In an attempt to develop a metacognitive writing questionnaire, Farahian (2015) conducted a study which was based on the results obtained from a semi-structured interview (Maftoon, Birjandi & Farahian, 2014). After running various exploratory factor analyses (EFA) to validate the questionnaire two general scales of knowledge and regulation of…

This paper has investigated the way the dissertation writing component of MA TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) programmes in Iran has changed over the past decade in relation to globalization. The data, collected from 40 questionnaires completed by Iranian academic staff teaching these programmes, suggest that while change in…

An increased enthusiasm on teacher accountability, in recent times, has led policy makers and teachers to a significant care over evaluating teachers' success. To this aim, a 40-item Teacher Success questionnaire was developed and validated by the application of the Rasch model. The Rasch model is used to decide whether the scores of an instrument…

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) has potential to help language learners; however, it has received scant attention. The present study was an attempt to investigate the effect of NLP techniques on reading comprehension of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners at an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course. To achieve this goal, two…

This study investigates the direct and/or indirect effects of some cognitive (working memory capacity) and affective (writing anxiety and writing self-efficacy) variables on the complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) of second language (L2) learners' writings. To achieve this goal, 232 upper-intermediate English learners performed an automated…

This study aims to paint a vivid picture of the English teacher training courses held in Iranian private language institutes, both to critically analyse their aims and content, and to find their strengths and weaknesses. In line with this, qualitative data were gathered through information available on 34 institutes' websites, narrative…

The current study aimed at investigating the differences between male and female Iranian students in using different learning strategies. The participants of the study included 60 Iranian EFL students (30 male and 30 female) in Islamic Azad University in Larestan branch. The results of this study revealed that the frequency of using different…

This study reports on a mixed methods study which explored 32 Iranian pre-service teachers' perceptions of attending online asynchronous discussion forums during two seven-week online introductory courses in corpus linguistics. Data were collected through a questionnaire, discussion forum entries and online text-based semi-structured interviews.…

The study of factors influencing undergraduate learners' participation and/or reticence in second/foreign language classrooms, a relatively recent line of research, can contribute to the betterment of language teaching and learning practices. In this work, we attempt to investigate the causes of a population of undergraduate English as a foreign…

This study aimed to evaluate an ESP textbook in terms of McDonough and Shaw (2003) based on external and internal evaluation. The ESP textbook was "Special English for Computer Sciences" (2010) by Hojjat Baghban. This study also discussed the external evaluation and a detailed evaluation of a chapter of the ESP textbook. This ESP…

This study was conducted in order to inspect the impact of podcasts as learning and teaching tools on Iranian EFL learners' motivation for listening as well as on their listening comprehension ability. It also investigated the learners' perception towards podcasts. 34 intermediate learners who were homogeneous in terms of listening ability were…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of Iranian EFL learners' proficiency level on their self-related personality traits (self-esteem and self-efficacy). To this end, 141 English major students, male and female, studying at Imam Khomeini International University (IKIU) and Kar Non-profit University in Qazvin, Iran were…

Han's (2009, 2013) selective fossilization hypothesis (SFH) claims that L1 markedness and L2 input robustness determine the fossilizability (and learnability) of an L2 feature. To test the validity of the model, a pseudo-longitudinal study was designed in which the errors in the argumentative essays of 52 Iranian EFL learners were identified and…

Among the plethora of studies conducted thus far to explore the factors affecting EFL reading effectiveness, scant attention seems to be paid to the why of poor reading comprehension of most EFL learners. In this regard, the present article capitalized on qualitative research on a small scale, for the purpose of addressing the not-so-often debated…

This study aims to rank types of English language learning strategies that are used by Iranian female university level learners of English language as a university major. The results show that except for the Metacognitive Strategies category, the mean score for each of the five categories fell in the range of medium strategy use.