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The prominence of teacher motivation in teaching practices and behaviors and its impact on student achievement is widely recognized in educational psychology. Nevertheless, English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ motivation and the factors influencing its development appear an uncharted domain. The following study attempted to explore EFL teachers’ motivation in relation to intrinsic interest, goal setting, and teaching effectiveness. The sample comprised 127 Iranian EFL teachers with their students (N= 500). The teachers were asked to complete a battery of two questionnaires. To assess teacher goal-setting and intrinsic interest, the researcher utilized the 'Teacher Self-Regulation Scale (TSRS)' designed by Yesim, Sungur, and Uzuntiryaki (2009). To gauge teacher motivation, 'The Work Tasks Motivation Scale for Teachers' designed by Fernet (2009) was employed. In the present study, this questionnaire was translated to Persian and then the translated version was validated in the Iranian context to pave the way for future studies on teacher motivation in Iranian context. To measure language teachers' performance and success in language teaching, the researcher employed the 'Characteristics of Successful Iranian EFL Teachers Questionnaire' (CSIET) designed and validated by Moafian and Pishghadam (2009). The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) indicated that there were relatively strong interrelationships among the three variables (intrinsic interest, goal-setting, and job motivation). All of them were positive and significant predictors of teacher success, and intrinsic interest exhibited the highest impact. It was also found that intrinsic interest positively influenced job motivation. The SEM analysis also indicated that goal-setting was positively influenced by both intrinsic interest and job motivation.
2nd Conference on New Trends in English Language Teaching and Testing Ardabil, August 28, 2017, At Ardabil, Iran
An investigation into attribution of failure-oriented EFL university students2017 •
Motivation can be conceptualized as a dynamic process which is a key contributor to mastering a second language. This study used the L2-Motivational Self System as the basis for a conceptual framework for studying the effects of external factors on learners' motivation. In particular, the role of teachers and parents was studied as the external facets of predicting learners' motivation. One hundred and twenty EFL teachers along with 1,270 of their students participated in the study. To measure motivation, the Persian version of Dörnyei's L2 Motivation Self-System Scale was utilized. Three key components of the scale, namely, criterion measure, attitudes to L2 learning, and instrumentality promotion were employed in measuring motivation. To assess the role of family in motivating learners, another subscale of Dörnyei's questionnaire, i.e., family influence was used. To gauge teacher burnout, the educator version of the Maslach burnout inventory (MBI-ES) was used. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was run to analyze the causal
The present study, adopting a quasi-experimental pretest/posttest design, investigated the effect of instructional intervention in teaching polite/appropriate refusal strategies explicitly on Iranian EFL learners’ performance of the speech act of refusing. The participants consisted of 24 male Iranian elementary EFL learners, aged 12 to 18, who responded to a discourse completion task (DCT) prior to and after they had been exposed to explicit instruction in the polite performance of refusals in English. The learners’ responses showed that there existed a variety of impoliteness elements at pretest stage including lack of mitigation, directness, shortness of responses, etc. The instruction, lasting for 10 sessions, was directed at eliminating these impoliteness/inappropriacy elements and included the length of semantic formulas, using adjuncts to refusals, apologizing prior to refusing, use of honorifics, intensification of refusal semantic formulas, etc. The participants’ responses to the DCT in the posttest showed a high level of appropriacy in the semantic content of refusal utterances. Furthermore, paired-samples t-tests demonstrated a significant difference in the use of both refusal strategies and adjuncts to refusals between the pretest and posttest stages. In conclusion, the study revealed that pragmatics can accompany language teaching even when learners have not attained a high level of linguistic proficiency. More specifically, the results clearly demonstrated that the pragmatic as well as the linguistic components of language can go in hand in hand in the course of language teaching.
Schumann’s (1986) Acculturation Model recognizes accent as a means of language learners’ identification with either their mother tongue (MT) culture or the target language (TL) culture which will consequently affect the learners’ language learning effort. Taking up a critical stance, the present study, thus, aimed to examine the role that learners’ attitudes and beliefs play in their adoption of MT (i.e., Persian) culture or TL (i.e., English) culture while speaking in the TL in an instructed foreign language context. The triangulated data were elicited from a number of 213 Iranian male elementary EFL learners, aged 12 to 19 years using a questionnaire consisting of both close-ended and open-ended questions, focus-group interviews and class observations. The questionnaire and the interview questions required the participants to voice their opinions freely regarding the accent they assumed and preferred when using the target language and the reasons for their preferences and the class observations focused on the participants’ reactions to MT-accented as well as TL speech of their peers. The findings revealed that 81.3% of the participants displayed strong preferences for the TL accent (i.e., English) while only 18.7% of the participants privileged speaking English with their MT accent. The rationale for the TL accent preference was found to be composed of nine categories of reasons with ‘intelligibility’, ‘beauty and effectiveness of TL accent’, and ‘resemblance to native speakers and avoidance of mockery’ cited as the most primary reasons. On the other hand, the major reason for assuming a MT accent was to reveal one’s identity through the MT accent. The study therefore highlighted the strong inclination among EFL learners to acculturate into the TL culture through assuming its accent.
Purpose: This research investigated the effect of immediate and delayed error correction on motivation of EFL learners to approve or disapprove the research hypothesis that, there is not any significant difference between three group of immediate correction, delayed correction, and control group. Methodology: This study was conducted among three groups of 30 subjects and in total, population of 90 learners. The errors committed by three groups of immediate correction, delayed correction, and control group were addressed in three different ways: immediately, with delay, and with no special method, respectively. A motivation questionnaire and a language test were given to three groups in the first session of the term and the last session of the term to see the effect of different kinds of error correction. The data of pre-test and post-test were analyzed by SPSS and one way ANOVA was used. Findings: The result provided evidence for rejection of the hypothesis and immediate group performed better than delayed group and control group. Significance: This study is the first research investigating the effect of error correction time on motivation.
The present study aimed at validating the Persian versions of epistemological beliefs scale among Iranian EFL learners. Epistemological beliefs questionnaire (EBQ) designed and validated by Chan and Elliot (2004) includes 30 items and employs a 5-point Likert scale which measure students' epistemological beliefs. On this scale, there are four dimensions: 1) ‚Innate/Fixed Ability‛ which refers to ability being innate and fixed, 2) ‚Learning Effort/Process‛ referring to hard work, and effort spent in drilling, 3)‚Authority/Expert Knowledge‛ concerning knowledge being handed down by authority figures and experts, and 4) ‚Certainty Knowledge‛ denoting whether knowledge is certain, permanent, and unchanged. The present study also set out to investigate whether these epistemological beliefs vary by learner's gender, Grade point average (GPA) and contextual factor. To do so, 206 EFL learners were selected according to convenience sampling among EFL learners in language institutes and universities in Mashhad, a city in northeast of Iran. The results of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) verified the validity and reliability of the translated versions of scale in Iranian context. It was also found that these epistemological beliefs vary by GPA not by gender and contextual factor.
Effective learners are cognizant of their own basic needs and abilities so as to maximize their capabilities , dispositions, as well as potentialities up to become self-actualized individuals. To delve into the process of university students' self-actualization, we strived to amalgamate this construct with two motivational-associated factors, i.e., mastery goal and intrinsic motivation. To do so, a three-phase mixed-methods study was designed. In the first phase, the reliability and validity of the 'Mea-surement of Actualization of Potential (MAP)' (measuring five sub-scales, namely, openness to self, openness to others, openness to life, adaptability, and autonomy) were determined in the present study via a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). In the second phase, our proposed model containing the three constructs was examined using a structural equation modeling (SEM). Eventually, to procure a deeper perception of self-fulfillment valence in actual behaviors, feelings, and assertions of the participants , a semi-structured interview was conducted on seven randomly selected participants from a general sample population of 253 Iranian university students in its first and second phases. The results demonstrated that the proposed model had a good fit with the empirical data. The contribution of mastery goal and intrinsic motivation was demonstrated in the model. It was also found that among the sub-scales of self-fulfillment, 'openness to self' had the highest association with intrinsic motivation followed by 'openness to life.' Mastery goal had the highest correlation with 'openness to life' followed by 'autonomy.' The analysis of interview protocol revealed that self-rating percentages of the delineated lists were all in congruence with the number of selected activities and traits the respondents preferred.
Journal of Faculty of Letters and Humanities
A Critical Appraisal of the Status of Chomskyan Linguistics in TEFL Curriculum2010 •
Fourth International Conference on Language, Discourse, and Pragmatics
The SFL Analysis of a Collection of Poems by William Butler Yeats2017 •
Advances in Language and Literary Studies
A Structural Equation Modeling of EFL Learners' Goal Orientation, Metacognitive Awareness, and Self-efficacy2014 •
2013 •
Journal of Modern Research in English Language Studies
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Incorporation of Persian Literature into ELT in Iran: A Necessity which has been Ignored.2014 •
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Teacher Educators and School Teachers' Perceptions of Professional Needs in the Foreign Language Classroom2013 •
Journal of Modern Research in English Language Studies, Imam Khomeini International University
The Impact of Teaching Self-regulation in Reading on EFL Learners' Motivation to Read: Insights from an SRL Model2019 •