore, the study has important implications for both non-native and novice researchers and course designers.

The present study sought to determine the factors of native and nonnative English teachers that predicted their teacher immunity. To this end, the researchers first selected 281 native and 274 nonnative English teachers in different private language institutes in Australia and Iran, respectively, as the participants. Secondly, they used 7 reliable and valid questionnaires to assess the participants’ teacher immunity, age, experience, income, working hours, emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence, perfectionism, professional development, reflective teaching, and job satisfaction. Finally, they used the standard multiple regression test to analyze the data. Results showed differences between the factors that predicted native and nonnative teachers’ immunity. In addition, the teacher immunity of native teachers was found to be more productive than that of nonnative teachers in their relevant settings. Results can provide English teachers and teacher educators with guiding principles regarding teacher factors in second and foreign language contexts.

Teacher factors encompass the teachers’ cognitive and affective characteristics that are likely to affect their instructional efficacy. Language teacher immunity is one of the affective factors that determines the teachers’ psychological well-being in their settings. The present study strived to itemize the factors in novice and experienced EFL instructors’ teacher immunity philosophy. To this end, first, the researchers used convenience sampling for selecting 62 EFL teachers including 38 novice and 24 experienced teachers at ten prominent language institutes in Tabriz (Iran) as the participants. Second, they conducted 30-minute interviews with the participants for determining the factors that influenced their TI philosophy using a researcher-developed semi-structured interview protocol. Lastly, they used thematic analysis in order to particularize the main factors in their teacher immunity philosophy. The findings of the study indicated that while the novice teachers considered external support as the main factor in their philosophy, the experienced teachers regarded their internal strength as the decisive factor that influenced their teacher immunity philosophy. The findings may have practical implications for teacher education courses in foreign language contexts.

The present study strived to determine the utility of tailor-made and learner-difference-based teacher education for the amelioration of the EFL teachers’ productive teacher immunity. To this end, 62 EFL teachers were selected from 12 language institutes in Urmia, Iran. The participants were randomly assigned to an experimental and a control group, and were asked to complete the teacher immunity questionnaire prior to the onset of the treatment sessions. In the treatment phase of the study, the experimental group received a tailor-made teacher immunity education on the basis of the overarching sub-constructs of the teacher immunity construct using a web conferencing system in ten sessions during a 5-week period. Notwithstanding, the control group received a learner-difference-based teacher education based on the predominant learner factors. Finally, both groups filled out the pertinent teacher immunity questionnaire anew, in order to examine the efficacy of the aforementioned treatments for the betterment of the teachers’ productive teacher immunity. The results of the study accentuated the fact that the EFL instructors’ teacher immunity was not impervious to the teacher education intervention. Furthermore, the tailor-made teacher immunity education had a more favorable impact on the improvement of the teachers’ productive teacher immunity. The findings might provide teacher educators with certain guiding principles that might empower them to revamp the current teacher education courses and tailor their education to meet the language teachers’ needs.

The present study made an endeavor to determine the degree to which online and flipped approaches to writing instruction affected the EFL learners’ writing ability. To this end, first, the researchers selected 75 intermediate-level female EFL learners in three intact classrooms of a private language institute in Urmia (Iran) as the participants. These classes were randomly selected from among the online, flipped, and in-person classes of the relevant institute and were assigned to the online, flipped, and control groups. Second, the researchers administered the writing pretest of the study to all of the groups. Third, they used Adobe Connect learning management system to provide the online and flipped groups with the pertinent writing instruction treatment in ten sessions. Nonetheless, they provided the control group with in-person writing instruction. Fourth they administered the immediate and delayed writing posttests of the study to all of the groups immediately after the termination of the treatment sessions and one month subsequent to the end of treatment respectively. Finally, they used SPSS 24 to perform the data analysis. Based on the obtained results, although both of the online and flipped approaches had immediate and delayed positive impacts on the participants’ writing ability, the flipped approach was more beneficial than the online. The results may provide EFL teacher educators, course developers, syllabus designers, and teachers with guiding principles regarding the uses of online and flipped courses in foreign language contexts.

The philosophy of education is an important issue in learning and teaching. Also, the relationship between teachers’ power and abilities can tremendously influence the learners. The purpose of this article is to explore the practice of power bases and Leech’s (1983) politeness maxims among Iranian teachers. A descriptive-qualitative method is used in this research. To this end, nineteen sessions of five classes of five different teachers in a private institute were audio-recorded and transcribed. In the second step of this study, the learners were asked to fill out a questionnaire consisting of 25 Likert-scale items relating to power and politeness issues. In the last stage, four teachers were asked to take part in an interview with the researchers for gathering the complementary data. The classes being observed were chosen based on the rules of convenience sampling method and among young-adult, pre-intermediate learners. The results revealed that Legitimate power among the power base uses and Tact maxim among the politeness maxim practices were the mostly used types of all. Also, it was concluded that in most cases, teachers used one form or a combination of politeness maxims with the practice of power bases.

Meaning is concerned with what a language expresses about the world in which we live or any imaginary or possible world. The study and analysis of meaning and its different angles is called semantics. Semantics is usually concerned with the investigation of the meanings of the words, expressions, sentences and sometimes to the meanings of utterances in discourse or the whole meaning of a text. There are different approaches in which meaning is studied in language. For example, philosophers investigate the relation between linguistic expressions, such as words of a language and people, objects and events in the world to which these words refer (e.g., references and signs). Linguists examine the way in which meaning is created in a language and differentiate among various types of meaning. Meanwhile, there are some studies on the semantic structure of the sentences (propositions). In this article, meaning is studied from different perspectives. It is hoped that this study could be useful and helpful to the field of philosophy.

This study tried to specify the extent to which Iranian EFL instructors’ teacher immunity was influenced by their affective factors. To this end, first, the researchers selected 129 (61 male & 68 female) EFL teachers from among the teachers at diverse language institutes, high schools, and universities in Urmia as the participants of the study. Second, they used an emotional intelligence questionnaire, a personality scale, and a teacher immunity questionnaire in order to determine the participants’ emotional intelligence, personality traits, and teacher immunity, respectively, during a three-week period of time. The results of the study accentuated that the participants’ emotional intelligence, along with their neuroticism, openness to experience, and conscientiousness personality traits made unique contributions to explaining their teacher immunity in descending order of statistical significance. The researchers ascribed the obtained results to the close affinity between the aforementioned affective factors and the sub-components of teacher immunity. The results may assist the teacher education course developers to overhaul the pre-service and in-service teacher education courses in foreign language contexts.

Willingness to communicate is subject to the moment-by-moment fluctuations in the classroom. Therefore, teachers’ decisive role comes to the foreground as they can increase learners’ desire to communicate at a particular moment by their interventions. Online instruction, despite furnishing learners with authentic material, has failed to culminate in communication thanks to connection problems or lack of non-verbal clues. Thus, the present study aimed to explore Iranian EFL teachers’ perceptions of strategies to promote willingness to communicate of learners in online classes. The mixed-methods design was employed to answer the research questions. To this end, a self-designed questionnaire was first piloted and then administered to the main sample which included thirty-seven teachers. The questionnaire subsumed five effective factors garnered from extant literature. Five teachers were interviewed as to their perceptions of pros and cons of promoting WTC in online classrooms. The results indicated that teachers’ motivational strategies were perceived to promote WTC best in online classes followed by teacher immediacy. Qualitative reports also corroborated the numerical data. Lack of non-verbal clues i.e. body language was perceived to decrease learners’ motivation and participation; however, technological resources like games were reported to increase WTC in online classes. Teachers should pay heed to their crucial role in inciting positive atmosphere and get better equipped to capitalize on online affordances to increase participation in online classes.

Inspired by the works of scholars who have done great efforts to improve study quality in second language (L2) papers in the recent decade (e.g., Hu & Plonsky, 2019; Larson-Hall, 2012, 2017; Plonsky, 2013; Norris, 2015), this paper aims to capture the perceptions of Iranian authors around issues of quality that have been emphasized by publication manuals (e.g., APA, 2010; Wilkinson, 1999) and recommendation (e.g., Norris et al., 2015). The triggering idea behind the study was that in order to adhere to standards of quality, authors, first, need to perceive the issues highly-associated with the concept. Accordingly, a questionnaire of quality developed by Larson-Hall and Jahanbakhsh (2020) was used to capture respondents’ perceptions. Out of the 1029 authors who had published quantitative papers in 10 Iranian journals from 2015 to 2019, 885 authors could be contacted and 128 answered the questionnaire. The results showed that respondents saw fundamental issues like random sampling, reliability, validity, checking normality, and reporting inferential statistics as the most highly-associated features with quality while the concerned issues by scholars, like generalizability in convenience samplings, use of delayed posttest, reporting non-significant results, and importance of visual presentations are less acknowledged. Moreover, using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), it was revealed that a path of perception exists which starts from sampling issues and going through design and statistical to reporting practices. It was recommended that authors take the issues of study quality more seriously in both their works and the context of education.

Classroom management and immediacy have always been the interesting topics for the researchers throughout the time. However, barely has any study been done on both of teacher/learner points of view. This study is a survey type research, investigating the relationship between teachers' classroom management, verbal and nonverbal immediacy as perceived by their students. The sample contained 20 teachers and 244 students taught by the same teachers from three English language institutes in Tabriz. The instruments for the measurement of classroom management was Teacher Classroom Management Self-Reflection Inventory called "The Incredible Years" designed by Webster-Stratton (2012), and the questionnaire for measuring verbal and nonverbal immediacy was designed by Gorham (1988). The Wilcoxon test and spearman correlation revealed that although there was a relationship between verbal teacher immediacy (VTI) and classroom management (CM), but, there was no relationship between CM and nonverbal teacher immediacy (NVTI). Further data analysis showed that teachers VTI was higher than NVTI. The basic tool for interacting with students is the behavioral cues, so for the improvement of NVTI of teachers some pedagogical implications were provided, like including it in teacher training courses (TTC). Finally, some suggestions for further studies are stated for other researchers to conduct more comprehensible studies. Extended Abstract Classroom management and immediacy have always been the interesting topics for the researchers throughout the time. However, barely has any study been done on both of teacher/learner points of view.  This study is a survey type research, investigating the relationship between teachers' classroom management and verbal and nonverbal immediacy as perceived by their students. The sample contained 20 teachers and 244 students taught by these 20 teachers from three English language institutes in Tabriz. The instruments for the measurement of classroom management was Teacher Classroom Management Self-Reflection Inventory called "The Incredible Years" designed by Webster-Stratton (2012), and the questionnaire for measuring verbal and nonverbal immediacy was designed by Gorham (1988). The Wilcoxon test and spearman correlation revealed that although there was a relationship between verbal teacher immediacy (VTI) and classroom management (CM), but there was no relationship between CM and nonverbal teacher immediacy (NVTI). Further data analysis showed that teachers VTI was higher than NVTI. The basic tool for interacting with students is the behavioral cues, so some pedagogical implications were provided for the improvement of NVTI of teachers like including it in teacher training courses (TTC). Finally, some suggestions for further studies are stated for other researchers to conduct more comprehensible studies. 1. Introduction To make a class as effective and productive as possible, we have to manage it with orchestration and coordination of entire classroom processes (Dobrescu & Grosu, 2014). According to Van Petegem, Creemers, Rosseel and Aelterman, (2006), in order to create a classroom in which the students have good feelings, a teacher must manage the conditions of the class and be cautious and make a strong learning environment. Marzano and Marzanos' research (2003) revealed that the action taken by teachers in classrooms is important compared to what educational systems are doing. They believe that learning and teaching can't occur in a classroom which is not managed properly. Talebi, Davodi and Khoshroo, (2015, p.592) believe that teachers' aim is to create positive or negative interactions with herself/himself and the learners. If the interaction is positive, then the learners are more eager to do their duties, do exercises, carry out assignments, and learn enthusiastically. As stated by Mehrabian (1996) for the first time, immediacy is the communication behaviors that “enhance closeness to and nonverbal interaction with another” (p. 203). He believes that by increasing “physical proximity” and “perceptual availability” of the speaker to the listener, the instructor is able to have greater immediacy. There are various studies about the relationship between immediacy and the successful learning in teaching processes. “The relationship of teacher immediacy to student learning has been explored in a series of studies which indicate that a teacher's use of communicative behavior that enhances physical and psychological closeness is positively related to learning outcomes” (Gorham & Christophel, 1990, p.46). The study is going to answer the following research questions: 1- Is there any significant relationship between the learners’ perceptions of their teachers' verbal and nonverbal immediacy? 2- Is there any significant relationship between the teachers’ classroom management skills and the learners' perceptions of their verbal immediacy? 3- Is there any significant relationship between the teachers’ classroom management skills and the learners’ perceptions of their non-verbal immediacy? 2. Literature Review 2.1. Classroom Management Studies have shown that despite the courses for teacher training in most countries, teachers have always had problem with class management in real context of teaching process (Martin, Yin & Baldwin, 1998).  Teachers' point of views and opinions on student behaviors and the interaction between student and teacher shapes the way they behave about classroom management tasks. Moreover, their basic understanding of classroom management and dynamics can affect this important task (Kagan, 1992).  Classroom management is not just merely the physical arrangement. A teacher should manage to teach a subject in a given period of time. Thus without the control in a teaching process, a teacher might not be successful because no one can force a student to learn a subject (Demirel, 2009). 4. Results and Discussion 4.1. Results and Discussion This research had three parts of classroom management, verbal immediacy and nonverbal immediacy. For the accurate results among these three variables, the questionnaires were given to both sides (teachers and the learners). The classroom management questionnaire was filled by the teachers and the immediacy questionnaires were filled by the learners, to see if actually what do they think of the accomplishments of these variables. The previous researches were all one sided as they investigated these variables from teacher or learner point of view. However, the main aim of this research was to mix their ideas and see if there is any relationship between their ideas. Unlike Derkhshani's (2016) study, in which the data analysis revealed that there was a significant relationship between nonverbal behavior of teachers and their classroom management, surprisingly, the present research revealed the fact that there is no relationship between these two variables. The reason behind this difference of results may be the process of data gathering in which the present study gathered the classroom management questionnaire from the teacher and nonverbal immediacy questionnaire from learners of the same teacher.  This comparison of the ideas of both sides may result in more accurate conclusions.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of flashcard and wordlist strategies with regard to concrete vs. abstract words on vocabulary development of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. The current study had a quasi-experimental design and consisted of two experimental groups and one control group. Ninety Iranian intermediate university students participated in this study. The participants were determined on the basis of Quick Placement Test (QPT). Eighty vocabulary items were selected from the wordlists presented on Paul Nation’s website for the treatment, and they were applied via two different strategies (flashcard/wordlist), and two different kinds of words (concrete/abstract). A pretest, an immediate test and a posttest were administered. To analyze the results, the SPSS software was employed. The experimental groups using flashcards and wordlists were found to outperform the control group. However, no statistically difference was observed between flashcard vs. wordlist strategies. Also, the findings showed that students will probably remember the concrete words for a longer period of time in comparison to abstract words. These findings will probably give insights into language pedagogy by encouraging English teachers to choose the teaching materials which can facilitate the process of teaching and learning.

There is a close and narrow relationship between linguistics and philosophy. Throughout the history, they have had tremendous influences upon each other. Linguistics has always tried to look and analyze meaning from different angles. By the same token, philosophers have always tried to use and apply words and their meanings in different physical and linguistic contexts. Philosophers select and use words and phrases very carefully. It is because words and phrases are their only tools and means of transferring their thoughts and ideas. In this way, linguists try to analyze these words and phrases from different points of view, whether morphology, semantics, or pragmatics. In this article, we try to study words and their meanings from semantic and pragmatic perspective. In this regard, the key concepts that play a role in philosophy are scrutinized which include denotation (core meaning) and connotation (additional, emotional, and attitudinal meaning). Meanwhile, some other important ways of analyzing philosophical texts are considered based on presupposition, cohesion, and coherence. It is hoped that this article to be useful and helpful to both linguists and philosophers.

Vocabulary knowledge is a basis for language education and use as well as for achieving higher order language skills. It is also regarded as the key component of language education. It is believed that knowledge of Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLSs) can be an effective device for understanding vocabulary. In this quasi-experimental study, the participants were divided into experimental and control groups. The Quick Placement Test was used to select sixty Iranian female students. Two strategy types (rote and mnemonic) were employed in the experimental groups and learners were instructed thirty vocabulary items from Barron's 1100 Essential Words during three sessions. These strategies were not instructed for the control group. Finally, an immediate and a delayed posttest were conducted. The collected data were analyzed both descriptively and inferentially through ANCOVA. It was found out that the group which used mnemonic strategy, rather than rote-based learning strategy, had a significantly better performance compared to the control group. This study implies that using VLSs can result in a better retention.

Language is the sign of mental development and an instrument of understanding. It has a very important role in cognitive and social development. Language is mingled with thought. Thoughts are conveyed through language. Words are the basic units, which construct the spoken and written language. In order to express the ideas, one needs words. Therefore, words and the way of learning them are essential processes for all the speakers of a language. Communication is possible through speaking. However, in order to be a successful communicator, it is necessary to pay attention to all the skills of the language. Learning a foreign language is an essential component in foreign language learners’ lives for the challenges that they face during this process. Most of the challenges posed in this stage are due to the learners’ limited exposure to that language. Vocabulary learning is at the core of language learning. Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLS) facilitate this process. The present study aimed to investigate three common types of vocabulary learning strategies, including rote memorization, mnemonic memorization, and contextualized memorization used by advanced Iranian EFL learners. The design of this study was quasi-experimental. It consisted of three experimental groups and one control group. A website was designed by the researchers for the sake of this study. The website helped the researchers in the process of scoring and reduced the probability of cheating among the participants, so it increased the reliability of the study. Some eighty advanced female Iranian learners (20 in each group) participated in this study. The participants were selected according to the results of the Quick Placement Test. The advanced level learners were chosen on the basis of convenient sampling. At the beginning, a pretest was administered to the learners. Approximately one hundred and fifty words were selected from the book named “Borron’s Essential Words for the TOEFL”. The words were taught to the learners in fifty sessions by three different rote, mnemonic and contextualized. The teacher was one of the researchers. There were also immediate and delayed posttests at the end; however, the immediate and delayed posttests were different in the order of the questions and choices. The results were analyzed by SPSS software. A one-way ANOVA was conducted. In terms of inferential statistics, this study showed that there is a significant difference between the experimental groups and the control group. The mnemonic group was meaningfully better than the contextualized group, the contextualized group outperformed the rote group meaningfully, and finally the rote group had a better performance when compared with the control group.  In descriptive terms, the findings of this study showed that those who were taught using the mnemonic strategy had the highest mean in both immediate (M=39.3) and delayed (M=39) posttests, and showed a better performance than the other groups. The findings of the study have some implications for classroom practice. Therefore, this study might have some beneficial pedagogical implications for both teachers and learners by helping them redefine their proper responsibilities. In a broad sense, this study may help teachers to remember that no single L2 instructional methodology fits all learners. Strategies help determine a particular learner’s ability and willingness to work within the framework of various instructional methodologies. It is foolhardy to think that a single L2 methodology could possibly fit an entire class filled with learners who have a range of stylistic and strategic preferences. Instead, the teachers should be aware of different strategies used by learners and apply the most suitable methods. These methods could allow creative variety to meet the needs of all learners in class. The results of the present study can make writers aware of the conventions of their discipline and help teachers to be careful in using different vocabulary learning strategy types to develop vocabulary and to improve reading and writing in a more natural way. The findings of this research can also contribute to the improvement of the ability to understand the language of written academic discourse. In the present study the application of vocabulary learning strategies resulted in successful learning among language learners. It is worth mentioning that applying these strategies are fruitful for both teachers and learners. They can help both groups to be successful in their practices. Also, even less proficient learners and novice teachers can find something interesting. However, syllabus designers and material writers can use the advantages of these vocabulary learning strategies in writing and developing English materials.

Task features and learner variables are believed to play an important role in language outcome. Thus, the present factorial between-subject study set out to determine the main and interaction effects of task manipulation in terms of intentional reasoning and planning time and learner variables with regard to language learning aptitude on Iranian intermediate learners’ written performance in letter writing tasks. Lexical and syntactical complexity and also accuracy were the linguistic elements measured as dependent variables in the writers’ performance. First, the participants were randomly divided into three experimental groups; each group included 70, 76, 80 participants respectively. Then, they were assigned to planning and no-planning groups within each experimental group, and there were the same number of high-aptitude and low-aptitude participants in each planning group. Three letter writing tasks with different degrees of reasoning demands (low, medium, high) were designed, and each experimental group received one of these tasks. The ones in planning groups were also given 10 extra minutes for planning before performing the tasks.

Among the latest efficient approaches in language teaching, Task-based Language Teaching has turned up to be the main approach in a way that it is currently recognized as the leading teaching approach in language instruction (Ji & Pham, 2017). Using the proper tasks based on the proficiency level of the learners can facilitate the process of language learning. The present study aimed at investigating the effect of open and closed tasks on improving Iranian EFL learners’ oral performance at intermediate and advanced levels. This study is a quasi-experimental research with pretest and posttest design. The participants of the study included 55 female EFL learners at Jahadeh Daneshgahi language institute in Tabriz city, who were selected through cluster random sampling method. The data were collected through 10 open tasks and 10 closed tasks along with an oral pretest and an oral posttest checklist that examined grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, breakdown-response, interaction, and speech flow of learners’ oral performance. The tasks were selected from the Four Corner series (Richards & Bohlke, 2012). The data were analyzed by a two-way MANCOVA test and ANCOVA. The obtained results indicated that open and closed tasks can improve EFL learners’ oral performance and there is no significant difference between open and closed tasks in developing learners’ oral performance in both levels. Besides, at the advanced level, the amount of oral performance development is greater than the intermediate level. The outcomes of this study can be useful for EFL teachers and learners regarding using the optimal kind of tasks in improving oral performance.