Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research
Volume:11 Issue: 2, Jul 2023

This paper makes a strong connection between the need for innovation in second language pedagogy and the need for language teachers to develop a good understanding of how language develops in our minds/brains. The future for innovative language pedagogy requires that language teachers fully develop the following: (i) a working definition of the nature of language; (ii) a working definition of communication; and (iii) a good knowledge of how language acquisition happens. In the field of both language teaching and language research, there is a need for teachers and researchers to reconnect to second language acquisition theories to ensure that any decisions about language pedagogy are informed and evidence-based. The main question which must be addressed by the experts is: How do we make the knowledge outlined above, commonplace in language teaching?

This study was an inquiry to investigate English for Specific Purposes (ESP) teachers' transitional experiences in the third space. To that end, 17 ESP teachers wrote autobiographical narratives focusing on their critical challenges in the third space and their approaches to dealing with them. The narratives were analyzed using Creswell's (2007) procedures to analyze the narratives, including managing the data, reading and memoing, describing the memos, classifying, and interpreting. The findings showed that ESP teachers' main challenges in the third space were negotiation tensions, identity struggles, the inefficiency of their previous experiences, and institutional barriers to change. Furthermore, ESP teachers' approaches to evolving their professional identity in the third space encompassed addressing reflective teaching and criticality, seeking external support, and creating a third space community of practice. It can be concluded from the findings of the current study that the third space can be a double-edged sword for ESP teachers since, on the one hand, some tensions in the third space create some problems for their professional identity development. On the other hand, ESP teachers need to take some approaches to address the third space tensions, helping them evolve their professional identity.

Emergentist, usage-based L2 research has witnessed that emphasizing formulaic sequences as entry points in meaning-based instructional contexts contributes to the development of linguistic comprehension and production. Related studies have thus far striven to find the most effective methods of highlighting these word strings. This study explored the effects of the focus on lexis (FonL) approach on L2 learners’ development of phraseological competence. Furthermore, it probed whether incidental and intentional FonL approaches result in any differential effects on the learners’ development of phraseology. Participants were 60 L2 learners in three intact classes randomly assigned to one control and two experimental FonL groups. Their general language proficiency was measured by administering a Cambridge PET Test. Additionally, a pre-test was used to measure their prior knowledge of phraseology. The control group received the mainstream typical instruction, whereas the experimental groups received incidental versus intentional FonL, differentially heightening noticing of conventionalized lexis expressions in L2 reading. A parallel post-test was administered to measure the development of learners’ phraseological competence. ANCOVA results indicated that the lexis groups made greater gains in their phraseology as compared to the control group. Moreover, differential effects were evidenced specifically in favor of the use of intentional FonL. The findings indicate that the varied amount of attention L2 learners pay to aspects of formulaicity in language use can influence the extent to which lexis-based input and interaction lead to intake. Theoretical and pedagogical implications of the study are discussed at the end.

While several research studies have investigated the impact of peer review training (PRT) on writing quality of L2 students, effects of PRT on revision quantity and quality remain vague. The purpose of this study was to compare revision quantity and quality before and after a scaffolded PRT following Anderson’s proceduralization theory. Twenty French-major Vietnamese college students were trained for two months to become acquainted with peer review processes: detection, diagnosis and correction. Texts and feedback from pairs of students were collected and analysed in terms of cognitive revision processes. Mann-Whitney U tests showed significant effects of the scaffolded PRT on detection quantity, diagnosis quantity, diagnosis quality and correction quality. Students made more error detections, more compliments, more diagnoses, and more macro-level detections but fewer micro-level detections in the first draft of their partner’s text after PRT. They generated better diagnoses in the first draft of their partner’s text and better corrections in the final draft of their text after training. The author recommends that language teachers continue to offer scaffolded PRT to improve students’ writing competence.

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine how teacher collaboration influenced the participation of Leo, an ESL student, in a collaboratively taught classroom at a middle school in the Southeastern United States. To this aim, this study consisted of two collaborative cycles and used the constant comparative method to analyze the influences of teacher collaboration on Leo’s participation. The findings showed that teacher collaboration generated more opportunities for Leo’s increased participation. During the first cycle, Leo could focus on his own learning outcomes without assisting his friend and fellow student. Moving into the second cycle, Leo was able to confidently participate in the collaborative discussion because of the interactive lesson design and the ESL teacher’s (Amanda’s) impact on the collaborative process. The findings highlight the social nature of student participation that is defined by the teachers in collaboration. The findings also call for teachers’ culturally responsive practices and additional studies to examine how teachers can work together to yield more equitable and inclusive spaces for student participation in the collaboratively taught classroom.

Social networking service platforms and social media have generated a significant amount of discussion and debate regarding their use in second or foreign language learning. However, leveraging digital tools with pedagogical constructs to enhance accessibility and engagement in teaching and learning English idiomatics has not received equal attention. Consequently, discovering new modes of learning in the formulation and implementation of English idiomatics instruction in the modern digital age is a must. This study investigated Chinese EFL learners’ development of idiomatic competence. It examined English vivid phrasal (VP) idiom learning in classrooms supporting WeChat use vis-à-vis the classrooms supporting traditional modes of language instruction without WeChat. It also explored the extent to which WeChat-enhanced instruction can affect learners’ motivation, attitude, collaboration, and experience. The participants of this study were 55 first-year English major students who took part in an intensive, eight-week idiom-training module. A pre-/post-test and a questionnaire were used to uncover how a WeChat-driven learning environment can mediate the way students acquired Post-Lexical Level (PLL) VP idioms and what their general perceptions towards using WeChat in the idiom-oriented activities were. The results indicated that there was a statistically significant difference in achievement between the WeChat-enhanced group and the traditional face-to-face group. Analysis of data further revealed that peer interactions supported by WeChat are likely to be essential learning constructs in furthering idiomatic competence development.

The indefinite nature of test fairness and different interpretations and definitions of the concept have stirred a lot of controversy over the years, necessitating the reconceptualization of the concept. On this basis, this study aimed to explore the empirical validity of Kunnan’s (2008) Test Fairness Framework (TFF) and revisit the established test fairness conceptualization following the principles of grounded theory. To this end, 10 university lecturers of TEFL, 20 high school English language teachers, 15 PhD students in TEFL, and 15 MA students in TEFL participated in open-ended and semi- structured interviews. Following grounded theory rubrics, the researchers read, codified, and analyzed the obtained interview data. Simultaneously, memos were written, comparisons were drawn, possibilities were seen, and robust categories were developed through theoretical sampling. This process continued iteratively until the categories saturated. Next, the categories were juxtaposed and compared to see how they fit together and finally several major categories emerged accordingly. The opinions were diagrammed and a visual image of the categories and their relevant scope, power, and associations were represented to construct a theoretical logic. The new hierarchy of test fairness categories became discernible as the interviewees named distinct characteristics for a fair test. The identified levels of the new conceptualization of test fairness were entitled validity, construction and structure, administration, scoring, reporting, decision-making, consequences, security, explicitness, accountability, equality, and rights. The need for advancing context-specific and locally agreed-upon equity principles as driven by the impossibility of the fulfillment of the equality principle in the real world conditions is an important finding of this study with concrete implications for both theory and practice in the field.

Students' engagement plays a pivotal role in how they respond to teacher’s written feedback on their writings. Despite the ubiquity of prior research on teacher’s corrective feedback in EFL writing classrooms, university students' engagement with the teacher's written corrective feedback (WCF) in tertiary writing classrooms receives scanty attention in the literature of second and foreign language writing. To fill this gap, this classroom case study aims to explore how 25 undergraduate students from an Indonesian university experience and engage with the teacher's WCF on their writings. Data were collected from the documentation of the students' essays, semi-structured interviews, and teacher-student conferences. Empirical evidence showed that the participants found the teachers' WCF helpful. Most of the students felt positively engaged since they received explicitly direct corrections or assistance from the teacher. They preferred the direct WCF because this strategy helped them correct their mistakes in micro writing skills, such as errors in articles, word choice and singular/plural forms, sentence structure, and fragments. However, it was found that negative engagement emerged when the teacher provided the indirect WCF to fix the students' macro writing issues, including unclear main ideas, disconnected ideas, lack of logical sequencing and development of the topic. It mainly resulted from poor English proficiency, less writing experiences, negative beliefs, and attitudes of the students towards the corrective feedback. This suggests that teachers should enact different ways of providing meaningful indirect corrective feedback on students’ writings.

There have been a number of models that probe the interaction of language and culture, including linguistic relativity, linguaculture, and thinking for speaking, to name a few. Despite such a long history of investigating language-culture nexus, there has been a gap regarding the existence of an analytical framework that can assist researchers in systematically analyzing the emerging, complex, and heterogeneous nature of this interaction (Baker, 2015). In order to integrate the aforementioned features into a model that explains language-culture nexus, Sharifian (2017) followed a multidisciplinary approach and expanded Palmer’s (1996) cultural linguistics to propose an analytical framework that investigates the interconnection of language and cultural conceptualizations, the latter of which refers to cultural schema, cultural metaphor, and cultural category collectively. As an attempt to localize such an analysis to a particular context, Persian Linguistics in Cultural Contexts, edited by Alireza Korangy and Farzad Sharifian, attempts to provide an application of Sharifian’s Cultural Linguistics to myriads of linguistic analyses related to translation, academic correspondence, pragmatics, and literature. This edited compendium is a reader-friendly collection of papers that comes across as appropriate both for postgraduate students and Cultural Linguistics researchers. The volume is organized into 11 chapters in addition to a one-page acknowledgement, information on contributors, an introductory chapter, and an index. All the chapters begin with an introductory note and end with concluding remarks, which provide readers with a short summary of the quintessential findings.

With the sudden and unprecedented emergence of COVID-19 in 2020, the need for secure online assessments that yield reliable and valid interpretations of test scores has become of vital importance. This edited book entitled Technology-Assisted Language Assessment in Diverse Contexts is an attempt to provide insight into test developers, test-users, test-takers, and teachers’ experiences and practices across various settings during the emergent technology-assisted language assessment amid COVID-19. Upon reading the book authored by a cohort of both emerging and seasoned researchers in the field of second language assessment, one may recollect the challenges we encountered when we were compelled to shift all testing operations to an online format in response to the sudden onset of the pandemic. We collectively faced unprecedented difficulties and apprehensions regarding the new testing environment, construct and scoring validity, fairness, reliability, test administration, and security. Adapting pen-and-pencil tests to online test administrations ensued a sense of discomfort among all parties involved. This book is an account of such challenges and the lessons learned for the future.