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Digital storytelling (DST) is one of the areas which has entered the field of foreign language education and has proved to be beneficial in learning different language skills. However, it remains underexplored whether and how DST can affect learners' writing skill and motivation to write. The present study sought to investigate the impact of DST on young EFL learners' writing skill and motivation to write through mixing quantitative and qualitative research methods. The data were collected through pre- and post-tests of writing and interviews from 22 EFL learners. The learners were asked to create digital stories based on the pre-taught topics, vocabulary, and structures in their course book within a 10-week implementation process. In addition, structured interviews were carried out to investigate the impact of DST on the learners' motivation. The result was a proof to the efficiency of DST in improving the learners' writing skill. Also, the thematic analysis of the interview data indicated that employing DST had a positive impact on young EFL learners' attitude toward writing and increased their motivation. The primary takeaway from this study is that DST can provide a more favourable and enjoyable teaching context to instruct writing to EFL learners.

During the last decades, increasing attention has been devoted to the notion of self-efficacy and its impact on education. The present study sought to examine Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers' perceptions of the characteristics of efficacious learners. The data were collected from 323 EFL teachers through a first-time self-prepared, validated, and piloted survey (with 100 EFL teachers similar to the main participants, with a Cronbach's Alpha of .08). Overall, the results of the study revealed the multi-dimensional nature of EFL teachers' perceptions with regard to EFL learners' efficacy. First and foremost, in the preliminary step of developing the survey, the results from the exploratory factor analysis led to the emergence of five different factors concerning efficacious EFL learners, namely (1) learning self-regulation, (2) ambiguity tolerance and adaptability, (3) linguistic processing and production, (4) self-assessment and memory strategies, and (5) risk-taking and communication management. Moreover, the findings from the two-group MANOVA showed that teaching experience and gender did not have any statistically significant effect on the five constructs of teachers' perception of efficacious learners. We would argue that in order for EFL teachers to be more successful, they need to increase their knowledge and understanding of their learners' specific needs and requirements. Teachers need to be aware of the factors affecting the learners' self-efficacy to be able to enhance it. It should be noted that our results provide valuable information for EFL teachers, materials developers, and syllabus designers.

Language knowledge is not limited to linguistic competence; cultural norms of a society affect the way people communicate. In fact, culture, tradition, and values are realized and manifested through language and the use of units known as speech acts. The current study sought to explore the strategies used by 200 native Iranian speakers of Persian, 50 American native speakers of English, and 48 Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in producing the speech act of congratulations through the social network of Instagram. Participants were asked to comment in response to the post and congratulate the celebrity for their birthday. The content analysis of the congratulations corpus led to the emergence of eight categories of congratulation strategies for Iranian native speakers of Persian (the most frequent one: "statement of congratulations," n = 80, 58.39%), nine categories for the American native speakers of English (the most frequent one: "use of address terms," n = 44, 30.34%), and seven categories for the Iranian EFL learners (the most frequent one: "statement of congratulations," n = 28, 47.45%). Moreover, the results of Chi-square indicated that the three groups were different with regard to certain categories of congratulation strategies. The results can have important implications for EFL teachers and learners as well as textbook developers.

Technology integration has become increasingly prevalent in language education and technology teaching tools are currently used for English instruction. In line with this trend, it is also believed to be influential in teaching and learning pronunciation. To cast an empirical light on this issue, this study aimed to analyse the influence of Virtual Reality Assisted Pronunciation Training (VRAPT) on pronunciation of young Iranian EFL learners. With respect to this, 18 low-intermediate English language learners (6-12 years old) were invited to take part in the study held in the lab at Sharif University of Technology in Iran. First, their English language pronunciation was measured by a pronunciation pre-test through "Speech ace Browser." Next, in a virtual environment, during 10 sessions (each session 90 minutes), the participants received instructions on all of the pronunciation items measured in the test (consists of English vowels like /[near-close near-front unrounded vowel]/ and /i/ and also vowels of /[near-close back rounded vowel]/ and /u/) through the Virtual Reality (VR) game administered by a humanoid robot. The results of a paired samples t-test revealed that there was a significant difference between learners' performance before and after the training sessions. This paper recommends that simulated games within virtual reality could be applied in enhancing pronunciation skills of EFL learners and utilized in helping them to develop native-like pronunciation. It also generates new ways of thinking about VRAPT as an innovative teaching approach and creating an efficient and pleasurable English learning environment.

Although decades of research have documented scaffolding in second language learning, providing scaffolding in content-based instruction (CBI) has remained under-explored. This qualitative study investigated teachers' discursive scaffolding strategies and functions and L2 students' reciprocity to teachers' scaffolding in science CBI. Four teachers and 30 bilingual students were selected through convenience sampling from an international school. The audiotaped recordings of 24 hours of classroom instruction were transcribed and analyzed based on discursive scaffolding strategies (Walqui, 2006) and scaffolding functions (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976). The deductive content analysis of data demonstrated that the most frequent scaffolding strategies were bridging and schema building while contextualizing and developing metacognition were barely observed. Furthermore, the findings revealed that scaffolding functions were mostly aimed at providing the idealized version, recruiting pursuit of a goal, and controlling frustration, whereas marking critical discrepancy was rarely employed. It can be concluded that scaffolding strategies and functions mostly pertain to enhancing students' comprehension rather than developing metacognition. These findings have implications for the applicability of types of scaffolding strategies and functions in CBI classrooms.

Although group dynamic assessment (GDA) has been gaining attention over the recent decade, its applicability in online context has been left rather underexplored. Hence, the current study examined the effects of GDA on developing EFL learners' written grammatical accuracy in the online context of 'Telegram'. To this aim, 60 Iranian EFL students whose age ranged from 14 to 18 years old were assigned randomly into two groups, namely GDA (N=30) and Non-GDA (N = 30). Initially, both groups wrote an essay on the same topic taken from Preliminary English Test (PET) as the pre-test. Afterwards, both groups wrote on seven writing tasks and shared them in their groups on Telegram. The students in the GDA group were provided with graduated and contingent feedback following a concurrent interactive approach. That is, the teacher offered a gamut of feedback according to the responsiveness of the students to fix errors. On the other hand, the non-GDA group only received direct corrective feedback without being afforded the opportunity to interact over their errors. Finally, both groups revised their own last essays as the first posttest and also wrote an essay on a new task. Results of the study indicated that the GDA group significantly outperformed the Non-GDA group in terms of gains measured by both revision and the new task. EFL teachers and teacher educators can be the beneficiaries of the current study to enrich their online sessions with more GDA-based feedback.

Despite the body of studies on different dimensions of effective teaching, the literature provides little evidence of research on effective teachers as persons. To narrow this gap, 50 pre-service and in-service English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers participated in this study to explore their beliefs about the attributes of effective teachers as persons. The data were collected through a mixed methods design using interviews and a Likert-scale questionnaire informed by the effective-teachers-as-persons component of the framework of effective teachers proposed by Stronge (2007). The analysis of both sources of data indicated that pre-service teachers valued personal teacher characteristics such as patience, kindness, friendliness, strictness, knowledge, enthusiasm, and fairness. In addition, they believed that an effective teacher uses reflection to improve teaching. On the other hand, in-service teachers mostly emphasized teachers' knowledge and energy, sense of humor, and friendliness. They further assumed that effective teachers as persons display positive attitudes toward teaching, create a warm classroom environment, and treat learners equally. A comparison of pre-service and in-service teachers' questionnaire responses revealed significant differences in their beliefs regarding, inter alia, creating a supportive classroom climate, using humor, taking pleasure in teaching, maintaining high-quality work, and seeking professional development. These findings suggest that in-service teachers possess different beliefs about the characteristics of effective teachers as persons due to their teaching experience, whereas pre-service teachers hold beliefs rooted in their immediate background as learners.

Virtual Reality (VR) technology is a growing technology that has been used in various fields of psychology, education, and therapy. One group of potential users of VR are children with autism who need education and have poor social interactions; this technology could help them improve their social skills through real-world simulation. In this study, we evaluated the feasibility of conducting virtual music education programs with automatic assessment system for children with autism at treatment/research centers without the need to purchase a robot, resulting in the possibility of offering schedules on a larger scale and at a lower cost. Intervention sessions were conducted for five children with high-functioning autism ranging in age from 6 to 8 years old during 20 weeks which includes a baseline session, a pre-test, training sessions, a post-test, and a follow-up test. Each music education sessions involved teaching different notes and pieces of music according to the child's cooperation, accuracy, and skill level utilizing virtual reality robots and virtual musical instruments. Actually, by analysis of psychological tests, and questionnaires conducted by a psychologist, we observe slight improvements in cognitive skills because of the ceiling effect. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of the proposed method was proved by conducting statistical analysis on the child's performance data during the music education sessions which were obtained by using both video coding and the proposed automatic assessment system. Consequently, a general upward trend in the musical ability of participants was shown to occur in these sessions, which warrants future studies in this field.

Despite many studies on assessment literacy, scant attention has been devoted to classroom assessment literacy for speaking. To bridge this gap, the present study set out to explore novice and experienced English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' classroom assessment literacy for speaking. Twenty-six novice and experienced EFL teachers first completed three scenarios to collect data about their practices for speaking assessment. Afterwards, they went through semi-structured interview to elicit their speaking assessment knowledge. Both scenarios and interviews were framed using Xu and Brown's (2016) six-component framework of teacher assessment literacy. The focus of this study was on the teacher knowledge base, which is the second component in this framework and consists of knowledge of assessment purposes, content/criteria, and methods. Novice and experienced EFL teachers' scenario data were content analyzed through a summative approach, which led to the discovery of formative assessment and diagnostic assessment as their knowledge of assessment purposes in practice. Moreover, this analysis shed light on the teachers' six assessment criteria in practice, including accuracy, fluency, vocabulary, pronunciation, communication, and content. As to the teachers' assessment methods in practice, the findings revealed their use of role play, monolog, picture story, and questions and answers. The interview data were transcribed and content analyzed through a summative approach as well, which resulted in three main categories of assessment purposes: formative assessment, diagnostic assessment, and summative assessment. Besides knowledge of assessment purposes, the interview data substantiated the scenario findings about the teachers' assessment criteria and their beliefs about various assessment methods such as role plays, monologs, and authentic tasks. Although divergence between novice and experienced teachers' beliefs was moderate, the data demonstrated more consistency in the experienced teachers' assessment literacy for speaking. The findings imply that EFL teachers need awareness of their underlying knowledge about speaking, which is the product of their past education and language teaching experiences.

Unlike linguistic fossilization, pragmatic fossilization has received scant attention in fossilization research. To bridge this gap, the present study adopted a typical-error method of fossilization research to identify the most frequent errors in pragmatic routines committed by Persian-speaking learners of L2 English and explore the sources of fossilization. In the first phase of the study, a pragmatic routines test was administered to 230 male and female participants to determine the typical errors and their persistence across different proficiency levels. In the second phase, retrospective interviews were conducted to explore the sources of the errors in pragmatic routines committed by 15 highly fossilized advanced learners. The findings revealed that the frequent errors in pragmatic routines were mainly due to sociopragmatic failure. It was found that first language transfer, lack of knowledge, and overgeneralizations were among the most frequent sources of pragmatic fossilization. This can be due to the nonauthentic poor-input pedagogical setting in which EFL learners fail to acquire the appropriate pragmatic routines. This study has implications for pragmatic instruction and pragmatic fossilization studies.

The analysis of raters' comments on pragmatic assessment of L2 learners is among new and understudied concepts in second language studies. To shed light on this issue, the present investigation targeted important variables such as raters' criteria and rating patterns by analyzing the interlanguage pragmatic assessment process of the Iranian non-native English speaking raters (NNESRs) regarding the request speech act, while considering important factors such as raters' gender and background teaching experiences. For this purpose, 62 raters' rating scores and comments on Iranian EFL learners' requests based on six situations of specified video prompts were analyzed. The results of the content analysis of raters' comments revealed nine criteria, including pragmalinguistic and socio-pragmatic components of language, which have been noted by raters differently through six request situations. Among the considered criteria, politeness, conversers' relationship, style and register, and explanation were of great importance to NNESRs. Furthermore, t-test and chi-square analysis of raters' assigned rating scores and mentioned criteria across different situations verified the insignificance of factors such as raters' gender and teaching experiences on the process of EFL learners' pragmatic assessment. In addition, the results of the study suggest the necessity of teaching L2 pragmatics in language classes and in teacher training courses.

Needs analysis is the key step to designing relevant and useful courses in English for Specific Purposes (ESP), but finding ways to deliver needs in a motivating and interesting way is also paramount. Therefore, investigating students' motivation to learn ESP is central in needs analysis. Few studies have investigated needs from the perspective of ESP learners' motivation. Focussing on engineering fields at three Iranian state universities, this study aimed to identify factors that affect engineering students' motivation for learning technical English in ESP courses. Using a mixed method design, this study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, semi-structured interviews with 40 undergraduate students helped to identify motivational variables, select a theoretical framework and develop instruments for the second phase. In the second phase, a survey using a 28-item questionnaire with 152 students, semi-structured interviews with 60 students, in-depth interviews with eight ESP practitioners and non-participant observation in seven ESP classes were done in parallel. Principal Component Analysis on survey data resulted in five motivational components of main sources of engineering students' motivation to learn technical English: (1) ideal-self, (2) ought-to self, (3) instrumentality promotion motivation, (4) learning conditions, and (5) learning experience. These components were in agreement with Dörnyei's L2 Motivational Self-system. Further quantitative and qualitative data analyses revealed that long-term goals and the practicalities of using technical English in every day life promote motivation more than a sense of obligation to learn technical English. Moreover, the results showed that Engineering students had negative attitudes towards elements of ESP learning experience, which best explained the reasons for students' low motivation. The findings also supported the significant effect of academic levels on motivation. The factors that motivated students call for modifications in ESP courses which are discussed as pedagogical implications.

Technology, as a source of instruction, has fulfilled various purposes in foreign language learning environments. During the last decade, Robot-Assisted Language Learning (RALL) has attracted teachers' and researchers' attention due to the look and feel of humanoid robots. However, in the field of pragmatics, studies highlighting the role of RALL have gone relatively unnoticed. To bridge this gap, this study sought to explore the effect of RALL on pragmatic features, including request and thanking speech acts by young Persian-speaking EFL learners. For this aim, 38 preschool children (3 to 6 year-old boys and girls) with no English learning experience were randomly assigned to the RALL (19 students) and non-RALL (19 students) groups. In the RALL group, a humanoid robot was used as an assistant to the teacher to play games, repeat the sentences, and interact with the students. In the non-RALL group the lessons included games similar to those in the RALL group, but without the presence of the robot. There were eight one-hour teaching sessions over a period of four weeks for both groups. Following completion of the lessons in both groups, the results of post-tests were analyzed using an independent sample t-test. The findings revealed a significant difference between the RALL and non-RALL groups' pragmatic performance for thanking and requesting. Based on these findings it can be concluded that RALL instruction was more effective than non-RALL instruction in improving the young learners' performance.

This article endeavors to present the impact of conducting robot-assisted music-based intervention sessions for children with low-functioning (LF) autism. To this end, a drum/xylophone playing robot is used to teach basic concepts of how to play the instruments to four participants with LF autism during nine educational sessions. The main findings of this study are compared to similar studies conducted with children with high-functioning autism. Our main findings indicated that the stereotyped behaviors of all the subjects decreased during the course of the program with an approximate large Cohen’s d effect size. Moreover, the children showed some improvement in imitation, joint attention, and social skills from the Pre-Test to Post-Test. In addition, regarding music education, we indicated that while the children could not pass a test on the music notes or reading music phrases items because of their cognitive deficits, they showed acceptable improvements (with a large Cohen’s d effect size) in the Stambak Rhythm Reproduction Test, which means that some rhythm learning occurred for the LF participants. In addition, we indicated that parenting stress levels decreased during the program. This study presents some potential possibilities of performing robot-assisted interventions for children with LF autism.

The present case study investigated the probable effect of applying a humanoid robot as a teacher-assistant for learning and retention of English vocabulary among 10 Iranian foreign language learners with intellectual disabilities, more specifically Down syndrome. This method is a new trend in using technology to teach classes called Robot Assisted Language Learning (RALL). To this end, participants were divided into 2 groups of five, one with the help of the robot (RALL) and one without (non-RALL). Both groups received the same lessons to learn 40 English vocabulary in 8 sessions. To measure the results, three English tests were run at different times during the teaching sessions (a pre-test, post-test, and a delayed post-test). The independent sample t-test on gain scores from pre-test to post-test revealed that there was a significant difference between the gains of the RALL group (M = 12.40) and the non-RALL group (M = 8.40), which indicates that RALL instruction had a large effect on the participants' English vocabulary improvement. Moreover, while both RALL and non-RALL groups retained the taught vocabulary, the RALL group showed a more satisfying result. The findings of this study demonstrate the positive effects of using a humanoid robot to facilitate vocabulary learning and retention among people with Down syndrome who have issues with both language learning and verbal short-term memory and need to learn through visual activities, gestures, and games. This study could be a starting point for a new line of research in second or foreign language instruction specific to people with Down syndrome.

Many studies have shed light on rater criteria for assessing the performance of language skills (e.g., Eckes, 2005). However, the interface between rater assessment and interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) has remained largely unnoticed. To address this interface, this study explored the ratings native (NES) and nonnative English speaking (NNES) teachers assigned to second language (L2) refusal production and the criteria they applied in their ratings. To this end, 50 NES and 50 NNES teachers participated in rating L2 refusal production of EFL learners that included responses to a 6-item written discourse completion task. The data were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Qualitative analysis showed that native teachers applied 11 criteria and nonnative teachers applied 6 criteria in their pragmatic ratings. Reasoning/explanation was the leading criterion in teacher assessment among native raters, whereas politeness was the main criterion for nonnative ratings. Quantitative analysis documented variation in the frequency of drawing on rating criteria and significant differences in ratings, with NNES teachers being more lenient and divergent in their ratings. The results suggest there is a gap between NES and NNES teachers in terms of rating criteria, strictness, and convergence in rating.

Mobile phones as new addition to information and communication technologies have created new ways to help learners in the process of foreign language learning. Given the importance of academic vocabularies for university students, this study tried to investigate the effectiveness of SMS on Iranian university students' vocabulary learning and retention. To this end forty five university freshman students with upper intermediate proficiency level were chosen to take part in this study. During 16 weeks of experiment, the participants of the experimental group (N = 28) were taught 320 head words from the Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000) via SMS. During the same period of time the participants of the control group (N = 17) were taught the same words by using dictionary. At the end, both groups were given a vocabulary test from Academic Word List, to see the effect of SMS on their vocabulary learning and the scores of each group were compared employing an independent t-test. The result of the t-test showed that both groups had improved in the post-test. Although there was not any significant difference between the groups in the post-test, the result of the delayed post-test showed that SMS had more significant effect on vocabulary retention compared to using dictionary, and the experimental group outperformed the control group. The result of this study can have pedagogical implication for language teachers, in that they can use SMS as a useful way to help their students to retain vocabularies in their long-term memory.

The present paper is an attempt to evaluate "Pacesetter" Series (Strange and Hall, 2005), an EFL course book series, in four levels of "starter", "elementary", "pre-intermediate", and "intermediate", being currently instructed at several language institutes in Iran. The purpose of this study is to determine the appropriateness of the series in Iranian EFL contexts. Litz (2000) questionnaire was exploited to examine the series thoroughly in all essential aspects. Sixty four EFL teachers rated the series. The results of descriptive statistics indicated that there is an overall consensus among the teachers that Pacesetter rightly addresses the needs of the learners in a communicative curriculum. However, two salient points are still worth further addressing. The first issue is that the series does not sufficiently underscore the speaking skill. The other concern involves the incorporation of European culture in every skill and skill-related activities as it may cause frustration and bafflement on the part of Iranian adolescent foreign language learners since they are unfamiliar with certain aspects of the target language culture. One way to remedy the two aforementioned issues is that the teachers using this series can think of other substitute exercises to solve the problem.

The present study was carried out to find out whether regular administration of cloze test improved the students' knowledge of grammar more than the multiple choice one. Subjects participating in this study were 84 Iranian pre-university students of Allameh-Gotb-e Ravandi University, aged between 18 and 35 and enrolled in a grammar course. To investigate the research, the candidates were screened through a NELSON test. This test enabled the researchers to have homogeneous subjects; therefore, among 84 subjects, 75 students were selected to take part in this research. Among this number of students, 39 students were to be in one group and the other 36 were the other group members. The two groups were provided with 10 consecutive weeks, each session 100 minutes long. Every week one experimental group was treated by a 25-item cloze test of grammar while the other experimental group was provided with a 25-item multiple choice one. The time allowed for each multiple choice test was about 25 minutes. Each week the grammatical point which had been taught the previous session, was tested. After the treatment, a 60-item test consisting of a 30-item cloze passage and a 30-item multiple-choice grammar section were administered to find out whether there was any difference in the grammatical knowledge of both experimental groups. The analysis of data indicated that there was no significant difference between the average performance of the two groups. In another words, the findings proved that the cloze procedure did not improve the subjects' knowledge of grammar any more than the multiple-choice grammar test did.

Despite the global spread of English, it seems that voices from nonnative English teachers concerning English as an international language (EIL) are under-represented. To address the issue, this study sought to investigate the nonnative teachers' perceptions of idealized native-speaker linguistic and pragmatic norms in the EIL context. Participants included 125 nonnative English-speaking teachers from the Persian context, falling within the expanding circle. Questionnaires and interviews were used to explore the teachers' perceptions of native-speaker norms. Findings showed that the nonnative teachers gave preference to native-speaker linguistic norms despite the emerging nonnative EIL norms. Although most of the teachers accepted the existence of a number of accents in English, they preferred the standard American or British accent for language education. As to EIL pragmatic norms, the teachers argued that some degree of flexibility is acceptable with regard to the use of L1 pragmatic norms in the EIL context. The EFL teachers in the present study maintained that the transfer of L1 pragmatic norms to the nativized English makes English a legitimate and culturally appropriate variety in communication between nonnative speakers. The findings contribute to the reappraisal of ELT practices and the premises underpinning teaching EIL.

Objective: Research on corrective feedback (CF) in L2 pragmatics instruction, especially in online teaching, is still in its infancy. To address this gap, this study sought to examine the types of CF provided by EFL teachers in online classes in response to the learners' pragmalinguistically and sociopragmatically inappropriate production of the binary speech acts of request and refusal. Methods: Eighteen hours of online classroom interaction data were analyzed using conversation analysis and a taxonomy that classifies feedback into implicit and explicit input-providing and output-prompting CF. Results: The findings of the study showed that explicit output prompts were largely applied by teachers as the most frequent type of CF. The teachers tended to use prompting questions and metapragmatic clues to help learners better understand request and refusal speech acts, rather than directly offering input or reformulation. In addition, because of the facethreatening nature of speech acts of refusal and request, the teachers applied explicit output prompts as corrective feedback to reinforce the accuracy of learners' production. Conclusions: It can be concluded that the online mode of instruction can impact the explicitness of pragmatic CF. This research is of great value for teachers to employ both implicit and explicit types of CF to develop learners' competency in pragmatics in online instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on scaffolding has turned the spotlight on implementing scaffolding principles for more effective instruction in the classroom. This qualitative study, using observations, investigated scaffolding principles, including continuity, intersubjectivity, contextual support, handover, flow, and contingency, in content-based instruction (CBI) in an international school. To this end, nine hours of science instruction by three science teachers were video-recorded and analysed deductively based on scaffolding principles. The content analysis of observation transcripts showed that continuity, intersubjectivity, and contingency were frequently observed during interaction in science classes, whereas the teachers occasionally implemented contextual support, handover, and flow. The findings revealed that scaffolding principles were mainly related to the conceptual understanding of scientific knowledge and the control of students' frustration in performing demanding activities and understanding complicated concepts. Furthermore, the findings uncovered that scaffolding principles were focused on providing opportunities for students' engagement and genuine communication and eliciting real-life samples and experience through inquiry-based, concept-based, problem-based, and project-based teaching approaches. Most importantly, the teachers frequently employed various scaffolding principles through practical and active participation by doing experiments and projects, modelling, and using video aids for more interactive and collaborative teaching practices. These findings contribute to our understanding of scaffolding principles and teacher-student interaction in science classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]