Awareness, in language learning, is a focused area of debate encompassing many different aspects of language teaching research, especially that of grammar. Although the learner’s awareness has been widely taken into account, noticing, which embraces the meaning of awareness, is something that lacks empirical data and literature in teacher’s cognition when it comes to second language teaching studies. Therefore, this qualitative study aimed to explore the teachers’ theoretical and practical cognition in conceptualizing and using noticing in teaching and practicing language; in addition, the congruency between teachers’ theoretical beliefs and actual practices were investigated. To this end, a total of 30 novice and experienced teachers were interviewed and the role of teaching experience as an overarching concept affecting teachers’ beliefs and performance was detected by using constant comparative analysis. Findings revealed seven conceptual themes out of the collected data as pedagogical effects, type of input, skill type, when to notice, noticing techniques, time allocation, and measurement. Then, six teachers from the same sample group were observed for possible inconsistencies in their teaching practices and their cognition about the concept. The discrepancies between the teachers’ stated beliefs and actual practices revealed that teaching experience has a relative impact on teacher’s performance. پرونده مقاله

Although FLIP learning has been used as an effective face-to-face and online learning pedagogy, there is a scarcity of research on students' English speaking skill using FLIP learning in these two modalities. Therefore, this study set out to investigate the effect of face-to-face vs. online FLIP learning on the speaking skill of lower-intermediate Iranian university EFL learners. The study was quasi-experimental with 32 participants (18 female and 14 male) whose homogeneity in terms of language proficiency at lower-intermediate level was assured through the administration of Oxford Placement Test. Then, the participants were randomly assigned to two experimental groups, both of which took the pretest and posttest of speaking. One group participated in face-to-face FLIP classroom and the other one took part in online FLIP context using Adobe Connect. The findings revealed that using FLIP learning significantly improved the speaking skill of the two groups since the participants of both groups performed more successfully on the post-test as compered to the pre-test. The findings also indicated that the face-to-face FLIP learning participants outperformed the online FLIP learning participants. This means that using face-to-face FLIP learning in which the students had face-to-face interactions had a positive effect on their speaking skill more effectively. پرونده مقاله

Kumaravadivelue’s (2012) language teacher education for a global society known as KARDS has gathered little momentum in the context of Iran due to scarcity of studies on it. To fill this gap, the present research investigated Iranian EFL teachers’ perceptions of KARDS with regard to variables including teaching context, gender, and teaching experience. To this end, a KARDS questionnaire was designed, constructed, and validated by the researchers, and the results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the validity of the questionnaire. Later, it was administered to 400 English teachers in Tehran. Then, 20 participants volunteered for follow-up interviews, and their verbatim interview transcripts were content analyzed. The results of descriptive statistics and MANOVA indicated that teachers’ perceptions were positive for the majority of items except theorization, observation of colleagues’ classes, and needs analysis done by outsiders, and there were significant differences in teachers’ perceptions of KARDS with regard to their teaching context, gender, and teaching experience. Also, the qualitative investigation of teachers’ perceptions confirmed the findings of the quantitative part. پرونده مقاله

Teachers need to know new applications for developing online materials and then they should become aware of different ways to present them to online audience. This study tries to help ELT teachers to overcome challenges and difficulties of vodcasting by recognizing their social and biological motives (Activity Theory), and using Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). It can alter teachers’ negative attitudes towards online materials development via providing useful tools and techniques to become better producers of their knowledge to survive professionally. This QUAL-quan inquiry initiated with 10 University professors of Islamic Azad University-South Tehran Branch. All these participants answered ‘Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)’ questionnaire, ‘Personality Test and Job Satisfaction’, ‘Three-D Test’, and ‘Spatial Recognition Test’. The researcher conducted semi-structured interviews with those whose data were grounded and initiated from open coding, down to axial coding, and finalized with selective coding. Participants produced vodcasts as pre-test. Then, they received the treatments on an exclusively launched ‘MArt’ Telegram group in the form of the researcher-designed audios and videos and YouTube samples. As a post-test, each of the participants made another vodcast. Then, two experts who are ELT university lecturers evaluated the two sets of recorded data. Finally, all the interpretations and analyses were presented in different graphs and charts along with researcher’s interpretation based on theoretical frameworks. The results show that whether ELT teachers are capable of producing vodcasts or not. Besides, VTS help teachers to become much more visually literate and produce more successful vodcasts. Both treatments of the present study and the derived codes can be used in teacher education, and they can turn into a task-based digital or paper-based coursebooks benefiting M.A. TEFL students. پرونده مقاله

This study aimed to examine the extent of familiarity of speaking instructors with the notion of Project Based Learning (PBL) and to find the effect of face-to-face PBL method on speaking ability of university language learners at different language proficiency levels. To reach this goal, four university speaking instructors‟ were asked to score the learners after some sessions of instructions. Then, to have teacher education sessions, the instructors were interviewed and given handouts on the basis of PBL themes. Af- ter the teacher training, their classes were observed and video recorded. To find the effect of the instruc- tion on both teacher education and students learning, the instructors were asked to score the learners at the end of the speaking courses. To examine the differences in the speaking scores of language learners be- fore and after the teacher education, a paired samples t-test was performed. The results indicated that all participants in the groups progressed in their speaking skills by comparing their pretests and posttests. The outcomes suggest the policy makers should provide opportunities for university instructors to observe principles of PBL in language teaching and replace the traditional methods and methods with it. پرونده مقاله

The significant role of needs analysis in enriching the design and content of ESP course books could be in no way ignored. The present study based on a three-year longitudinal needs analysis study of medical students, a medical ESP course book was developed and approved by experts. The feedback of the four-semester practice of the approved book revealed that practitioners showed great interest in the translation notion of the course book, hence considering the cultural turn in translation studies, the researchers opted to compare the satisfaction level of the medical students once they received a translation-focused instruction based on transliteration strategy. Thus two samples of 74 and 67 medical students were randomly selected by the Training Department at Islamic Azad University, Tehran Medical Sciences and through a quantitative approach; an accredited needs-analysis questionnaire was utilized to ascertain the needs, desires and satisfaction of the medical students. Comparing both groups’ needs and satisfaction questionnaire results revealed that the transliteration-focused group displayed a higher level of satisfaction and fulfilment during the ESP course. The study suggests that manipulative transliteration is the pivoting factor in empowering teachers, prosperous students, materials developers, and stakeholders as the truly involved practitioners of medical ESP courses. پرونده مقاله