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Emotion labor is defined as any conflict between institutional demands and teachers’ professional beliefs and preferences. Engaging in emotion labor is an inevitable aspect of becoming a language teacher. Scholars agree that language teacher agency and identity are closely tied to emotion labor. This fact particularly looms large for novice language teachers, who tend to perceive contradictions between what they imagine prior to entering the profession and what they actually experience in their teaching contexts. This case study applied activity theory (Engeström, 2015) and Gee’s (2000) identity framework to explore how the emotion labor experienced by a novice Iranian female teacher of English as a foreign language (EFL) over a five-year career period at three private language institutes affected her language teacher agency and identity. The findings, obtained from class observations and semi-structured interviews, highlight two major sources of emotion labor: 1) profit-oriented policy, and 2) performance-constraining factors within the institute, which caused the participant to contemplate quitting her job. Implications and further research are discussed in line with the interplay among emotion labor, language teacher identity, and well-being.  

In recent decades, many second language acquisition (SLA) researchers have identified the leading role of organizing sequentially cognitive tasks in Task-Based Language Teaching. Presenting types of different task sequence has become increasingly crucial for syllabus designers. This investigation examines the theoretical basis of task sequencing, which claims that pedagogical tasks should be developed and ordered cognitively from easy to complex. The current study aims to compare the performance of English learners in sequenced and isolated familiar tasks. Sixty EFL learners studying at the intermediate level in two private language institutes participated in this research. They were randomly selected as one experimental and one control group, each comprising 30 subjects. Before starting treatment, all the participants took a listening comprehension test as a pretest. The treatment took place over one semester, during which the subjects performed simple-complex familiar sequenced tasks while the control group received familiar randomized tasks. After treatment, the posttest of listening comprehension, which contained two complex task features, i.e., - Here-and-Now and - Planning time, was employed. The independent-samples t-test showed that the experimental group who received simple-complex sequenced tasks outperformed the control group in listening to complex tasks. The findings supported the employment of simple-complex sequencing tasks to foster listening task complexity performance.

Despite the widely recognized significance of values education in a rapidly changing world and teachers’ education-related beliefs, little research has investigated how English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers navigate values in their classrooms. The study reported in this paper explored in-service EFL teachers’ perceptions of values education and their conceptions of their moral roles, aiming to develop an instrument related to values education. To this end, this exploratory sequential mixed-methods study recruited 10 EFL teachers selected through maximum variation sampling. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the teacher participants and the data were analyzed inductively through thematic analysis. Furthermore, the existing literature and the insights gleaned from the initial phase of the study led to the development of a questionnaire, which was administered to 332 EFL teachers in the quantitative phase of the study. Six overarching themes were identified through thematic analysis of the interview data, namely relational values, personal growth, academic excellence, regulatory values, teachers’ personal standards and global values with teachers prioritizing students’ motivation and wellbeing over other value types. In addition, confirmatory factor analysis of the developed questionnaire verified a five-factor structure. Only 23 items out of 53 initial items were retained in the final version of the questionnaire. Overall, the results revealed that master obligation of teachers, associated with nurturing students’ dignity was prioritized over teachers’ prima facie obligation which promotes students’ learning and intellectual growth. After a detailed discussion, implications and suggestions for future research are presented in the end.

The researchers in the current study were pinpointing the factors contributing to teacher motivation. Among the myriad of variables which were deemed liable to influence teacher motivation, the researchers opted for teacher motivation, namely teacher burnout, self-efficacy, emotional intelligence, and teaching style as the main predictive variables for teacher motivation. To conduct the study, a total of 200 English language teachers were asked to fill the study questionnaires. The target group encompassed teachers from both public school and language school contexts. The teachers were from both genders and came from a variety of age groups, years of experience, and language backgrounds. The participants were recruited from 10 cities across West Azarbaijan. To facilitate the data collection process, the questionnaires were sent to participants via Google forms link. The obtained data were analyzed through SEM (Structural Equation Modeling) to find the exact interrelationships between the four variables considered as predictors and teacher motivation. The findings pointed toward the existence of significant paths from burnout, self-efficacy, emotional intelligence (EI), and teaching styles toward teaching motivation. Additionally, EI, self-efficacy, and teaching styles were depicted to be significant predictors for burnout. The path from EI to self-efficacy was also significant. Furthermore, teaching style was significantly predicted by EI and self-efficacy. Finally, the findings obtained via interview analysis demonstrated that teacher motivation can be influenced by a variety of factors including low income and lack of environmental/social support, which can, in turn, lead to increased levels of burnout and hence diminish teaching efficacy and hence motivation. The implications of the findings are discussed throughout the paper.

Synesthesia, among other rhetorical devices, has played a prominent role in conveying the intended messages in the realm of poetry. Nonetheless, it has not grabbed adequate attention to its nature and function. Belonging to the domain of comparative literature, this essay has benefitted from analogy studies as its methodology to render novel perspectives in the meaning and reading of the poetry of Sitwell and Ebtehaj. Here, we have attempted, firstly, to foreground the function of synesthesia and, secondly, to enrich the understanding of the mentioned poets. This paper concludes that the realization of synesthesia heavily and helpfully affects the perception of literary poems. In addition, to showcase such influence, a reasonable number of poems by Sitwell and Ebtehaj were subjected to scrutiny, indicating that a great deal of their poetry is best understood only after investigating synesthesia. This essay is merely concentrated on two poets, yet its findings can be helpful for the whole field of poetry.

This study aimed to investigate the effect of task type (i.e., sentence fill-in/sentence writing) and word type (i.e., real/ pseudo) on initial learning and retention of 10 word meanings, taking the predictions of Involvement Load Hypothesis (ILH) and Technique Feature Analysis (TFA) into account. Participants were 59 intermediate-level EFL learners from eight intact classes. Each intact class was randomly assigned to one of the four learning conditions: 1) sentence fill-in with real words, 2) sentence writing with real words, 3) sentence fill-in with pseudowords, and 4) sentence writing with pseudowords. Initial learning was measured by administering a meaning recall test immediately after the tasks and medium-term retention was measured by administering the same test with rearranged items one week after the tasks phase. The results of a mixed between-within subjects ANOVA did not show any significant interaction effect between test time and learning condition. Furthermore, the main effect for learning condition was not statistically significant but there was a significant main effect for test time, suggesting that participants’ scores dropped significantly from the immediate posttest to the delayed posttest. The findings of two independent-samples t-tests failed to show any significant difference between the immediate and delayed posttest scores of the participants who received either sentence fill-in or sentence writing tasks. However, some tentative findings demonstrated that those participants who were assigned to the sentence writing task achieved higher scores on the posttests. This finding indicates that TFA has probably more predictive power than ILH and it also provides some evidence in favor of the heavier weight of the evaluation component of the ILH when compared to its search component.

   COPYRIGHTS ©2021 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publisher. This study set out to explore the efficacy of EFL teachers' digital literacy in improving language learners' speaking fluency and accuracy through the development of virtual languaculture tasks. To this end, 52 male and 68 female EFL teachers from different areas of Kurdistan province participated in the study by completing a digital literacy scale developed by Ng (2012). Moreover, three groups of teachers, 12 high and 12 low-digitally literate teachers who used virtual languaculture tasks and 10 teachers who used traditional teaching methods participated in semi-structured interviews, and their teachings were observed for 8 sessions. Besides, by conducting an IELTS speaking test, 121 male and 122 female EFL learners of the three groups of teachers were selected to participate in this study. After conducting 16-session treatments, a speaking test was used as the posttest.  The qualitative and quantitative data were analyzed via MAXQDA and SPSS. The results of one-way between-groups multivariate analysis of variance indicated the efficacy of the implementation of languaculture tasks in developing students' speaking fluency and accuracy. On the other hand, the qualitative phase of the study showed that being digitally literate influenced the development, implementation, variety, and complexity of languaculture tasks. Moreover, the attained results supported the superiority of the languaculture task as a mediator between instructors' digital literacy and learners' verbal ability. Accordingly, enhancing teachers' digital literacy and learners' critical languaculture awareness are suggested as useful strategies to improve language learners' speaking fluency and accuracy. 

Intersectionality refers to the experience of multi-faceted emotions from diverse angles (Crenshaw, 1989). This concept, originally developed in Western studies, has been applied to critical pedagogy, which concerns minority individuals in educational or vocational settings. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of the concept of intersectionality in Second Language (L2) education and propose a new term for the main concept. Recent research has encouraged the use of quantitative and mixed-methods designs for measuring intersectionality. As such, the new term "discrima," derived from the Latin word "discrimen" meaning discrimination, is proposed to refer to the emotion experienced after discrimination. Intersectionality is used to pave the way for further steps in quantifying the intersectionality line of research.This study also explores what intersectionality is, where it originates, where it occurs in L2 education, and whether the concept can effectively express what should be expressed. The implications of this research are relevant to educational policymakers and course designers who can use the concept in real-world settings. Emphasizing the emotional aspects of intersectionality may help prevent unpleasant L2 learning and teaching experiences for minority groups. Therefore, this new term may facilitate promoting L2 education internationally. It would be beneficial for future research to provide more details about the significance of the new term "discrima" in measuring intersectionality and to offer examples of how the concept of intersectionality can be applied in L2 education.

The first objective of the present study was to develop an inventory assessing EFL teachers’ professional identity perception (PIP) of technology-enhanced instructions (TEIs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the findings of a semi-structured interview administered with three teachers following their actual implementation of TEIs, a 55-item EFL teachers’ PIP inventory of TEIs was developed. The second objective was to investigate the construct validity and reliability of teachers’ PIP inventory of TEIs by gathering data from 157 Iranian EFL teachers. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity verified the suitability of the data for factor analysis. The results of Exploratory Factor Analysis indicated a nine-factor solution for the inventory items. Moreover, the PIP inventory of TEIs enjoyed a reliability of 0.77 suggesting a high reliability. Regarding teachers’ perceptions, various personal, professional, situational, and contextual aspects of professional identity were specified in relation to the implementation of TEIs in Iranian higher education. Some distinctive findings of this study comprised the society’s perception toward TEIs and the role of teachers’ pedagogical beliefs in the implementation of TEIs. This study has some implications for stakeholders to devote due attention to all aspects of teachers’ professional identity in the implementation of TEIs during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Writing by which students can be assessed plays an important function in the education process. By considering this fact, investigating the impact of graphic organizer strategy on improving Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ complexity of written performance was the main goal of this study. 40 intermediate EFL learners were selected as the participants of the study on the basis of findings of Preliminary English Test. After that, they were randomly divided into two experimental and control groups. To assess the initial writing ability of participants, two groups were given a pre-test prior to the treatment. After applying traditional method to the control group and the graphic organizer strategies to the experimental group, both groups received a post-test to examine the effect of materials. To examine the effectiveness of the treatment, an independent samples t-test was conducted. To see the progression amount between pre-test and post-test of the experimental group, a paired samples t-test was also employed. The findings of the study indicated that graphic organizer strategies improved the learners’ complexity of written performance. The results have some implications for EFL/ESL teachers, students, test and materials developers, and syllabus designers.