The research on both receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge has attracted the attention of researchers, however, there is paucity of studies in these strategies on productive skills’ enhancement. Hence, this study aimed at finding the effects of receptive and productive types of vocabulary testing on overall and lexical writing performance of Iranian EFL learners. Multiple-choice format of cloze tests and C-tests were selected as receptive and productive forms of vocabulary testing, respectively. For this purpose, 60 Iranian EFL learners with the age range of 20 to 27 at the intermediate level took part in this study. The data gathering tools were Oxford placement test, a writing pretest, a writing posttest, and a rubric. The students were randomly assigned to one control group and two experimental groups whose vocabulary knowledge was assessed using Cloze tests and C-tests. The results of one-way ANOVA showed that using both C-tests and multiple-choice format of Cloze tests was effective in enhancing learners’ overall and lexical aspect of writing performance. The quantitative results approved by the semi-structured interviews from the C-test group that represented more positive attitudes towards the strategy. Analysis of the students’ responses revealed that they found C-tests more effective in improving their active vocabulary knowledge that assisted them in writing better essays. The findings of this study might provide new insights for language teachers and curriculum designers to apply receptive and productive measure of vocabulary to improve different aspects of the writing ability. Manuscript profile

This contrastive study was conducted to contrastively analyze English and Farsi newspaper opinion columns in terms of the frequency of different types of stance markers.60 newspaper opinion columns (30 written in English and 30 written in Farsi) from 10 wide spread newspapers published in the United States and Iran in 2015 were analyzed. Hyland’s (2005) model of stance markers (hedges, boosters, attitude markers, and self-mention) was used as the framework of analysis.The findings revealed that hedges and self-mentions used by English columnists were considerably more frequent than those employed by the Farsi columnists. In contrast, Farsi columnists used large number of boosters and attitude markers. Although, attitude markers were in the last position of sub-categories of stance markers in both corpora.Generally, it could be concluded that the similarities and differences among columnists could be related to the cultural and linguistic preferences of the writers in languages. This study could be beneficial for EFL students and teachers in understanding intercultural linguistic problems in language use, and could be used to lead to creative reading and writing in journalism and ESP courses. Manuscript profile

This study was an attempt to investigate the perception of Iranian senior high school teachers toward critical cultural awareness. The participants of the study comprised of 307 teachers in different high schools in Qazvin. All the participants filled in the Critical Cultural Awareness Questionnaire. The data were then fed into SPSS software and were subjected to Principal Components Analysis. Three factors were extracted and named as CCA in ELT Programs, CCA in ELT Textbooks and Materials, and CCA in General Terms, and the participants’ responses were analyzed based on these factors. The results indicated that the teachers’ critical awareness perception toward ELT Textbooks and Materials was the highest factor. The results of the item analysis revealed that teachers indicate all cultures should have an equal status in ELT textbooks and materials. It was concluded that the teachers’ cultural awareness regarding the integration of culture into mainstream teaching should be raised and they should pay more attention to culture in their classes. One significant implication of this study for EFL teachers and also syllabus designers is that an intercultural curriculum can enable learners to have a better understanding of the target materials. Manuscript profile

This study is a quantitative and functional corpus-based study of self-mention in soft science Master theses. One important purpose of this study was to find out the functions of self-mention in soft science Master theses. For this purpose, 20 soft science Master theses in four disciplines (Applied linguistics, Psychology, Geography, and Political sciences), were randomly selected out of the library of four American universities. Five Master theses were selected in each discipline, in a period of seven years (2007-2014). The present study analyzed only the discussion section of these Master theses. The quantitative analysis of the corpus showed that the frequency of the various forms of self-mention in soft science Master theses is quite different. Among the analyzed resources, “I” with the frequency of 49 was the most frequently used first person pronouns. Based on Tang and John’s (1999) taxonomy of the discourse roles of personal pronouns, self- mentions were functionally analyzed. The findings of the functional dimension of the present study showed that the most frequent discoursal role of self-mentions in the corpus was the recounter of research process, whereas the least frequent role was originator. Manuscript profile

The present study aimed to investigate whether Reports on the results and Comments on the results moves’ recycling in the Research Article (RA) Discussion sections is affected by cultural/disciplinary variations. To this end, 600 empirical RAs in six Soft Science disciplines, including Economics, Sociology, Applied Linguistics, Linguistics, Management, and Psychology, with an equal number in each discipline and culture, published in the period from 2006 to 2018 were selected. Weissberg and Buker’s (1990) move model was used as a starting point to analyze the RAs. First, the Reports on the results and Comments on the results moves were identified in the Results sections. The Chi-Square test was then used to calculate and compare the frequency of their recycling in the Discussion sections across cultures and disciplines. The data analysis results revealed that changes in the disciplines or sociocultural settings do not result in variations in recycling the two moves under study. Given that the current study provides a relatively new framework for scrutinizing scientific discourse, it may promise certain pedagogical implications for native and non-native students in Soft Science disciplines, researchers, English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP) instructors, and course designers. Manuscript profile

The well-established affiliation of metadiscourse research tradition to the philosophy of ESP raises some inevitable expectations on how much and how well the concept has been geared to meet the practical necessities of academic writing pedagogy. In light of such an expectation, a corpus of 35 academic writing coursebooks published during the last three decades was evaluated in terms of the possible realizations of key resources of interaction in pedagogical tasks. Due to its theoretical rigor and analytically operationalized nature, Hyland’s model of metadiscourse (2005a) was taken as the guiding framework for the current evaluation. The quantitative findings emerging from the analysis of the corpus did not sound sufficiently promising, suggesting that those theoretical developments have not yet been ideally translated into pedagogical designs; however, the rich range of resources identified in the tasks (i.e., the 55 categories emerging from the evaluation of the corpus) suggest that the rigorous tradition of research in metadiscourse has contributed to the effective operationalization of the concept for pedagogical objectives. It has been argued that through the effective introduction of the concept of metadiscourse into pedagogical designs and its appropriate operationalization, novice participants of academic/scientific discourse communities would be enabled to redefine the nature of academic communication and get rid of a large number of misconceptions which have become fossilized through long years of the dominance of positivistic thinking. Manuscript profile

Numerous academics in the domains of language instruction, cultural studies, communication studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, etc. have focused on critical cultural awareness (CCA) as a crucial element of intercultural competency. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate whether the cultural elements in Iranian high school coursebooks (Vision Series) have been (un)touched by the ministry of education. To this end, the conversation contents of the Vision Series (levels 1-3) were examined by the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to evaluate possible intercultural competence used in Vision Series. It was found that the content was biased toward the source culture in general. Finally, some ideal ways of presenting culture in the coursebooks were put forward in the form of a cultural rubric. The pedagogical implications of this study are discussed. Manuscript profile

It is assumed that web-based dynamic assessment will continue to thrive and have a profound role in pedagogy. In this regard, an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was selected to consider the effect of web-based dynamic assessment on learners' autonomy. A sample of 60 high school EFL learners was selected non-random for this purpose, and they were categorized into two groups web-based dynamic assessment and the control group based on the convenience sampling method. the learners’ autonomy questionnaire was used as a data-gathering tool for the pretest and posttest in autonomy. The high school students were exposed to web-based DA via a designed web, based on the student's level and need in grammar. However, control learners learned grammar through the traditional or conventional method of instruction. Based on Mann-Whitney U-test results, the learners’ autonomy means scores in web-based DA increased in comparison to those of the control group. The platform and methods employed in this study produce results that are encouraging for the field of language instruction and could produce motivational outcomes in the future. The pedagogical implications of the study will be discussed. Manuscript profile

This study sought to examine the efficacy of contemplative and transformative instruction methods for teaching second language speaking skills. In distinct ways, these techniques depart from customary teaching approaches by placing learners at the focus of education. For this study, 41 EFL students were subjected to each pedagogical technique, and their speaking progress was examined before and after the relevant activities with the Preliminary English Test (PET). In addition, the participants were interviewed so that they could have more knowledge of the efficacy of both techniques. The contemplative group performed practices such as journaling, attitude communication, and vision setting while the transformative group completed activities such as directing real-life role-plays, miscellaneous situations, and drama, to name a few. Both statistical and interview studies revealed that the transformative approach was more effective than the traditional technique in improving learners' post-test speaking scores. The contemplative method, on the other hand, could not be proven to be statistically effective. These results will provide important suggestions for all educators in terms of oral language development and will be examined in greater detail below. Manuscript profile

While both reader and text variables are crucial for second language (L2) learners' success, the impact of the latter has been understudied in the literature. This study investigated the distinct roles of receptive and productive vocabulary testing formats in influencing the lexical diversity and lexical cohesion of L2 descriptive writing. Sixty Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students were randomly assigned to a control group and two experimental groups. Vocabulary knowledge was assessed using Cloze tests (receptive) and C-tests (productive), followed by two descriptive writing tasks evaluated with computational tools. One-way ANOVA revealed that the C-test group produced more lexically cohesive essays, while the Cloze-test group exhibited greater lexical diversity in their descriptions. These findings offer valuable insights for language teachers and curriculum designers, highlighting the potential of incorporating both receptive and productive vocabulary measures to enhance various aspects of L2 writing performance. Manuscript profile