This study set out to evaluate Iranian EFL teachers' Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) beliefs and practices. An ICC belief scale was developed drawing on Byram's (1997) model of Intercultural Competence (IC) and Sercu's (2005) EFL teachers' opinion on Intercultural Foreign Language Teaching Questionnaire. To ensure the validity and…

Purpose: Despite the growth of theory and research on young English learners and the widely-recognized importance of critical incidents (CIs) in teachers' professional development (PD), little research has examined young-learner teachers' CIs. This study investigated the impacts of a PD course structured around CIs sharing/discussing on 14 L2…

This study explored the effects of three types of lexical tools (MOOCs, E-dictionaries, and lexical concordancers) and three types of lexical applications (technology-mediated communication-based applications (TMCA), Anki as an e-flashcard application, and WordUp as a dedicated lexical application) on learning academic core words among a sample of…

Purpose: While research on language teacher cognition is increasingly developing, the scope of research on writing teachers' cognition is still limited, particularly on how teacher education influences their cognitions. The present study moves along this line of inquiry and investigates the impact of a teacher education course on second language…

Despite the recognition of the importance of teachers' professional development, the exploration of teachers' Critical Incidents (CIs) as a type of professional development initiative has received insufficient attention in L2 teaching contexts. Motivated by the dearth of research in this area and building on complexity theory as its conceptual…

Purpose: The growing body of knowledge on language teacher agency highlights the positive contributions of agency for teacher identity construction. However, teachers may face challenges in effectively exercising agency, and their agentive actions may be impeded by multiple contextual factors. The present study adopts a narrative inquiry…

While research on teachers' Critical Incidents (CIs) has grown exponentially, little research has been done on teachers' assessment-related CIs, much less examining the contributions of such CIs to their identity sense-making. This study aimed to fill some of this gap by exploring assessment-related CIs of 13 Iranian L2 teachers and the associated…

Although researchers in the area of second language acquisition agree on the effectiveness of form-focused instruction, there is little consensus on the appropriate time to direct learners' attention to linguistic items, that is, whether before or after the error occurrence [Nassaji, H. 2010, "The Occurrence and Effectiveness of Spontaneous…

Following a suggestion by Poehner [2008. Dynamic Assessment: A Vygotskian Approach to Understanding and Promoting Second Language Development. Berlin: Springer] about the possible merger between group dynamic assessment (GDA) rooted in Vygotskian sociocultural theory (SCT) and computer testing, this study has decided to test the feasibility of…

With the recent shift from negative psychology to positive psychology in the field of second language acquisition deeper understanding regarding the transfer and construction of positive emotions within classroom interactions is needed. Inspired by the concept of emotion contagion in the field of psychology, the purpose of this study was to…

The present study was an effort to investigate the effects of flipped learning on EFL (English as a foreign language) learners' L2 speaking, L2 listening, and out-of-class participation and engagement with course materials and activities. To this end, 67 freshmen English students from two universities in Iran were assigned into one of the three…

Although adventure video games have been identified as effective tools for education, few studies have examined the usefulness of such games for language learning. The present classroom-based investigation, therefore, examined the possibility of exploiting commercial adventure video games for improving vocabulary recall of second language learners…

This article reports on a study which employed a flipped classroom strategy to increase the amount of peer dialogue among a group of Iranian EFL learners. The flipped strategy used in this study required the students to study some online materials provided for students via a social network called Telegram. Before attending the class, the…

Reading comprehension is a key skill that can influence the learning outcome and further language development. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of two types of reading interventions, Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) and Shadow Reading (SHR), on EFL learners' reading comprehension across two proficiency levels. To…

Owing to the importance of learner autonomy (LA) and considering the prominent role of teachers in this respect, the present study investigated: (1) Iranian English as a foreign language teachers' practices for promoting high school students' autonomy, (2) possible differences among teachers' practices with different educational degrees, levels of…