Curriculum Research
Volume:4 Issue: 4, Oct 2023

Grammatical accuracy has been controversial in L2 writing, and the utility of different types of corrective feedback has been enigmatic. Therefore, the present study attempted to explicate the impact of intensive versus extensive recasts through grammar-focused tasks on Iranian EFL learners’ grammatical accuracy in writing. To do so, 60 Iranian male and female EFL learners were assigned into two experimental groups (i.e., intensive and extensive groups) and one control group. After taking the Oxford Placement Test (OPT), the experimental groups received intended corrective feedback, while the control group did not receive any feedback. Then, the data was analyzed deploying both descriptive and inferential statistics. The results revealed the outperformance of experimental groups compared to the control group in the writing post-test. Also, it was concluded that extensive recast can improve EFL learners’ writing performance much better than intensive recast. The findings have some fruitful pedagogical implications for both teachers and materials developers.

This study attempted to explore to what extent each of the three techniques of culture narratives, culture capsules and culture training activities significantly affect the critical cultural awareness of Iranian EFL learners by comparing their means from pretest to post-test questionnaire after ten-session treatment. Furthermore, it investigated whether there are any differences in the effectiveness of these techniques. Regarding the participants, the testing group was 154 undergraduate English language translation students, including both male and female students, forming three experimental groups. This investigation used the quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design. The sampling method was convenience sampling. The homogeneity test and a pre-post critical cultural awareness questionnaire were used to collect data. The collected data were analyzed through Repeated Measures ANOVA and Simple Effect Analysis. Based on the obtained results, there were significant differences between the pretest and the post-test, which means that by applying the techniques mentioned above, the critical cultural awareness of learners increased. Also, there were significant differences between the three groups’ overall means on pre-post critical cultural awareness questionnaires. Considering the three groups, culture narratives, culture capsule and culture training activities, the former outperforms the others. Furthermore, between culture training activities and culture capsule groups, the culture training activities group performed better than the culture capsule group.

The present study explained the role and responsibility of parents and schools in the sexual education of children through library studies and qualitative-descriptive research methods in this field. Child sexual education requires parents to know when, what and how to pass it on to their child. Some parents think that it is better to keep the child away from any sexual issues so that sexual thoughts do not develop in their minds, but sexual questions inevitably arise in the minds of children and the ignorance of parents and their inability to answer some questions of children cause children to get confused about sexual issues. Therefore, the most important issue for them is to grow up in a safe environment physically, mentally and emotionally. In the meantime, due to the prevalence of abnormalities and widespread factors that make sexual deviations more and more widespread, it is the suitable implementation of sexual education methods that requires children to be raised in a healthy environment based on religious supervision and education. Employing such methods also guide their sexual instincts in the right direction, and protect them from all kinds of abnormalities such as masturbation, thirst, oral and verbal sexual abuse, prostitution and pornography that lead to sexual perversion and harm.

The present research was conducted with the aim of designing and developing Job Fatigue Scale for Elementary school Teachers in 2024 employing both qualitative-quantitative data. In the qualitative phase, official documents and opinions from experts in this field were used to obtain the basic structure of the tool, and in the quantitative section, the basic structure of the tool was given to samples of three target communities in three stages to check the validity and reliability of the tool. The findings of the qualitative section showed 51 effective components in reducing job fatigue, based on which the initial pool was prepared with 81 items. The Holsti's coefficient of reliability was 0.864 and the results of the content validity investigation led to the removal of 29 items. Therefore, a 52-item questionnaire was formed based on the qualitative and quantitative data. Consequently, using factor analysis and Cronbach's alpha coefficient led to the removal of 7 items from the final form. Finally the structure of 45 items with 4 educational-psychological, psychological, behavioral-organizational and managerial-organizational factors was confirmed. Among the 4 factors affecting job fatigue, the educational-psychological factor took the first rank and then the psychological, behavioral-organizational and management-organizational factors took the second to fourth ranks respectively. In general, considering the validity and reliability of the developed model, it can be used to evaluate the level of job fatigue of primary school teachers.

This study examined the differences between the effects of reasoning gap tasks and opinion gap tasks on young EFL learners’ classroom engagement. The participants comprised 63 Iranian young EFL learners within the age range of 9 to 12 years old. These 63 learners were selected out of an initial number of 100 male and female EFL learners at the intermediate level based on their performance on a Flyers test. The 63 selected participants were divided into two intact groups consisting of 31 learners in the opinion-gap task experimental group and 32 learners in the reasoning-gap experimental group. Then, an engagement checklist was used by two raters in the two groups as pretest. After that, for ten sessions each lasting for 90 minutes, in one of the groups, the researcher carried out opinion-gap tasks while reasoning gap tasks were implemented in another experimental group. Upon finishing the treatment, the two raters used exactly the same checklist and obtained the posttest engagement scores. The analysis of the data through the parametric test of paired sample t-test indicated that both task types significantly impacted young EFL learners’ classroom engagement. Besides, the results of Mann-Whitney U Test revealed that there was no significant difference between the effects of reasoning gap tasks and opinion gap tasks on young EFL learners’ classroom engagement. Based on the results, EFL teachers are recommended to use both task types to enhance EFL learners’ classroom engagement.