perspectives

The importance of incorporating graduate students' needs into academic writing courses has established a good reputation in EAP/ESP research. In addition, writing and publishing research articles (RA) is a universally established benchmark for students' academic flourish. The present study examines the status quo of academic writing courses in graduate programs to determine the extent academic writing needs of Applied Linguistics students, mainly RA writing needs, are addressed and practiced in the course. Drawing insights from the literature on academic writing, we developed two similar interview protocols for graduate students and course instructors to capture these key stakeholders' retrospective views on the course. We found that the course mainly focuses on proposal/thesis writing, not regarded as a critical need based on students' perspectives. Moreover, both students and instructors echoed the importance of RA writing as a significant area to be covered while emphasizing the need to integrate RA genre literacy into classroom practices. In this paper, we call for the reconsideration of students' primary needs in designing and running graduate writing programs and suggest that RA writing with a genre-based orientation become an instrumental component of academic writing courses in English as an Additional Language context (EAL).

This research investigates methods to enhance the conversational portion of the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) textbook called 'Vision 1' that is utilized in Iranian high schools. The study involves 50 Iranian EFL high school teachers within the age range of 25-40, who have been teaching for 3-7 years and currently incorporate 'Vision 1' into their English curriculum. The collection of qualitative data was accomplished by conducting semi-structured interviews to gain a deeper understanding of their viewpoints. The findings highlight challenges faced by teachers, such as limited oral practice opportunities, lack of authenticity in dialogues, and difficulty in engaging students. Proposed solutions include incorporating authentic dialogues, increasing oral practice opportunities, incorporating interactive activities, and providing teacher support materials. Implementing these insights can benefit not only the designers of EFL textbooks but also curriculum developers and language educators in Iran and similar educational contexts. By addressing the identified issues and incorporating the proposed solutions, it is expected that the conversational component of the 'Vision 1' textbook can be significantly enhanced, leading to more effective English language learning experiences for Iranian high school students.

Changing the English textbook of the first grade junior high school at Iran’s public schools after 27 years has sparked researchers’ interests in conducting evaluations of the new English textbook to get insights into its strengths and weaknesses. In line with this trend, this study aimed at evaluating the new textbook (Prospect 1) from teachers’ perspectives. To attain this objective, 30 junior high school teachers were interviewed and the data were then analyzed by qualitative content analysis. The results revealed that from teachers’ perspectives, there were some pitfalls with the new textbook such as applying an unsuitable method of literacy instruction; over-attention to the communication skills at the expense of literacy skills; over-localization of the content; overlooking the development of intercultural competence in students; and lack of authenticity in the presentation of the content. Finally, as the central figures in the process of educational change, the participant teachers offered some suggestions to amend the new textbook with the hope that their voices be heard by the pertinent authorities.