The present study investigated the effects of using flipped classroom techniques on Iranian ESP students’ critical thinking and engagement. The flipped classroom model flips the traditional relationship between class time and homework. Students learn at home via online coursework and lectures, and teachers use class time for teacherguided practice or projects. Participants were 60 ESP students studying in Payam-e Noor University, who were divided into 2 equal groups with 30 students each. Participants’ language proficiency was checked through a language proficiency test. The participants of experimental group received vocabulary instruction through flipped classroom techniques. A specialist group of EFL/ESP professors who were the researcher's colleagues produced 10 videos, and each video lecture was accompanied by a lecturer's avatar, which used his or her true voice and audiovisual materials representations. The control group received conventional vocabulary instruction. Results of the statistical analyses showed that there was a positive influence of flipped classroom over the participants’ task engagement. Also, it was found that t h e flip p e d classroom had a significant effect on the Iranian students' critical thinking in ESP courses. Flipped classrooms enable ESP students to become more independent, which necessitates more critical thinkers. As a result, flipped classrooms can provide a platform for L2 students' potential critical thinking abilities to blossom and develop.

This small-scale study investigates (a) whether academic vocabulary compares in development with vocabulary breadth and depth for Iranian ESP/EAP learners and, if the answer is positive, (b) whether this trend of development happens across proficiency levels. Fifty-seven graduate students served as the subjects who were also divided into high and low groups based on whether they had acquired the most frequent 2, 000 words. Multiple regression analysis results show much shared variance between breadth and depth tests, and academic vocabulary test for the participants as a whole group. Therefore, as learners’ vocabulary breadth and depth increase, so does their academic vocabulary. A similar finding is also observed for the high group and low group. However, the finding for the low group is contrary to our expectation. The results suggestmore systematic vocabulary development for the high group, less for the participants as a whole group, and least in the low group. This investigation has some implications for language, and more particularly vocabulary, instruction for ESP/EAP purposes in Iran.

The purpose of the present study was to discover which of the two reading strategies, concept mapping or summarizing, is more effective on ESP learners' reading comprehension of EAP texts. To fulfill the purpose of the study, a sample of 94 undergraduate students of accountancy sat for a standardized sample of Key English Testing (KET). Sixty-two students whose scores fell one standard deviation above and below the sample mean were selected and randomly divided into two equal groups. One group practiced concept mapping and the other group summarizing. A researcher-made reading posttest was finally administered to the students in both groups and the mean rank scores were compared by a Mann-Whitney test. The results led to the rejection of the null hypothesis, indicating that concept mapping had a significantly higher effect on the reading comprehension of EAP texts. The implications of the study for EAP readers and teachers as well as EAP textbook writers are discussed.

During recent decades publishing articles in academic journals has become a worldwide urge for all members of academia. There is, however, a widespread belief according to which more value is given to the articles published in internationally-recognized, high standard journals. An issue raised in this regard is whether the articles published in highly prestigious journals are remarkably different from those published in other journals as far as their contents and rhetorical styles are concerned. Taking the organization of information/moves into account, the present study seeks the probable differences existing between the two groups of 32 research articles (RAs) randomly selected from among Iranian ISI and non-ISI medical journals in English, published between January 2008 and February 2009, through analyzing the Introduction and Discussion sections of these articles based on the model presented by Nwogu (1997). The results of Mann-Whittney U and correlational tests revealed that Moves and Sub-moves have been exploited with quite similar frequencies in the two sets of the articles. The frequent use of Moves/Sub moves in the sections not commonly stated in the literature, use of meta-discourse markers in the corpus, some marked implications of the findings of ESP genre analysis of RAs as well as some other findings have also been discussed.

Background: The present study set out to examine English for Specific Purposes (ESP) for nursing instructors’,perceptions of what constitutes quality ESP delivery and their perceptions on the challenges that may inhibit the provision of the quality in ESP education for nursing students. Methods: To obtain data, first, the questionnaire of quality of education in ESP was given to ESP instructors. They were asked to fill in the questionnaire and rank strategies for effective ESP education. Secondly, 13 volunteer instructors were interviewed to delve into the problems of teaching ESP to nursing students. Thirdly, to examine ESP students’,expectations, 15 students were interviewed. Results: The findings from the first research question showed that the quality of ESP courses was not satisfactory. Comprehension of the texts and communication in the foreign language were among what the students’,prioritized. With particular reference to the strategies for effective ESP education, the instructors pointed to the integration of skills. Moreover, the instructors believed that certified professionals need to be hired to go with ESP specialization as well as the fact that a needs-based curriculum has to be redesigned. The major problems that ESP instructors often cope with were i. e., organizational, learner-related, and teacher-related problems. Conclusion: ESP for the students of nursing seems to be experiencing a deeply-felt demand for reform and this kind of reform depends on a series of remarkable changes. Hence, the present study has important implications for ESP educational policymakers, and curriculum designers.

EAP textbooks have been one of the most important materials commonly used in any EAP program and attracted many researchers' attention due to their crucial contributions to foreign/second language acquisition. Despite the plethora of research on EAP textbooks, especially EAP textbooks published by SAMT, the Organization for Researching and Composing University Textbooks in the Humanities, there seems to be a paucity of research on newly developed SAMT EAP textbooks. At the same time, although EAP textbooks are based on criteria to meet particular students’ needs in specific disciplines, there have been only a few evaluative studies on EAP textbooks taking students’ and teachers’ viewpoints into account. Therefore, the present study attempted to evaluate a newly developed SAMT EAP textbook for the students of Medicine, as a sample from SAMT publications, from the students' and teachers' perspectives. The study used a questionnaire and the results revealed that students and teachers were satisfied with the theoretical considerations, the organizational features and practical considerations, the vocabulary, and the grammatical structure of the current textbook. However, the students were not satisfied with the content and the language skills and the teachers were not satisfied with the content of the textbook. In addition, no significant difference between the students' and teachers' viewpoints with regard to the necessity condition of EAP textbooks was found. However, their responses to the questions related to the present condition of the current textbook were significantly different. Such findings can have some implications for EAP teachers, material developers, and textbook designers.