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Considering the body of research on the intersection of psychology and assessment that suggests assessment is not only under the influence of the model against which a translation is assessed, the present study aimed to investigate the role of raters’ personality traits in their assessment. It was also intended to see if the application of an agreed-upon unified assessment tool could change the way evaluations are made, and if this possible change is the same among raters with different personality traits. To this end, seven raters were asked to score an English text translated by 23 students twice with an interval of at least two weeks. In the first scoring, they were asked to assess the way they usually did with no specific guidelines. However, the second assessment was done through the application of an agreed-upon model. Moreover, the raters were scored on the personality traits of agreeableness and conscientiousness as it is believed that these two traits are predictors of leniency. The data analyzed revealed (1) a significant correlation between the raters’ score on agreeableness and the scores they assigned to the translations, and (2) a significant negative correlation between the raters’ score on conscientiousness and the scores they assigned to the translations. This proved that more agreeable less conscientious raters are prone to be more lenient. The value of Cronbach alpha also revealed that more conscientious less agreeable raters were more consistent in their assessments in both rounds of scoring. This, however, turned out not to be the case for less conscientious raters.

Technology-mediated instructional activities have received increasing attention in second language acquisition (SLA) studies. Yet, research on the role of technology in language learners’ emotional intelligence has been limited. More specifically, the role of data-driven learning (DDL) using concordancing, as a technology-mediated approach to learning English, in developing emotional intelligence has been left unattended. Through a mixed-methods explanatory sequential design within a quasi-experimental comparison group pretest-posttest design, the present study examined if DDL statistically significantly influenced the English learners’ trait emotional intelligence (TEI) and its attributes, including emotionality, self-control, well-being, and sociability. The results of questionnaires, open-ended surveys, and semi-structured interviews with 92 female undergraduate English learners indicated that DDL did not statistically significantly influence their TEI and its attributes. However, in terms of well-being, learners in the experimental group were slightly higher than learners in the control group. Finally, analysis of the qualitative data pointed to an increase in the learners’ TEI through enhancing self-confidence, stress management, and emotional perception.

Due to the advancement of multimedia technology, it is now very common to use tools and equipment for teaching and learning. Understanding how to best utilize the benefits and functions of multimedia technology has now taken the lead in English teaching and learning. The positive contributions that multimedia technology makes to the teaching and learning of English listening, speaking, reading, and writing are highlighted in this essay. It also focuses on strategies and methods to enhance English comprehensive ability in a multimedia environment and highlights issues that need to be addressed. It is advised to focus more on the natural integration of multimedia technology and English teaching, expand the range of English reading, increase interest in English learning, enhance the comprehensive ability of English application, and establish a resource-sharing environment for teachers.

The breakout and intensification of the worldwide Coronavirus pandemic caused dramatic changes to education across the world. Both teachers and students were not prepared for the sudden change regarding the mode of teaching and learning: onsite to offsite and offline to online. The current study seeks to identify frequent problems that first-year English major students have during their online learning process and explore their suggestions for the improvement of the situation. Data were collected from an online survey of 89 first-year English-majored students. The students’ obstacles were identified by the 30-item questionnaire, and their suggestions for positive changes were explored thanks to open-ended questions. The results show that learning environment is the students’ biggest problem due to the distraction of attention during home study. The extent of problems in six areas: (1) self-regulation, (2) technological literacy, (3) student isolation, (4) technological sufficiency, (5) learning resources, and (6) learning environments are significantly different. Among the suggestions, the students expected improvements in (1) teachers’ pedagogy, (2) students’ health, and (3) assessment scheme. Acknowledging the problems and putting forward suggestions for emergency remote teaching could contribute to the development of sustainable online teaching as a complementary mode of instruction in the new normal.

One strategy that eases the process of teaching argumentative writing might be teaching them how to express their thoughts, beliefs, and in general, ideologies in academic essays. This study aimed to investigate the effect of teaching writing skills on ideology transfer in the academic writings of EFL students. To this end, a sequential mixed-methods design was used. Participants were 80 male and female IELTS candidates who were selected based on some criteria such as proficiency level, age, and educational background. A sample Mock Writing Task 2 and a sample IELTS Writing Task 2 were used as instruments in the pre-test and post-test respectively. Learners’ essays produced during these stages were analyzed based on Fairclough’s (2001) three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis: description, interpretation, and explanation. To analyze the data, content analysis methods were applied during which discursive strategies used by the candidates were identified and coded, and the frequency and percentage of them were calculated. After the analysis, the following themes were extracted in the participants’ writings, as representing ideology transfer: tendency towards representation of identity, use of active voices, use of first-person pronouns, social views, author visibility, ideology-laden concepts, and idea development. Moreover, there were significant changes in the post-test writings of the participants in terms of the number of discursive strategies used to express ideology. This shows that teaching writing skills can significantly affect EFL learners’ ability to transfer their ideology into academic writing. The findings can have some implications for EFL learners, teachers, and curriculum planners.

Adaptive teaching addresses students’ diversity and their immediate learning needs. Particularly, in the high-interactive context of English teaching, fostering adaptive teaching in teacher professional development programs not only stimulates teacher change at the micro level, but also facilitates implementing the organizational and curricular innovations imposed by authorities at the macro level. The current English teaching literature lacks a measure for evaluating and fostering adaptive teaching within higher education. Hence, within the present study, the Interconnected Model of Teacher Professional Growth (IMTPG) was adapted and validated as a measure for evaluating and fostering teacher adaptability for 183 international English teachers in higher education. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was employed for validating two different enactment and reflection links in the original IMTPG, and the final adapted IMTPG for adaptive teaching (At-IMTPG) was proposed. The AT-IMTPG can be applied for evaluating how adaptive English teachers are, seeking to resolve the problem of implementing educational innovations by English teachers in higher education. It can also be used to design teacher professional growth programs for fostering adaptive teaching within English teaching higher education. Such a change in the classroom level is hoped to be translated into an educational change in English teaching higher education.

Discrepant cultural systems of languages are more likely to reflect challenges for translators maintaining the cultural dynamics of translation. Such perspective is mostly highlighted in the translation of literary texts where the main parts of the equation are language and culture. The present study aims to investigate cultural, historical and religious loss or gain in the translation of culture-specific items (CSIs) along with the rendering procedures used by the translators. To this end, through a comparative analytical and descriptive method based on (Vinay & Darbelent Model, 1995), culture-specific items of three Persian translations of the Huckleberry Finn story were extracted and divided into three subcategories of cultural, historical, and religious; consequently, the procedures applied by the translators which led to the cultural loss or gain were analyzed. The findings demonstrated that the first translation by Mohebbi had the highest degree of loss (17.16%), and the third translation by Daryabandari had the highest degree of gain (41.58%). Also, the highest frequency of lost items belonged to the cultural type with %6/31 in the first translation by Mohebbi and %2/52 in the second translation by Pirnazar. The findings indicated that the policies and normative differences of societies in different periods had an undeniable impact on the transmission of concepts which reflects the degree of loss and gain in translation. The result of the present study could be thought-provoking for psychoanalytical studies on the translator’s decision-making.         

This study set out to examine how stereotypes as social psychological phenomena are enacted in everyday discourse. Besides discussing how ingroups and outgroups are formed in mundane talk, it is argued that stereotypes are ideological constructs that are jointly achieved in social contexts. Moreover, it is assumed that the ways in which stereotypes are constructed and discussed in discourse are informed by a number of underlying moral conceptualizations which might justify the potential face-threatening acts and the impoliteness inherent in prejudiced talk targeted to a third party. The study is an ethnographic case study informed by an eclectic approach to the analysis of data so as to shed light on how the expression of thoughts and feelings are constructed as talk in ordinary social interactions unfolds and what these expressions achieve. The analyses revealed that the construction of outgroup stereotypes is a mutual accomplishment and possibly a face-threatening act moderated by mitigating discourse features

The present study aimed to develop writing skills by using the blogging technique. This experimental research used a pre-post group design. The study had two groups; a control group (23 male students) and an experimental group (24 male students). The students in the control group were taught traditionally through paper-and-pencil assignments. On the other hand, blogging was taught in the experimental group. The topics focused on current global events, which were prepared and posted by the researcher. The learners were asked to search for photos, videos, or articles related to the assigned topic and write about these events in their own words. They also had to post comments and feedback on their classmates’ blog posts. The learners worked on their blog posts individually, in pairs, or in small groups. The researcher worked as a facilitator. Comparing the posttest scores using SPSS analysis of learners who blogged about current global events and those who only used paper-and-pencil tasks on the same topics showed significant differences in writing improvement in favor of the blog group. Moreover, students in the blog group showed positive attitudes toward the blogging activity. They enjoyed interacting and cooperating with their peers and reflecting on their performance in writing in response to the feedback and comments they got from other classmates’ blog posts. The study ended with some recommendations for intensifying the blogging activity of EFL students in writing courses. Also, blogging about current global events was confirmed to be efficient in raising students’ global awareness and promoting their writing skills.

The ICTs have invaded not only the fields of business, economics, and different sciences, but also the field of education and particularly language teaching and learning. This article addresses a crucial issue related to the use of ICTs at the university in Morocco and its impact on the academic performance of students. Many studies in the review of literature are presented and they mainly revolve around similar issues related to advantages and disadvantages of ICTs in general, however little attention has been devoted to the relationship between ICTs and academic performance. Thus, this article seeks to answer a set of research questions along with hypotheses which are tested and discussed following some statistical procedures. The researcher looks at the correlation between the use of ICTs in higher education and students’ academic performance. A questionnaire was designed and submitted to a sample of students composed of 108 students from four major universities in Morocco. Cronbach’s alpha was obtained to test the reliability of the instrument. The findings indicate that the implementation of ICTs in higher education is positively correlated with the academic performance of students. The implications of this study suggest that integrating ICTs into higher education can lead to improved academic performance of students. This has significant implications for educators and policymakers who can use this information to design and implement effective ICT-based teaching and learning strategies to enhance student learning outcomes. The study also highlights the importance of considering the relationship between ICT use and academic performance in educational research and policy-making. The results provide a foundation for further research on the use of ICTs in higher education and their impact on student success.

Measurement disturbances refer to any conditions that affect the measurement of some psychological latent variables, which result in an inaccurate interpretation of item or person estimates derived from a measurement model. Measurement disturbances are mainly attributed to the characteristics of the person, the properties of the items, and the interaction between the characteristics of the person and the features of the items. Although numerous researchers have detected measurement disturbances in different contexts, too little attention has been devoted to exploring measurement disturbances within the context of language testing and assessment, especially using graphical displays. This study aimed to show the utility of graphical displays, which surpass numeric values of infit and outfit statistics given by the Rasch model, to explore measurement disturbances in a listening comprehension test. Results of the study showed two types of outcomes for examining graphical displays and their corresponding numeric fit values: congruent and incongruent associations. It turned out that graphical displays can provide diagnostic information about the performance of test items which might not be captured through numeric values.

Today, technological applications provide language learners with many possibilities to improve their learning. Online learning environments create opportunities for more flexibility, interaction, and collaboration in a way different from face-to-face learning environments. This study attempted to investigate the effects of synchronous distance education on the oral comprehension of Iraqi English language learners. The participants were 19 Iraqi English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in a language institute in Karbala, Iraq. All learners were following the same language course at the B1 level. These learners were randomly divided into three groups: the face-to-face control group, the experimental group taught via the Adobe Connect platform, and the experimental group taught via the Skype application. The data were collected through pre- and post-oral proficiency tests. The findings showed significant differences in the improvement of oral comprehension among the three groups. Experimental groups scored significantly higher than the control group. Moreover, the results indicated that the Adobe Connect-based instruction had a better effect on the learners’ oral comprehension in comparison to the Skype-based instruction. Concerning the performance of males and females in the experimental groups, the findings showed a significant difference between females and males in the Adobe Connect condition, with females showing more improvement. However, no significant difference was observed between males and females in the Skype group. The study stresses the mediation of virtual classrooms in enhancing EFL learners’ learning achievements. Relevant pedagogical implications for classroom practice in EFL education are presented and discussed and some suggestions are made for future research

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.