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Self-efficacy, which is known as the teachers’ self-perception of their competence and abilities in doing specific tasks, has attracted considerable attention in teacher education. It is seen as the teacher’s belief in achieving specific outcomes for students in their teaching practices, but the main sources of EFL teachers’ self-efficacy have not been systematically explored in a single study.  Therefore, this study set out to present a systematic review of the studies on EFL teachers’ self-efficacy. To this aim, a meta-analysis approach was employed to systematically review closely related papers from Elsevier, Google Scholar, and ERIC. The articles examined the sources of self-efficacy in a different context. Through precise screening, 13 papers were found to be eligible enough to be included in this study. Findings revealed that ‘Mastery Experiences’, ‘Vicarious Experiences’, ‘Social Persuasion and Support’,                                 ‘Emotional and Physiological States’, ‘Language Proficiency’, ‘Intelligence’, ‘Teaching skills and experience’, ‘pre-service training courses’, and ‘professional development activities’ are the main sources of self-efficacy. The findings could be theoretically and practically significant to EFL teachers, teacher trainers, and researchers interested in teacher education.

The present study aimed to examine the differences between Iranian EFL teachers’ burnout in online classes during the Covid-19 pandemic in public schools (PSs) and private language institutes (PLIs). It also investigated the causes of teacher burnout in the two contexts. The participants included 268 Iranian EFL teachers (108 teaching at PSs and 160 teaching at PLIs). The study employed a mixed-method design. In the quantitative phase, 268 EFL teachers were asked to answer Maslach et al.’s (1996) Burnout Inventory and in the qualitative phase, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 EFL teachers (10 from PSs and 10 from PLIs). The results of the first phase of the study indicated a significant difference between the two groups in the two dimensions of burnout including “Emotional Exhaustion”, and “Personal Accomplishment”. However, the difference between the “Depersonalization” aspect of burnout was not significant. The results of the second phase of the study indicated that factors such as challenges of online teaching, concerns about teaching effectiveness, lack of collegiality and principal/manager support, financial concerns and low wages, lack of job security, students’ misbehavior and lack of motivation, lack of teacher autonomy, heavy workload, as well as school/institute policies were conducive to teacher burnout.

The current quasi-experimental research aimed at exploring the influence of Lexically-Based Language Teaching (LBLT) on task response and coherence and cohesion aspects of the writing proficiency of Iranian university EFL learners. The research sample of the study included sixty male and female university students (N = 60) attending two university classes. They were selected by using a convenient sampling procedure and were assigned to experimental and control groups. To ascertain the groups' homogeneity at the beginning of the study, the researchers gave two groups the Key English Test (KET). Prior to starting treatment, two groups took the pretest writing task. While the participants comprising the experimental group were instructed consistent with the lexical approach's underlying practices and activities, those constituting the control group were instructed based on conventional techniques applied to present essay writing in universities. At the end of the experiment, the posttest writing, identical to the pretest, was given to both groups. To compare the two groups' mean scores with respect to coherence and cohesion and task response aspects of post-test writing, One-way Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) and independent T-test were drawn upon. Version 20 th of the SPSS software was applied for this end. The attained results were indicative of a significantly positive influence of the lexically-based language teaching on both coherence and cohesion and task response aspects of writing proficiency. However, the attained improvement was greater in the task response aspect. The findings suggest some implications for English language teachers and university instructors.

Numerous academics in the domains of language instruction, cultural studies, communication studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, etc. have focused on critical cultural awareness (CCA) as a crucial element of intercultural competency. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate whether the cultural elements in Iranian high school coursebooks (Vision Series) have been (un)touched by the ministry of education. To this end, the conversation contents of the Vision Series (levels 1-3) were examined by the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to evaluate possible intercultural competence used in Vision Series. It was found that the content was biased toward the source culture in general. Finally, some ideal ways of presenting culture in the coursebooks were put forward in the form of a cultural rubric. The pedagogical implications of this study are discussed.       

Classroom assessment practices play an important role in increasing students' learning. These practices are also key to the success of curriculum reforms. In line with this importance, the current study aimed to explore Iranian EFL teachers' classroom assessment practices following the new curriculum reform introduced in 2011. It also examined whether there were differences in teachers' practices based on variables such as gender, teaching experience, and educational degree through qualitative and quantitative approaches. A total of 28 EFL teachers at public high schools from three provinces in Iran (Lorestan, Kermanshah, and Ilam) participated in the semi-structured interviews. After transcribing the interviews, recurrent themes were identified by thematic analysis. The results revealed that English teachers used primarily assessment for learning or formative assessment, yet their assessments were still exam-based. The frequency of assessment practices indicated that oral questioning during instruction (60.7%), test after each lesson or unit of lesson (50%), written exams (35.7%), and group activity (32.1%) were the most frequently used assessment practices among teachers. The findings revealed that there is a discrepancy between teachers' classroom assessment practices and the curriculum reform. Across gender, there was a significant difference between participants in terms of role play, assigning summaries of lessons, and playing audio files. Regarding teaching experience and academic degree, there was no significant difference between participants. The findings would have implications for teacher education programs and EFL teachers.Key Words: Classroom assessment; EFL teachers; Formative assessment; Practices

Pronunciation is one of the sub-skills which has significant effect on improving the communication competency and linguistic performance. Moreover, Pronunciation is one of the most difficult parts of teaching a foreign language to adults. It seems that the sub-skill of pronunciation is not taught in the form of a well-rounded program in communicative approaches and interactive conversations in Persian language classes, and that learners pronounce Persian under the influence of the phonemes of their mother tongue. This study is an attempt to provide an answer for the question of what strategies foreign learners use in their learning process by examining pronunciation learning strategies. The current research is the application and collection of research data using the field research approach and the descriptive method is used for the data analysis. The research instrument in data collection is a questionnaire composed of 43 items, each question containing a pronunciation strategy. After verifying validity and reliability, it was randomly distributed among foreign Persian learners. Based on the findings, they make significant use of cognitive, social, metacognitive and compensatory strategies. Commonly, mother tongue does not have a significant effect on the use of these strategies, but Chinese speakers use the group of cognitive strategies significantly more than Arabic speakers do.

Due to inconclusive evidence for the differential impacts of portfolio assessment (PA) on genre-based writing improvement and learner engagement, this study cross-examined 46 EFL undergraduates’ descriptive and narrative writing performances in a 12-week PA design. Teacher feedback points were collected from consecutive formative assessments of the students’ descriptive and narrative writing according to the genre-specific indicators in the West Virginia Department of Education descriptive writing rubric and Smarter Balanced narrative writing rubric, respectively. Statistical results reported the significant impact of PA on improving accurate word choice and grammar, development, and organization of ideas in session-wise students’ descriptive writing, with no sign of improvement in their performance on post-test descriptive writing. Further, the positive impact of PA was supported by improving the components of elaboration of narrative, language and vocabulary, organization, and convention in session-wise students’ narrative writing, as well as their performance on post-test narrative writing. Qualitative data on students’ engagement in PA was collected from inductive content analysis of their reflective journals. Students’ self-reports were schematized, and their level of engagement was rendered in terms of their approval of the usefulness and novelty of PA, the frequent mismatch between student self-assessment and teacher feedback both in quality and quantity, the sensitivity of teacher feedback to some writing features over others, the applicability of teacher feedback to the revision process, and overall positive perception of writing improvement.

This study posits that an important key component of political discourse derives from its heavy reliance on persuasion strategies to support the ideological bases. Throughout the argument, the study positions an emphasis on the US Democratic Party’s (DP) success in receiving the public consent and acceptance. Their victory is more likely the result of the power of their democratic ideologies that are constructed through the strategic use of rhetorical devices and linguistic structures. In an attempt to investigate which particular discursive strategies and rhetorical devices are instrumental in constructing a particular type of ideology, we adopted a CDA approach and analyzed Barak Obama’s public speeches to the US nation. The analytic categories found in his speech are: rhythmic paralleled structures and repetition; nominalization; and metaphorical framing. Moreover, in our macro-analysis of Obama’s discourse, special attention is paid to the effective role of devices such as topoi, or fallacies in his political argumentations and positive representation of DP.