Teacher factors encompass the teachers’ cognitive and affective characteristics that are likely to affect their instructional efficacy. Language teacher immunity is one of the affective factors that determines the teachers’ psychological well-being in their settings. The present study strived to itemize the factors in novice and experienced EFL instructors’ teacher immunity philosophy. To this end, first, the researchers used convenience sampling for selecting 62 EFL teachers including 38 novice and 24 experienced teachers at ten prominent language institutes in Tabriz (Iran) as the participants. Second, they conducted 30-minute interviews with the participants for determining the factors that influenced their TI philosophy using a researcher-developed semi-structured interview protocol. Lastly, they used thematic analysis in order to particularize the main factors in their teacher immunity philosophy. The findings of the study indicated that while the novice teachers considered external support as the main factor in their philosophy, the experienced teachers regarded their internal strength as the decisive factor that influenced their teacher immunity philosophy. The findings may have practical implications for teacher education courses in foreign language contexts.

Productive intelligibility strategies used by EFL learners to make themselves understood in reciprocal interactions with their teacher and peers are essential for success in online English learning courses. This qualitative study aimed to identify Iranian basic-level EFL learners' reactions to online misconceptions by identifying their productive intelligibility strategies, which involve manipulating their linguistic productions and taking social and cultural norms into account. Content analysis and critical discourse analysis were applied to the interactional discourse of 50 learners with their instructor and classmates during a three-month online English course. The students used phonological, lexical, and grammatical efficient intelligibility techniques to target online misconceptions of their teacher and classmates. Nonetheless, due to the specific affordances   of the online learning context, learners' self-confidence, and the gravity of the misunderstood linguistic elements, discrepancies emerge in the subcategories of efficient intelligibility strategies. Furthermore, Iranian basic level EFL learners’ low level of language proficiency did not lead to their avoidance of reacting to misconceptions. They strategically reproduced power relations and recontextualized Islamic culture in targeting their teachers’ misconceptions in online context through a flow of dynamic interactions. The findings uncovered the potentials of online learning in shaping the linguistic and discursive aspects of learners' strategic productions.

It is highly conspicuous that learning and reaching high levels of mastery in writing and the psychological factors affecting it has an increasing importance. A common strategy that has attracted more attention in the field is the study of the possible effect of individual differences including willingness to write and personality type on the writing performance of language learners. As in particular no study in Iraq, to our knowledge, has considered such relationships, the present study dissects the links between EFL Iraqi learner’ s willingness to write, writing ability and personality types. To homogenize the learners, 200 English university students from Diwaneyah English language departments were selected through convenience sampling and were required to participated in Oxford Placement Test from which 120 EFL language were considered intermediate. The intermediate participants were also asked to fill out two questionnaires of Willingness to write and five-factor personality type and complete a writing task. The Pearson correlation between the scores showed that willingness to write and writing ability are moderately correlated and that from among five sub-factors of personality traits, conscientiousness has the highest positive correlation and Neuroticism has the lowest negative correlation with writing ability. The findings of this study have important implications for teachers and administrators to know how to consider psychological factors to improve students’ writing ability.

Postmodernism represents skepticism toward metanarratives and universal ideologies that dominated the modernist era. The study focuses on three key postmodernist concepts - alternative assessment, process syllabi, and self-directed learning. Alternative assessment emphasizes evaluating the learning process over summative testing. Process syllabi focus on the learning experience rather than rigid outcomes. Self-directed learning enables student responsibility in setting learning goals and processes. This paper examined the effects of postmodernist educational concepts on improving Iranian EFL learners’ autonomy. A quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test design was utilized with 60 intermediate level Iranian EFL students divided into an experimental and control group (n=30 each). The experimental group received instruction utilizing the three postmodernist concepts over 14 weeks, while the control group received traditional modernist instruction. Autonomy was measured using a validated questionnaire before and after the intervention. The results showed the experimental group demonstrated significant increases in autonomy compared to the control group. Paired sample t-tests revealed significant differences between pre-test and post-test autonomy for the experimental group across all three postmodern concepts - alternative assessment, process syllabi, and self-directed learning. This suggests postmodernist concepts that decentralize instruction and emphasize student process over outcomes can enhance Iranian EFL learners’ self-direction and responsibility for language acquisition. The study implies EFL syllabus designers and instruction should transition to postmodern models centered on individualized assessment, flexible syllabi, and student-guided learning to boost autonomy. Further research can expand sample sizes and explore additional postmodernist concepts across diverse demographics.

In comparison with the four main language skills, the writing skill has revealed that students are struggling with writing problems mainly due to ineffective feedback. Under the insights of Vygotsky's Socio-cultural Theory (SCT), DA intended to combine instruction and assessment and warrant both instruction and feedback quality. The present quasi-experimental study tried to investigate the effectiveness of the interventionist DA modalities (i.e., authoritative and facilitative) in developing the writing revision types of a sample of 120 advanced Iranian EFL learners in the form of two experimental and one control group. They produced sample essays for both diagnostic and achievement purposes; but in the interim, each experimental group was exposed to specific DA-oriented interventions while the control group received its conventional non-dynamic mainstream of teaching writing revision types. Parametric statistical analyses (MANOVA and one-way ANOVA) run forurposes revealed interesting findings: 1) significant differences among the three groups in favor of DA-interventions; 2) significant difference of facilitative-DA modality over authoritative-DA modality; 3) significant differences with regard to Addition Deletion, and Substitution, 4) but no differences between the control group and the experimental groups in ‘Permutation’ were detected.

The main aim of this study was to see if a significant relationship existed among Iranian EFL learners’ Learning Styles, Writing Strategies and Writing Anxiety. To this effect, 183 EFL learners studying English in three language institutes from the upper intermediate and advanced proficiency levels were selected based on convenient nonrandom sampling procedure. They completed the Kolb Learning Style (KLS), the Inventory of Learning Strategies for writing (ILS) and the Foreign Language Writing Anxiety Scale (FLWAS) self-report questionnaires. However, after the initial screening, 21 cases were discarded as their answers were incomplete, leaving 162 participants in the final sample. The relationship among EFL learners learning styles, writing strategies and writing anxiety were analyzed using the Spearman rank order coefficient of correlation. Since, the results indicated statistically significant relationships among them, multiple regression analyses were run to see if significant predictors of EFL learners’ writing anxiety could be identified. Interestingly, the analyses showed that pragmatist learning style made the strongest statistically significant unique contribution to predict writing anxiety while activist learning style failed to make such a significant contribution. To clarify, the negative relationship suggests that the more pragmatic the preferred learning style is, the lower the writing anxiety. Furthermore, only memory writing strategy made a statistically significant unique contribution to predicting writing anxiety while the other five writing strategies did not. To explain further, their positive relationship implies that learners who apply memory strategies more, face higher levels of writing anxiety. Thus, this study identified learners’ pragmatist learning style and memory writing strategy as significant predictors of writing anxiety in the EFL context. As a result, not only does this study provide statistical evidence of the relationship among these variables but it also stresses the importance of EFL learners’ language learning styles and writing strategies to their writing anxiety.

English prepositions possess only a small proportion of language but play an important role. Despite their frequently use in English textbooks for secondary school, students fail to acquire them and often show low achievements in using prepositions properly. In this paper, we use a quasi-empirical study to examine the effect of cognitive-inspired instruction on learning in, on, and at, which are known to pose tremendous difficulty to English language learners due to their language-specific features and polysemous nature. The participants were learners at several schools in Saqez province. They were divided into cognitive and rule group. The cognitive group was presented with pictorial representations of the prepositions and cognitive tools used to motivate non-spatial uses, while the rule group received materials based on rules. Although the cognitive group was significantly improved in the post-test, the positive effect did not last until the delayed post-test. On the other hand, the rule group gained little progress in the immediate post-test, but the performance of the group dropped significantly in the delayed post-test.

Learner autonomy (LA) has always been a controversial issue among applied linguists. Several studies have been carried out to investigate the teachers' and learners' perceptions of learner autonomy as well as the feasibility of learner autonomy. Despite the importance of learner autonomy and the existence of several related studies, the challenges in promoting LA in Iranian institutes to the researcher’ s best of knowledge have not been explored appropriately, yet. The main objective of the present study was to investigate the challenges in promoting learner autonomy from Iranian EFL teachers' perspectives. To do so, a qualitative research design was used. In doing so, 23 Iranian EFL teachers employed as full time teachers in different universities in Tehran, Iran were selected through purposive sampling. The data were collected through in-depth interviews and analyzed through content analysis following Randor model. Based on the content analysis of the interviews, three different themes were extracted. The first most frequent observed theme, institution related challenges, consisted of prescribed objectives, materials, and assessment methods. The second theme, learner related challenges, consisted of seven sub-themes. However, the third extracted theme was teacher related challenges which consisted of four sub-themes. The findings can be used by teacher trainers, teachers, as well as EFL learners. It can be concluded that EFL teachers should receive training in learner autonomy through both pre-service and in-service training courses.

Combining teachers’ big and small stories through a hybrid lens, the present study sought to examine the presence of meaning, as a component of well-being, in Iranian English language teachers within the discourse of sanctions, which could shape their positionality towards TESOL. Two themes were extracted: the emergence of critical hope and a shift towards plurilingual practices of agency. While challenging social injustice and colonial projects such as native-speakerism, critical hope created the possibility of transformation as it enabled teachers to evaluate their position towards the existing situation, acknowledge their relative agency, and implement new pedagogical practices. Valuing plurilingual identities of non-native teachers centered on the possibilities of empowerment and resilience fostering teachers’ agency within the discourse of sanctions and othering. Sanctions were turning points that helped participants negotiate different kinds of teacher identity through the fluid and context-based use of diverse linguistic repertoires and re-visit their conception of TESOL.