Journal of Modern Research in English Language Studies
Volume:7 Issue: 4, Autumn 2020

Personality types and professional/psychological attributes of teachers have long been the subject of extended debate and research in all fields of education, namely ELT. Accordingly, the focus of this study was to investigate the relationship between introvert and extrovert EFL teachers’ adversity quotient and their effective classroom management. To this end, the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI) was distributed among 200 teachers who volunteered to participate in this study and ultimately the 60 teachers who were introverts and the 60 who were extroverts were chosen or the study. All the participants were 30 females and 30 males aged 25-50 with at least three years of teaching experience in different language schools in Tehran. The Adversity Quotient Profile (AQP) was administered among these 120 participants and each teacher’s class was subsequently observed by the researchers through which the teacher’s classroom management was assessed using Murdoch’s (2000) Checklist. To find out the relationship between the two main variables of this study, both descriptive and inferential statistics including Pearson Correlation and linear regression were carried out. The results showed that both introvert and extrovert teachers’ AQ was a significant predictor of their classroom management. These findings delineate that teachers’ AQ is possibly a more decisive factor predicting their classroom management than their extroversion/introversion.

Upholding the integration of form and meaning, focus on form approach can increase both accuracy and fluency of EFL learners. This paper evaluates the role of focus on form approach, i.e. input enhancement, on the acquisition of passive voice in English. The degree of implicitness or explicitness of instruction is explored whether it affects learning of a specific form of the language. The pretest-treatment-posttest design was used in this quasi-experimental research with two groups: experimental (n=20) and control (n= 17). First, a proficiency test was administered to guarantee the learners’ homogeneity. Then, a pretest was administered to examine the learners’ passive voice knowledge. The experimental group received the instruction through input enhancement technique. However, it was taught to the control group through the traditional method (i.e. focus on formS). The superiority of focus on form technique over the focus on formS was revealed through the one-way ANOVA and post hoc test. It can be claimed that the findings of this study are important for second and foreign language learning and teaching in that it indicated the advantage of input enhancement technique of focus on form approach over the traditional one – i.e. focus on formS – in strengthening of grammatical competence in intermediate EFL learners.

This study aimed to illuminate the diagnostic potential of the interactionist dynamic assessment (DA) to identify the candidates’ academic reading difficulties on the IELTS Reading test. Furthermore, DA and its interactive environment seem to provide an opportunity to diagnose the possible linguistic and cognitive roots of the academic second language (SL) reading difficulties that the modest user IELTS candidates faced. In so doing, three participants whose scores in the academic IELTS reading sub-score were 5/5on a scale of 1-9 were recruited to participate in this study. The data were collected through observation and interaction based on DA principals through 36 individualized sessions (12 sessions for each participant). In each session, they were assigned to answer 13-14 academic reading comprehension questions independently and then the mediator and the learners collaboratively reviewed the questions answered in the first stage. The feedback types offered deliberately ranged from very implicit to very explicit. The interactions were video recorded, transcribed word-by-word, and investigated. The findings indicated participants' difficulties in locating specific information, interpretation of words or phrases in the text, understanding the key ideas in a paragraph level, inference making, and interpretation of the writer's intention and viewpoint. From diagnostic standpoint, it is recommended that the interactionist DA be used as an independent or complementary diagnostic tool in order to diagnose academic reading difficulties and their linguistic and cognitive roots.

Due to the rapid expansion of knowledge and ever-increasing growth of international communication, the need to highly qualified translators is felt more than ever before. Not being satisfied with the traditional approaches to teaching translation, translation experts, practitioners, and researchers argue for a move to a more team-based, experiential, and cooperative approach. This study aimed to investigate if teaching translation through cooperative learning improved university students’ class-engagement, self-esteem, and self-confidence. Having administered the class-engagement, self-esteem, and self-confidence questionnaires, the control and experimental groups, with 15 students in each, received the treatment for 10 sessions. The experimental group did the translation tasks through cooperative method in groups of 2 or 3. However, the control group was taught through traditional method, and students translated the text individually. Once the treatment was over, the questionnaires were distributed again, and responses were recorded. Employing one-way ANCOVA, the data were analyzed. The results revealed that cooperative learning improved students’ self-confidence, self-esteem, and class-engagement. Using this technique, teachers can create a more relaxed, competitive, and stress-free atmosphere, where students are keen to participate in the class discussions and enjoy the cognitive and affective benefits. The results are discussed with regard to self-efficacy theory, attribution theory, and self-worth theory.

Speaking in a foreign language has always been, and still is, one of the most anxiety inducing activities. This speaking anxiety may be both the result or the cause of low self-efficacy in speaking. Finding ways of improving the speaking self-efficacy and reducing speaking anxiety has long been a concern among teaching practitioners. The present study was an attempt to investigate the comparative effects of scaffolded and un-scaffolded feedback on EFL learners’ speaking anxiety and self-efficacy. The participants were 90 intermediate male EFL learners at Safir Language Institute in Tehran who were selected out of a total number of 120 participants who took a standard PET test. The participants were divided into two experimental groups and one control group. They were given questionnaires of speaking anxiety and speaking self-efficacy as pretests followed by 10 sessions of treatment using scaffolded feedback, un-scaffolded feedback and no feedback. Then, they filled out the same questionnaires as posttests. The collected data were analyzed using the one-way ANCOVA procedure. It was observed that scaffolded feedback could reduce the amount of speaking anxiety, while increasing speaking self-efficacy. This was followed by un-scaffolded feedback, which was presented through recast. These findings have theoretical implications for researchers and theoreticians as well as pedagogical implications for language teachers and learners.

Despite scholarly criticisms censuring the monopoly of Eurocentric and Anglophonic literatures in English as Foreign or Second Language (EFL/ESL) teaching, cross-cultural literatures have not received due attention in such contexts, Iranian one as a case. Addressing the gap, in this practitioner-led inquiry, the researcher attempted for integrating Comparative Literature in English language teaching through deploying translated Persian works of literature apropos of thematically-resembling foreign ones. The participants of the study were twenty Iranian English Literature freshmen who were taking a reading comprehension course in a state university in Tehran. Partially framing the practice within reader-response approach to reading, the teacher-researcher concentrated on the ways by which the students transacted with the selected literary texts. The analysis of the class events and the students’ reflective writings revealed that the students drew upon their sociocultural and literary backgrounds to construct meanings of the texts and to establish connections between them and their personal and social milieus. Considering the mounting concerns about the linguistic and cultural imperialism of English and its teaching, practices like this may hint at the way local sources of knowledge could find a niche in EFL classrooms. Keywords: English as Foreign Language (EFL), Comparative Literature, Persian literature, Practitioner inquiry, Reader-response theory.