This study aims to explore the hermeneutics of the word, focusing on the interpretive reading of the Quran, reflection on individual verses, and acting in accordance with this Holy Scripture. A methodology for reading is proposed that is significant for engaging in dialogue with the word of Allah. In doing so, it seeks to broaden the horizon concerning the Islamic understanding of revelation and to create appropriate approaches to it. This theory of understanding incorporates a practical way of life to inspire individuals toward nonviolent hermeneutical action. This introduction to the Quran provides a solid foundation for Quranic research on the one hand and for studies on Shi'a Islam, which remains largely unfamiliar in the Western world, on the other. The study, entirely conducted from the Shi'a Islamic perspective, aspires to contribute to establishing a "nonviolent hermeneutics" within the academic field, which could also foster a culture of nonviolent dialogue. Leser des Wortes Diese Studie dient zur Betrachtung der Hermeneutik des Wortes, dem verstehenden Lesen des Koran, der Reflexion über einzelne Verse und dem Handeln gemäß dieser Heiligen Schrift. Eine Methodologie des Lesens wird vorgeschlagen, die für den Dialog mit dem Wort Allahs von Bedeutung ist. Dadurch ersucht sie, den Horizont im Hinblick auf das islamische Offenbarungsverständnis zu weiten und angemessene Zugänge zu ihm zu schaffen. Diese Verstehenslehre birgt eine Lebenspraxis, um Menschen für gewaltfrei-hermeneutisches Handeln zu motivieren. Diese Hinführung zu Koran bietet eine fundierte Grundlage der Koranforschung einerseits und der Forschung zum schiitischen Islam, der weitestgehend in der westlichen Welt unbekannt geblieben ist. Diese Studie, die gänzlich aus der Schia-Islam-Perspektive erfolgt sind, vermögen dazu beizutragen, eine „gewaltfreie Hermeneutik“ in der hiesigen Forschungslehre zu etablieren, die einen ebenfalls gewaltfreien Dialog zur Kultur werden lassen könnte. Schlüsselwörter: Koran, Offenbarung, Mensch, Gott, Ahl-ul-Bait, Wilaya

As we are approaching the summer, I am pleased to write to you with the announcement of the publication of a new issue of IJLTR. While most of my colleagues in other parts of the world have almost ended their spring semester and are starting to enjoy the summer holiday after a few final days of scoring and grading, here in Iran we are still running classes with exams to start soon. As an editor, even when the exams are over and you are entitled to enjoy the summer break, there is the duty of preparing the next issue of the journal which means that journal editors have essentially no break whether between the semesters or after them. What makes an editor survive such break-less life is the generous moral support received from editorial team as well as readers and contributors. All this contributes to journal growth which in turn is a strong motivation for the team to move forward more steadily. For the last several issues of IJLTR, I had the honour to share with you a new achievement of our publication, form being promoted to Q1 in Scopus in 2020, to ranking top in Iran and the Middle East, and the like. Indeed, IJLTR seems to have conquered all peaks last year and there is no new achievement expected; it seems that there is no higher rank than Q1 which IJLTR has once more gained in 2021 in Scimago’ s recent rankings (SJR) which was announced on the 1 st of June. Regionally, IJLTR has tanked top among 134 journals indexed in ISC (Islamic Science Citation) whose most recent JCR was recently announced. No doubt, these steady gains are a direct outcome of the quality papers published as well as invaluable academic support by the editorial team, reviewers and the journal internal staff; thank you all for playing your part so effectively and keeping IJLTR at the peak! Like all its previous issues, IJLTR’ s new issue comes out on time, 1 st of July 2021, as initially planned. In 2020 and earlier years, each issue carried seven full text articles, two book reviews and one interview. Beginning with January 2021 issue, we decided to leave out the interview to open space for one more research article, given the huge number of submissions we receive and the long list of accepted manuscripts awaiting publication. In line with the same policy and to open more space for international contributors, we decided to stop receiving submissions from our Iranian colleagues temporarily until the end of 2022. The current issue accordingly is packed with 8 original articles form Hong Kong, the UK, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and Iran as well as two book reviews by Iranian and American reviewers. In the first paper, drawing on second language acquisition principles, Alessandro Benati presents a case for evidence-based language instruction, moving beyond methods and focusing on the key role of input. Fathi, Greenier and Derakhshan then concentrate on the role of EFL teachers’ emotion regulation in mediating the role of teacher reflection on their self-efficacy and burnout in the second paper, followed by a further focus on teachers by Bagheri and East in paper 3, where they investigate teachers’ cognitions and practices in the context of listening classes in private language schools. The next paper by Wotring, Chen and Fraser is a syllabus document analysis which looks at the alignment between learning objectives, teaching principles and curriculum policies in three East Asian contexts, followed by John Liontas and Patrick Mannion’ s argument for a place for digital story-telling in language classrooms to afford optimal learning conditions. In paper 6, Mohammadzadeh and Alavinia look at the role of motivation in task performance and analyse motivational changes during task supported instruction to seven young language learners, followed by Rahimi, Yousofi and Moradkhani’ s paper on challenges in ELT research in Iran’ s higher education system. The final research paper in the volume by Kaivanpanah, Akbarian and Salimi is devoted to vocabulary instruction where they compare differential effects of three modes of instruction (explicit, implicit and modified implicit) on its learning and retention. The books reviewed are The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching and The Routledge Handbook of Research in Applied Linguistics reviewed respectively by Kristen Fung, and Khodadust and Mohammadi. I trust the collection will fill part of your long summer days. As you enjoy reading the published work in this issue, please also watch out for our Special Issue on Online Professional Development in TESOL (edited by Jack Richards), that will appear on the 1 st of October 2021. Our 2022 special Issue will be guest-edited by Michael Byram and Petra Rauschert, and is devoted to Language Teaching, Education for Democracy and Cross-curricular Connection for which it is time to plan a submission. Moe information about all this is just a click away: ijltr. urmia. ac. ir.

Alas, 2020 has so far not been a happy year at all that it promised to be. Not soon after the start of the year, did the world experience the worst-ever pandemic of our age (Covid-19) hitting around 10 million people worldwide and claiming thousands of lives. While this incident has led to a new world order, it is at the same time a gesture that we need to value morality more and consider how weak human beings are in the wake of a new disaster, and that death and the other world are much closer to us than we have imagined. Lets’ pray for God to help overcome the disease and work together for a more peaceful world. It is also very saddening and hard to accept the shocking loss of one of our young and vibrant board members, Professor Farzad Sharifian of Monash University, who was a pioneering international figure in Cultural Linguistics. May his soul rest in peace! Apart from these sad events, 2020 was a fruitful year for IJLTR. A few days ago, Scimago and Scopus announced their most recent journal metrics (for 2019) and I am very pleased to announce that in both metrics, IJLTR has continued shining. As for Scimago, we have achieved a Q1 status, with an improved SJR of 0. 341. In Scopus rankings, our CiteScore has almost doubled jumping from 0. 94 in 2018 to 1. 7 in 2019. Our journal ranking has also improved considerably, earning us a ranking of 129 out of 830 journals indexed in Scopus under Linguistics and Language category (84 th percentile). These achievements are surely the outcome of the continued support of all editorial members, contributors, reviewers, readers and journal staff. Warmest congratulations and thank you all! Like its predecessors, the current issue includes seven national and international research papers on issues of importance to second language education and applied linguistics as well as two book reviews and an interview. In the first paper, Andrew Gill and Daniel Hopper report a study on reflective practice in a Japanese context where they investigate the potential of integrating conversational analysis and dialogic reflection. Sá nchez Ramos in the next paper explores the application of a Corpus Management Tool (CMT) to teach medical English in a Spanish context, followed by a research study on the effect of longitudinal teacher feedback on CAF, content, and organization in writing in an EFL context written by Rastgou, Storch and Knoth in the third paper. Fatemeh Sadeghi and her colleagues in the next paper use a constructivist grounded theory to examine Iranian EFL teachers’ and learners’ perceptions of the principles of critical thinking. In a case study in paper five, Thomas Farrell and his co-author delve into teaching principles of a TESOL teacher in Canada, analyzing the match between her practice and the principles in a reflective practice framework proposed by the first author. The relationship between vocabulary size and depth of Iranian EFL learners at different language proficiency levels is investigated by Enayat and his co-author in paper six; and the last research paper by Seifoori looks at negotiated strategic awareness-rising at postgraduate level in the context of a reading course. The first book reviewed by Soleimani and Sadeghi is titled English Language Teacher Education: A Sociocultural Perspective on Preservice Teachers’ Learning in the Professional Experience; and the second book reviewed by Mohebbi is the third edition of Schmitt and Rodgers’ An Introduction to Applied Linguistics. The interview in this issue of IJLTR is with another leading and highly cited researcher in the field of Applied Linguistics, who is the co-editor of the journal with the same title as the field. In the interview, Anna Mauranen shares with us highlights of her academic and professional life as well as offering advice on writing for publication in top-tire journals. Hoping that you will have a relaxing and healthy summer ahead I invite you to browse the current issue and other journal pages (all available online at ijltr. urmia. ac. ir) and plan a future submission to our mainstream or special issues. Our next issue will be a special issue on Classroom Discourse, to go online in October 2020. Do watch out for news on next year’ s special issue which will be guest-edited by Prof. Jack Richards.

Happy 2020! I am very pleased to reach you on the first day of the New Year, extending my heartfelt best wishes for the year ahead and announcing the publication of our new issue. For the last eight years since our inception, we have successfully managed to publish the journal issues on exactly the first day of January, July and October each year; and this timeliness, which we owe to our dedicated journal team, is a great achievement to be proud of. In the words of one of our International Editorial Board members, “ I think the world calendars should be synchronized with the publication of IJLTR, rather than the other way round. ” Similar reflections by our friends are golden evaluative notes to remember and to take pride in, and are of course motivating nudges for us to keep moving forward steadily. Similar success stories and signs of recognition are without doubt attributable to journal board members, reviewers and contributors whom I feel obliged to express my gratitude to for their everlasting support. Thank you all! To follow the pattern we set in our first issue, the current issue comes with seven research papers written by both Iranian and international scholars on various aspects of second language education as well as two book reviews and an interview. In the first paper, Ali Malmir and Ali Derakshan report a research study on the pragmatic comprehension (as opposed to pragmatic production) strategies of Iranian male versus female EFL students. The next paper comes from a Chinese context, where Wang Lan and Ricky Lam investigated an EFL teacher’ s stated beliefs and observed classroom practices in teaching a speaking course called Topical Debates. The effect of teachers’ scaffolding and peers’ collaborative dialogue on speech act production of requests, apologies and refusals in symmetric versus asymmetric groups is taken up in the next paper by Zahra Fakher Ajabshir and Fatemeh Panahifar, followed by a study on how assessment is perceived by EFL students at a Turkish context by Ali Isik in paper 4. In paper 5, Fazilatfar and his colleagues’ study compare the effect of planning time (0-10-20 min) and task conditions (topic, topic + idea, topic + idea + macrostructure) on the production of writing in terms of CAF; and Chen reports a study on the online English information searching strategies of Taiwanese university students in paper 6. The final research paper, by Ghanizadeh and her colleagues, is devoted to discovering the link between error treatment, motivation, language achievement, and cognitive, behavioural and emotional engagement. The first book reviewed by Pirooz and Akbarian is Porte and McManus’ s Doing Replication Research in Applied Linguistics, and the second book, reviewed by Mohammad Salehi is by Joan Kelly Hall, titled, Essentials of SLA for L2 Teachers: A Transdisciplinary Framework. The final item of the issue is an interview with the President of AILA, Daniel Perrin, who reflects on his academic life as well as talking about highlights of AILA and the field. Hoping that you have enjoyed your New Year holidays and started a very prosperous year, I invite you to browse the issue and other journal pages (all available online at ijltr. urmia. ac. ir) and plan a future submission to it. Let me remind you that our 2020 Special Issue is devoted to Classroom Discourse and will be guest-edited by Prof. Zia Tajeddin (Tarbiat Modarres University) and Dr. Minoo Alemi (Islamic Azad University), with the submission deadline being 1 st of March.

Although there has been great progress in medical sciences, taking good care of human’s health and treatment of many of diseases satisfactorily are still out of reach. Regardless of having different understanding of the reasons and treatment methods, our new perspective of medical sciences, which is considered the result of the scientific renaissance in Europe in the 17th century by some and the result of Islamic Revolution in the 8th and 9th centuries by others, has not yet helped us to find cures for a lot of diseases.The theory of growing advances in the history of science which considers all the past efforts effective in the future achievements is not completely consistent with scientific methodology in which the issues related to the growth of science, making theories, principles and new scientific rules are discussed. From another aspect the dominant paradigm during each period of history gives the survival chance to the sentences which are solely consistent with the imposed paradigm framework. Anything inconsistent with the sole of that paradigm is victimized without any undeniable and clear reasons.

Happy New Year!: 2020, as the worst ever year during the last century, has now thankfully come to an end. The world is still in turmoil and experiencing numerous challenges and changes brought about by the C-19 pandemic. There is almost none of us whose life, personal and professional, has not been impacted negatively in one way or another as a result of the worldwide epidemic. Let's pray for 2021 to be a year we have wished to have, and for us all and our loved ones to be bestowed with health, prosperity and happiness. Amen. . .

September/October is associated with the start of schools and universities in many parts of the world and reminds us that education/research is a never-ending process despite the C-19 pandemic having affected the world and the education system. Our team in IJLTR have also worked non-stop to ensure that its issues are published on-time and as planned. 1 st of October is the time IJLTR publishes its Special Issue. Before introducing the content of this Special Issue, I would like to share the happy news that, following our recent recognition as the only Iranian journal in Humanities indexed in Scopus with an SJR-Q1 ranking, in its first evaluation by Iranian Ministry of Science, Research and Technology (MSRT), IJLTR has received 'International' ranking. MSRT evaluates Iranian journals using some rigid quality criteria and ranks them as International, A, B, C and D, with International being the highest and D the lowest ranks. Congratulations to you all for being part of this evaluation process and for contributing to this gain! I am also honoured to introduce the online publication of our 2020 Special Issue on Discourse in Second Language Classrooms. This year's Special Issue was guest-edited by Prof. Zia Tajeddin (Tarbiat Modares University) and Dr. Minoo Alemi (Islamic Azad University), to whom I would like to extend my sincere thanks for the time and energy they invested in reviewing and editing the papers published in this issue. I am also very thankful to the contributors who considered IJLTR as the venue for sharing their latest research findings. Like its predecessors, this Special Issue is also made of 7 research articles on the theme of classroom discourse. In addition to the guest editors' opening paper on functions and strategies of teachers’ scaffolding, other papers come from the UK, the US, China, Thailand and Iran and survey important topics such as linguistic designs of teacher questions and student responses, classroom greetings, novice teachers’ construction of identity, the use of L1 in primary English classes, peerpeer scaffolding in writing, and classroom discourse during C-19 pandemic. Further information on these works appears in guest editor's note at the end of the first paper. In addition to these research papers on the theme of the Special Issue, the issue also includes two book reviews and an interview as usual. The books are on Autonomy, Agency and Identity in TEFL and Reflective Practice in ELT and have been reviewed by Alireza Bonyadi and Teymour Rahmati, respectively. The interview features highlights of academic life and achievements by Prof. Claire Kramsch (University of Berkley, US). I am also delighted to announce that IJLTR will continue to publish special issues in 2021 and 2022. The Special Issue in 2021 is devoted to On-line Professional Development in TESOL, and will be guest edited by Prof. Jack Richards (University of Sydney, Australia). 2022 Special Issue will mark the 10 th anniversary of the publication of IJLTR (the guest-editors to be announced) and will be devoted to the latest developments in the field of TESOL/AL. To learn more about this issue as well as further information and deadlines for future Special Issues, you are only one click away from IJLTR website available at: http: //ijltr. urmia. ac. ir/. I trust that you will find something of interest here and look forward to your continued support and future contributions.

With the start of the school season here in Iran and many other parts of the world, I am delighted to reach you announcing the publication of our most recent issue. The October 2019 issue of IJLTR, as with all our October issues, is a special issue devoted to the important topic of Reflective Practice in TESOL. The issue has been guest-edited by Prof. Thomas Farrell from Brock University (Canada), and similar to all our regular issues, includes seven papers, two book reviews and an interview with a well-known personality in the field of teacher education. Before providing further details on the content of the issue, I would like to share with you a brief report of the submissions we had received via journal online system since we started accepting online submissions some 22 months ago. IJLTR has received 650+ online submissions during this period, which means an average of one submission per day, not counting a small number of submissions we have received via email. Of these submissions, only around 40 have been either published or accepted for publication. This means that the acceptance rate for IJLTR has been around 6 percent (rejection rate = 94 percent). Given the limited space available for publication, and the fierce competition, especially among Iranian scholars to get published in IJLTR, we invite potential contributors to make an informed decision on whether to submit to IJLTR or not to avoid unnecessary waiting time and disappointment as a result of rejection. On the other hand, this low acceptance rate is at the same time a proof for the quality our editors, reviewers and contributors are after, and we are all proud of this. As with its predecessors, this special issue of IJLTR is packed with both status and reseach articles on the topic of Reflective Practice in TESOL. In the first paper, the guest editor, Thomas Farrell, introduces the concept of Reflective Practice (RP) by looking back at two of the giants of the RP movement (John Dewey and Donald Schö n) interpreting their work and his own work in the implementation of RP for TESOL teachers. He also introduces the six research papers that make the core of this special issue. Since these papers are introduced in Farrell’ s article, I invite you to read his state-of-the-art paper to find out more about other contribution here. The papers authored by Cirocki and Widodo, Playsted, Gutié rrez and her colleagues, Donyaiea and Soodmand Afshar, Rahmati and his colleagues, and Yeo and Lewis survey different aspects of refelctive practice in countries like Indonesia, Australia, Chile, Iran, and Singapore/New Zealand, respectivbely. In addittion to these papers, the issue features two book reviews and an interview. International Research, Policy and Practice in Teacher Education: Insider Perspective has been co-reviewed by Boudjemaa Dendenne and Ali Derakhshan and 50 Tips for Teacher Development has been reviwed by Roghayeh Pourbahram and me. The interview with Proferssor Donald Freeman offers invaluable information on the status quo of language teacher professional developments and provides insights and advice to both practitioners and researchers in TESOL. Hoping that you have enjoyed your summer break as we were busy preparing the issue for you, I invite you to browse the collection and have your take from the fine contributions published here. I am also pleased to announce that our 2020 special issue is devoted to the topic of Discourse in Second Language Classroom Context. The issue is to be editied by Prof Zia Tajeddin (Tarbiat Modarres University) and Dr Minoo Alemi (IAU). The submissions to the special issue are now open, for which the deadline is 1 March 2020. To learn more about the journal and plan a future contribution either to a special issue or to regular issue, please visit us at: ijltr. urmia. ac. ir.