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Known as what educational contexts do not teach, null curriculum has been considered one of the most significant types of curricula due to its absence, being left out or overlooked. This non-existent curriculum brings an important theoretical tool to the field of curriculum development for the idea that something which is not offered to students has an educational significance and effect. To follow the purpose of the study which is teachers' perspectives on the null curriculum at the BA level, 300 university instructors were selected to participate in this study. To answer the research questions various statistical methods (one-way ANOVA, independent sample t-test, Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Scheffe’s test) have been utilized. Results of this quantitative study revealed that among the sub-constructs of the 21 st century, critical thinking, collaboration skills, creativity and innovation skills, self-direction skills, technological literacy, global and local connection skills, economic and financial literacy, business and entrepreneurial literacy and media literacy should be considered as aspects of the null curriculum in TEFL curriculum in BA level in Iran, and they should be added to the present curriculum; however, communication skills are not regarded as aspects of null. In addition, Iranian EFL university instructors’ ratings on different components of 21 st -century skills as one aspect of the null curriculum significantly differed. Finally, a model was proposed to describe the relationship between the ratings of the components of 21st-century skills as one aspect of the null curriculum by Iranian EFL university instructors. The findings of the present study can help to a better understanding of the ELT curriculum, aspects of the null curriculum, and 21 st -century skills in the Iranian context.

Teacher identity has been studied from several perspectives. However, the present study makes an attempt to investigate the process of identity formation through narrative telling from the framework of complexity theory. In a case study design semi-structured interview data and teacher-produced diaries of a novice Iranian English teacher were analyzed in order to identify attractors of identity formation. As a result, four major attractors that had the strongest effect on the process of identity formation were detected. Then the mechanisms through which these attractors exerted influence on identity formation are discussed. Finally, it has been argued that narrative construction of identity requires the individual to stress different aspects of their identity at different times; and that the phase shifts that occurred when the identity system moved in the direction of another attractor were triggered by the moment-to-moment requirements of narrative formation. The findings are followed by a discussion of pedogogical and theoretical implications.

This mixed methods nationwide research aimed to examine the relationships between three variables; namely, self-efficacy (S-E), emotional intelligence (EI), autonomy (A), their sub-constructs and reading comprehension ability of Persian second language (PSL) students. Participants were 141 PSL students from 28 different countries studying at 12 universities across Iran. Data were collected through S-E, EI, A scales, and a reading comprehension test and were analyzed using Pearson correlation. The results revealed that there were significant links between the variables and their sub-constructs and reading comprehension ability. Also, structured interviews were administrated with 45 participants, the results of which confirmed those obtained from quantitative instruments. Moreover, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to access more in-depth perception of the variables and explore the strengths of the causal relationships. The three independent variables strongly predicted reading comprehension, with S-E being the strongest predictor. Also, three out of four sub-constructs of EI, and two out of three sub-constructs of A were powerful predictors of reading comprehension. In terms of the increasing number of PSL learners, the findings of the present study could be helpful for L2 (particularly PSL) teachers, learners, and academic policymakers.

The present work is a contribution to the debate around attitude towards English as a foreign language in Cameroon. By case-studying an under-searched area through a multi-component tool: the Attitude and Motivation Test Battery, it proposes a different reflection to the question. The test was administered to 211 Grade 11, 12, and 13 Francophone students from various urban and semi-urban schools in the city and its suburbs. It was based on the postulates that attitude is a dynamic characteristic that varies according to place and time on the one hand, and that it is far too complex to be examined from the prism of a single variable. The results revealed that of the six parameters that made up the three components of the tool, three were negative and three were positive, with the integrative orientation slightly outpacing the instrumental one. This underscores the need to envisage attitude as a multi-component variable, as well as the need to reckon with evolving social variables. In general, the results reveal that attitude towards EFL is not as desperate as usually thought. It can be intimated that recent socio-political initiatives aiming at reinforcing French-English bilingualism are gradually bearing fruits. Thus, socio-political ideologies appear to have significant effects on overall attitude towards EFL.

Self-directed learning and digital literacy are the most effective issues in the process of foreign language learning. Due to the importance of digital literacy and self-directed learning in the process of foreign language learning, the present study aimed at investigating the relationship between Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ digital literacy and their self-directed learning. For the purpose of the study, 210 male and female Iranian EFL learners from Mashhad English language institutes took part in the study through using convenience sampling method. The digital literacy and self-directed learning questionnaires were distributed among intermediate EFL learners to measure their attitudes towards digital literacy and the self-directed learning process. To conduct the study, a correlational design was used. The results of Pearson Correlation analyses revealed that there was a positive relationship between the Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ digital literacy and their self-directed learning. The results of the multiple regression analyses also showed that information communication technology literacy and information literacy as the two components of the digital literacy questionnaire significantly predicted the Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ self-directed learning. It can be concluded that high levels of digital literacy and self-directed learning tend to result in better academic performance and learning motivation. It is important that educational contexts, as well as lan guage institutes administrators provide opportunities for en hancing learners’ self-directed learning and media literacy and consequently improving EFL learners’ achievement and motivation.

With the spread of English, the conception of English is currently changing into English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) worldwide. However, the form of English teaching and learning is still identified by reference to native-speaker norms. In response to the increasing use of ELF and an emergent need to describe it in various domains, the current study takes a preliminary step in linguistic analysis of the written mode of ELF. Adopting an exploratory case study, the morphological marking of third-person singular present tense main verbs, i.e., -s/es has been analyzed using the Written ELF in Academic Setting (WrELFA) corpus. The selected corpus included 82369 tokens. It was tagged by the LancsBox software, and all instances of variation were categorized into two groups: omission and addition of the suffix. The quantitative analysis revealed that most ELF writers conform to the grammatical rules of English simple-present tense, yet, there is a negligible amount (0.5%) of variation in the use of this suffix in a way that writers either drop it or overgeneralize it. Dropping the third-person singular suffix accounts for around half of the entire variety (56%), and overusing this feature accounts for the other half (44%). Moreover, through qualitative analysis, factors contributing to such variations were identified. The overall findings indicate that such minor grammatical errors shouldn't be overemphasized, as long as they do not hinder the reader's understanding. The results may contribute to constructing a framework for teaching ELF in general and English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) in specific.

The teacher, his instructional method, and indeed his characteristics are considered to be the decisive factors for the success or failure of education. The current study was carried out to determine the Iranian EFL teachers’ perception of immunity in their occupational contexts, that is in English language institutes and public schools. To achieve this objective, one hundred EFL teachers teaching in public schools (N = 50) and language institutes (N = 50), in Isfahan, were selected through convenience sampling to participate in this study. Then, the Teachers’ Immunity Level questionnaire was administered to them, and they were interviewed as well. The teachers were asked about their perception of immunity in their own occupational setting. All the teachers working in language institutes believed that teachers in these educational centers are suffering from low levels of job immunity. The teachers were also asked about the reasons underlying the high and low levels of job immunity in these two educational contexts. The teachers in language institutes believed that the dearth of monitoring by the government, the large number of unemployed educated people, employers’ greed, and lowering the value of education in the society are among the most important reasons underlying this catastrophe in language institutes. These findings can have some implications for the decision-makers in the Iranian Ministry of Education to provide language institutes with more support and attention with an eye to eliminating the mentioned problems.

The interaction between the writers and the experts while using citations is one of the main features of academic texts. For the integration of external experts into the text, writers usually use reporting verbs, which seem to function differently. Furthermore, selecting reporting verbs (RVs) by the researchers of disciplines seems to vary. This paper explored the functions of RVs across sciences. To this end, 200 “Results and Discussion” section of RAs from the four sciences, namely Life Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities, Physical Sciences and Engineering, and Health Sciences were gathered and used as the data, and their functions of RVs were analyzed based on Hyland’s framework (2002). Hyland (2002) considered three basic RV types based on their function, including research, cognitive, and discourse acts, subsequently dividing each category into several subcategories. The results showed that the writers in Life Sciences used more research acts in comparison to the other disciplines. In terms of cognition acts, the rates of tentative verbs were high in all sciences since the researchers tried to report the results with caution as they were uncertain about the findings. The results approved this claim, indicating the high frequency of tentative verbs under the category of discourse acts, across disciplines using verbs like hypothesize, indicate, and suggest to show doubt with different rates. The obtained results can guide novice writers of the above-mentioned four disciplines to advance an authorial perspective and adjust to the expert conventions of the relevant research areas.

The present study addressed the effects of cognitive styles on answer-switching practices across online and traditional tests. After completing Ehrman and Leaver’s (2003) cognitive style questionnaire, a sample of upper intermediate students took pen-paper and online versions (59 test-takers each) of an already validated teacher-developed test of English. The data from think-aloud and erasure analyses revealed significantly more frequent total and right-to-wrong changes in the traditional and online tests, respectively. Multiple regression values explained more than 50% of right/wrong-to-wrong, wrong-to-right, and overall answer-changing variance based on cognitive styles in the pen-paper exam. However, the regression results from online performance analyses could not prove the power of thinking styles in predicting answer-changing strategies. Fisher’s exact tests showed significantly different answer-changing strategies adopted by field-dependent, leveler, analog, concrete, and impulsive individuals in the traditional test but no significant differences between the behaviors of individuals with different cognitive styles in the online exam. Based on the present findings, online and pen-paper platforms may require different test-taking strategies. Language instructors and test developers can use these findings to align their instructional and assessment practices with various cognitive styles and testing environments.

Abstract The necessity of using online education during the Coronal virus pandemic and the barriers created by the absence of face-to-face instruction has shifted the researchers’ focus to web-based instruction and assessment. In this regard, an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was selected to consider the effects of web-based dynamic assessment (DA) on learners' grammar accuracy, autonomy, and attitudes. To this end, a convenient sample of 60 male English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners was chosen and categorized into two groups of web-based dynamic assessment and a control group. The data collection tools were a pretest and posttest of grammar, a pretest and posttest of autonomy, and a semi-structured interview. The participants were exposed to web-based DA via a designed web based on the level and the students’ needs in grammar, whereas the learners in the control group learned the grammar through the traditional method of instruction. Based on the results of ANCOVA and Mann-Whitney U test, the learners’ grammar accuracy and autonomy mean scores in web-based DA increased compared to those of the control group. In addition, the results of interview showed that the learners had a positive attitude toward web-based dynamic assessment treatment. The results of the semi-structured interview with the experimental group verified the quantitative results. The platform and methods employed in this study suggest encouraging implications for the field of language instruction which will be discussed.