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Corrective feedback has been evidenced to be a propitious pedagogical tool to promote second language (L2) knowledge, yet little is known about the role of interactional feedback in maximizing L2 learners’ pragmatic knowledge and their reciprocity patterns to corrective feedback in teacher-student interactions. Therefore, the current study made an attempt to bridge this gap. To do so, twenty (11 male and nine female) intermediate English as a foreign language (EFL) participant with an age range of 19 to 31 were recruited and were provided with recast for their inappropriate request strategies. The participants were assigned to perform requests in various scenarios that varied in terms of power, familiarity, and social distance. To gauge their performance, a pretest and posttest Discourse Completion Test (DCT) was run. The obtained data gave evidence to the efficiency of recast in improving L2 pragmatics. Moreover, classroom interactions were recorded and transcribed to identify the emerging reciprocity patterns. The findings revealed several reciprocity patterns, including repetition of trigger, modification of trigger, acknowledgement, topic continuation, and inability to respond. The findings have implications for L2 teachers and augment our understandings of the role of recast in L2 pragmatics and reciprocity patterns of students.

This study tried to inspect and compare any possible effects of immediate and delayed metalinguistic and indirect feedback on the level of WTC of Iranian EFL learners in task performance. This research was a quasi-experimental work with 120 Participants (63 males and 57 females) who were divided into four groups: 30 students as the direct-immediate feedback group, 30 students as the direct-delayed feedback, 30 students as the indirect-immediate feedback, and 30 students as the indirect-delayed feedback. Different instruments were utilized to collect the required data, including the Oxford Placement Test (OPT), the WTC scale (McCroskey, 1992), and a set of two-way exchange tasks. After homogenizing the participants, based on the OPT test, the participants took the WTC scale as a pretest. As the treatment, the indirect immediate feedback group participants reformulated the errors into the correct form as soon as they committed errors. In the indirect delayed feedback group, the teacher noted the errors and the student’s name to provide feedback for that specific student. In the direct metalinguistic immediate feedback group, the participants were provided with both explanations and examples of the correct form of errors they committed. In the metalinguistic delayed group, the teacher wrote notes on the error types and the students’ names to provide explanations andcorrect examples for specific students. The WTC scale was readministered in the post-test and the scores were recorded. Two-way ANOVA was used to analyze the pre-and post-test data. The result of the data analysis showed there was an interaction between the timing and the type of feedback regarding their effect on Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ WTC.

One of the significant factors in EFL learning is teacher effectiveness which is of high importance since teachers are really and directly engaged in language learning as the final aim of English classes. This study aimed at designing and validating a Critical Pedagogy-Based Teacher Effectiveness Scale for Iranian EFL teachers. In so doing, an exploratory mixed-methods design was used. The participants of the qualitative phase included 20 male and female Iranian English teachers who were selected through available sampling. In the quantitative phase, 200 male and female Iranian English teachers participated through available sampling. To collect the data, a semi-structured interview was used. To analyze the data, qualitative thematic analysis, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Cronbach’s Alpha Test were used. According to the results, the Critical Pedagogy-Based Teacher Effectiveness Scale for Iranian EFL teachers was developed in 42 Likert items in three sub-scales including pedagogical effectiveness (items 1 to 23), socio-cultural effectiveness (items 24 to 33), and empowering effectiveness (items 34 to 42). Six items were omitted in EFA and 36 items remained in the final scale. It was designed in a four-point Likert range from 1= strongly disagree to 4= strongly agree. It was shown that the developed scale is valid and reliable. The findings have some implications for EFL teachers, learners, teacher education instructors and policy makers

This paper presents a critical evaluation of the English Test for International Communication (ETIC), a large-scale, computer-based, and criterion-referenced English language proficiency test developed by the China Language Assessment in 2016. The ETIC test battery comprises five categories: Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, Superior, and Translation, with the goal of assessing test-takers’ oral and written communicative language abilities in workplace contexts. Given that a revised version of ETIC with many structural changes has been in use since 2021, and the recent growth of interest in assessing communicative language abilities, a critical review of ETIC is warranted. Drawing on Kunnan’s (2018) recent model of test fairness and justice, this review primarily evaluates the usefulness and fairness of ETIC Basic, ETIC Intermediate, and ETIC Advanced. Appraisals reveal that ETIC encompasses the philosophy of fairness, justice, and usefulness in the development, administration, and scoring procedures. There is, however, room for improvement in various areas, such as establishing a test inquiry and appeal service and keeping the channels of communication open. As reviewers, we hope this article will assist language testing researchers and practitioners, teachers and students, or even potential test-takers in better understanding the unique ETIC assessment scene in China and spark more discussions about communicative language testing worldwide.

This study was an attempt to explore the impacts of recast and prompt as two types of corrective feedback on the development of knowledge of past tense by Iranian pre-intermediate EFL learners. This study followed quasi- experimental design including pre-test, treatment, an immediate post-test, and a delayed post-test procedure. Initially, the pretest data from learners' performance on the Oral Performance Test (OPT) and the Untimed Grammatical Judgment Test (UGJT) was collected. After administering the pretest, the researchers gave the treatment to two experimental groups. Recast corrective feedback was supplied to the first experimental group, prompt corrective feedback was provided to the second experimental group, and no specific corrective feedback was given to the control group. The immediate post-test was given immediately following the delayed post-test, which was performed three weeks later. The findings of the study showed that when it came to their explicit and implicit knowledge of past tense, students who received prompt or recast corrective feedback outperformed those who received no particular corrective feedback. The results also showed that in this area, students in the group receiving prompt corrective feedback still did significantly much better than those in the recast group. The findings of this study may be useful for all stakeholders in the field of education but particularly for language teachers and students. They would benefit language teachers, teacher trainers, and material developers interested in employing task-based approach with feedback in their pedagogical activities.

The advent of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology, represented by ChatGPT, has ushered in new possibilities in the realm of language learning and teaching. This pre-application pedagogic position study delves into the potential benefits and associated challenges of employing ChatGPT as a potent pedagogical instrument for the acquisition of legal vocabulary. The proposed pedagogy is based on the authors’ primary experiences with the use of ChatGPT for their personal and pedagogical purposes and an unsystematic application of the pedagogy in EAP classes for undergraduate students at a law school of a university in Bangladesh. Our pre-application proposed innovative ChatGPT-mediated approach to vocabulary instruction is theoretically grounded in constructivism in language teaching and (web) technology in constructivist language pedagogy. The proposed pedagogy utilizes online newspapers with legal terminology, creating an interactive learning environment that encourages active participation and covers pronunciation, meaning, and spelling. It leverages primary language word definitions, refines pronunciation, fosters bilingual comprehension, and enhances spelling proficiency, offering a comprehensive learning experience. However, the study also predicts that the implementation of ChatGPT-based language instruction may involve challenges related to educator proficiency, student participation, resource limitations, and technology requirements. This study not only underscores the value of ChatGPT in language education but also paves the way for future research and innovation in the field. 

While the issue of intercultural competence has received considerable attention in second language learning and teaching over recent decades, the lack of a practical, valid, and dependable instrument to cross-culturally measure intercultural competence is strongly felt. For this reason, the current study aimed at developing and validating an inventory to examine EFL learners’ intercultural competence within the context of Iran. Following a qualitative-quantitative descriptive method research design, an instrument consisting of items adapted from intercultural competence-based survey instruments was generated. Accordingly, the study recruited 200 Iranian EFL learners to fill out the inventory. Furthermore, nine Iranian university professors in Applied Linguistics received an earlier draft of the Intercultural Competence Inventory (ICI) after it was prepared. The experts were requested to provide feedback on the developed Inventory’ content and face validity. After expert/content validation, the construct validity of the inventory was checked using R software running Mokken Scale Analysis. The analyses aimed to determine the structure of the inventory and verify the effectiveness of a five-point Likert response scale. The results concerning item attributes and the quality of the response scale provided confirmation of the scale's internal validity. Hopefully, the presence of this inventory in the Iranian context, characterized by strong internal consistency, internal validity, and construct validity, can contribute valuable insights to the study of intercultural competence among language learners.

The purpose of the present research was to investigate if the type of feedback significantly affected EFL learners’ uptake. In addition, it aimed to search if feedback could lead to more learners’ attention in EFL classes. The participants were 60 EFL learners. The data were obtained from classroom observations in addition to running a test. In order to investigate the effects of teachers’ CF on learners’ uptake, the current study employed Lyster and Mori’s (2006) taxonomy of CF types and learners’ immediate uptake moves. All episodes which included learner errors were identified by the researcher. Then, instances with teacher feedback were extracted. In order to investigate the amount of uptake by the participants, an uptake sheet was utilized. the uptake sheet was facile and easy to understand. Corrective feedback and uptake were coded and tabulated. It was shown that recasts were the most highly frequent type of feedback followed by explicit correction and prompts. In addition, the frequency of uptakes followed by recast was higher than the uptakes followed by explicit correction and prompts. The results of Anova Test revealed a significant difference among various amounts of uptake followed by different types of feedback (p >.034).

Though dynamic assessment (DA) has gained strong theoretical and empirical support over the last decades, second language (L2) practitioners have blamed it for its applicability in large classes. To ameliorate this limitation, peer-dynamic assessment (peer-DA), rooted in the conceptualization of zone of proximal development (ZPD), can be introduced and practiced as an alternative approach. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the effects of peer-DA on cultivating Iranian upper-intermediate EFL learners’ interlanguage pragmatic (ILP) competence. Additionally, it was to disclose how peer-DA leads to improving the learners’ ILP competence. To achieve these aims, a sample of 84 upper-intermediate EFL learners, including females was selected through a convenience sampling method at Iran Language Institute in Borujerd City, Iran. Then, a total of 37 EFL learners whose scores fell around the mean score were selected and randomly assigned to two groups, namely an experimental (n = 19) and a control (n = 18). Then, they went through a pre-test, interventions (lasting 16 one-hour sessions held two times a week), and a post-test. The experimental group’s interactions were meticulously recorded. The collected data were analyzed through two independent samples t-tests, and the microgenetic development approach. Findings documented a statistically significant difference between the experimental group and control group concerning the gains of ILP competence on the post-test. Furthermore, the results of the microgenetic development analysis evidenced how the gradual, contingent prompts could lead to noticeable improvements in the learning of ILP features. These findings may have some pedagogical implications for different stakeholders.