Khalil Motallebzadeh

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Tabaran Institute of Higher Education

Known as what educational contexts do not teach, null curriculum has been considered one of the most significant types of curricula due to its absence, being left out or overlooked. This non-existent curriculum brings an important theoretical tool to the field of curriculum development for the idea that something which is not offered to students ha...

برنامه درسی پنهان در فرآيند‌‌ تعليم و تربيت نقش ویژه‌ای دارد بطوریکه حتي اهداف برنامه ‌درسي آشکار(صريح) تحت تاثير آن قرار مي‌گيرد. در همین ‌راستا ﭘﮋوﻫﺶ ﺣﺎﺿﺮ ﺑﻪ ﺑﺮرﺳﻲ دیدگاه مدرّسان زبان انگلیسی نسبت به یادگیری‌های قصد‌نشده (برنامه درسی پنهان) آموزش زبان انگلیسی در فراگیران پرداخته است. جامعه آماري اين ‌پژوهش شامل 164 مدرس زبان انگلیسی است که در سطو...

The current master’s curriculum in English Translation major in Iranian universities has not satisfied the demands of the society in which it was developed. Translation students have complained that some essential skills are not considered in the curriculum. Therefore, this study is aimed at proposing some guidelines for curriculum reformers in Ira...

Teacher education had been addressed in various studies. Although many studies attempted to measure teachers' twenty-first century skills, there is still a gap that prompted us to investigate the area from the teacher-educators' perspectives. To accomplish the purpose, this mixed-method study aimed to develop and validate a scale to assess Iranian...

Teachers' professional identity has been defined as a developing and dynamic characteristic of teachers affecting social and personal aspects. Regarding Teacher Professional Identity (TPI), both personal and the professional dimensions of being and empowering a teacher should be investigated. Achievement goal theory concerns that individuals do the...

Teacher professional identity (TPI) is a characteristic of a teacher, which should be developed in a long, consistent, and progressive process and usually shapes in any specific educational and social context. In addition to several factors influencing TPI, such as university education and empowerment courses, experience seems to play a significant...

Much of what educators address is the overt curriculum; however, there is a hidden curriculum that affects education in a very profound manner. As educators, we need to be aware of the EFL hidden curriculum which affects our educational settings and what we teach. In view of that, the purpose of the present study was to determine the relationship o...

This paper reports on the second phase of an exploratory sequential mixed methods research. The main purpose is to develop and validate the Teachers’ Assessment Identity (TAI) questionnaire based on the dimensions and factors found in the first part of the study. The extracted factors from interviews along with the theoretical framework, formed the...

Reading comprehension in English, as one of the most central skills, has a vital role in the process of learning English as a Foreign/Second Language. The current study used the Mokken Scale Analysis (MSA), a probabilistic-nonparametric approach to item response theory (IRT), to determine the unidimensionality and scalability of a 20-item reading c...

Whether acknowledged or neglected by educators, the hidden curriculum is present in every institute. Therefore, studying the hidden curriculum is essential to understand how it functions within an English language institute's setting and among those within it. The purpose of this study was to design and validate a scale to measure language teachers...

In spite of the facts that validity is known as a unified concept in contemporary theory and practice, investigating the sub-construct of this concept enlightens the discipline to a great extent. Predictive validity of high-stakes tests such as English proficiency tests (EPTs) which are used for critical educational decisions is an example. EPT of...

Conducting educational research is not an arbitrary practice. When implementing educational research, teachers, as researchers, need to adhere to ethical rules and norms. Thus, developing an instrument for evaluating English as foreign language (EFL) teachers’ awareness of the code of ethics in research can guide Iranian ELT professionals to work t...

Curriculum development has always been dealt as one of the most important areas of language learning and teaching by educational institutions. Null curriculum has been viewed as one of the significant kinds of curriculum types which is important due to its absence, being left out or overlooked but should not be disregarded. For this reason, a 48-it...

This study is aimed at examining the role of gender, and years of teaching experience in Iranian EFL teachers' awareness of the code of ethics in research. 272 Iranian EFL teachers were chosen based on convenience sampling and were assessed through the Iranian EFL teachers' awareness of the code of ethics in research scale inventory. After gatherin...

Instructors play an important role in educating the future members of society through their work in universities and quality education cannot be achieved without the supreme efforts of dedicated and committed university teachers. Hence, there is a call for more research concerning the notion of teacher commitment, its dimensions and the factors tha...

This study aims to develop and glocalize a set of quality indices that can enhance the English language teaching learning output at Iranian private institutions. CIPP (Context, Input, Process, and Product) Model with a progressive/humanist approach was opted by the researchers as the main pattern of thought. This study used concurrent-mix method de...

Universities require highly qualified and committed instructors to carry out the significant tasks of educating the future generation of the society. The primary interest of this study was to explore the construct of teacher commitment to determine its dimensions and components and finally design EFL Teachers' Professional Commitment Questionnaire....

Master of Arts English Translation Curriculum in Iran has not been successful enough in satisfying the needs of the society for which it has been established. There is a strict need to redesign the M.A. English Translation curriculum in order to meet students’ needs and wants, satisfy the market demands and train professional translators equipped w...

As Campbell (2008) skillfully explains, "the field of ethics in teaching as a moral profession is a robust and compelling one. It captures the interest and imagination of scholars, researchers, and practitioners alike because it is very important and integral to the world of education" (p.21). Similarly, in many EFL countries including Iran, profes...

Teaching and learning in the 21st century is dealt with challenges and novelties. This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between 21st century skills, EFL learners' speaking and writing skills. The participants comprised 122 EFL learners from three private language institutes of Mashhad. Their selection was based on convenience sam...

This study was designed to find out whether there is any association between EFL learners attribution tendency and their learning style level at advance level. To this end 135 English learners were chosen as the subject of the study; 85 female, and 50 male. They were asked provide answers to two valid, reliable questionnaires; attribution questionn...

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...

Throughout the past decade, evaluating teachers’ success has become a crucial issue due to the increased motivation on teacher accountability. In view of that the purpose of the present study is to determine EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers’ success in the Iranian institutional context based on students’ perspectives. More specifically,...

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between English Foreign Language teachers’ reflective practices and their teaching effectiveness. Moreover, years of experiences in teachers’ reflective practices and their teaching effectiveness were explored. The participants comprised 115 EFL teachers teaching at different languag...

Teacher professional identity is seen as a sense of self that results from various factors such as experience, education, environment, and personal characteristics. The purpose of the present article was to investigate the relationship between EFL teachers’ professional identity and their self-esteem. The research data were collected with 224 EFL t...

The field of ethics in teaching as a moral profession is a robust and compelling one. It captures the interest and imagination of scholars, researchers, and practitioners alike because it is so very important and integral to the world of education”. For the same purpose, the major aim of the current paper was to come up with a code of professional...

Group-work dynamics has been assumed to explain a great part of impact in language learning and teaching in specific contexts or for particular skills. In the same vein, structural accuracy has been significant in foreign language learning. Today, foreign language learning is not limited to the classroom environment. In addition, it encompasses the...

The quality of teachers has influence on the quality of educational services. Nurturing the teachers is actually a preoccupation for the educational organizations. The aim of our education system is to produce successful, well-prepared citizens; therefore, careful examination of individuals who teach at all levels is a critical step in meeting that...

In educational world, the language teaching pendulum is swinging away from methods to postmethod pedagogy although its actual emergence in some contexts is under doubt. The present study aims at pursuing whether Iranian English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) teachers conform their teaching approach to postmethod principles and whether there exists a r...

Studies have been done on finding construct-irrelevant factors and cognitive processes involved in test taking. Previous studies have explored correlations between reading comprehension (RC) ability and psychological variables such as creativity and intelligence reporting significant relations. Many researchers trying to figure out the difference b...

The purpose of the present study is to examine home culture attachment construct and its underlying variables among Iranian English as Foreign Language learners as well as their attitudes towards English language learning. Pearson correlation is used with a sample of 411 English major university students from different provinces in Iran, mainly Kho...

Assessment plays a crucial role in any educational milieu (OECD, 2003). The researchers sought to investigate the possible impact of diagnostic formative assessment on students' listening comprehension ability and self-regulation. To this end, 46 participants were selected from among 78 students. A listening test was given to the participants to me...

This study explores the effect of explicit back-channel strategy training on Iranian EFL language learners� success in speaking skill. Back-channels are turn taking responses uttered by the listeners. Forty homogenous learners (20 male, 20 female) were randomly assigned to four groups (2 experimental, 2 control). They were at intermediate level in...

The present study aimed at examining the relationship between EFL teachers� effective teaching and the language learning motivation of Iranian EFL learners whose English proficiency was upper-intermediate and above. To this end, 150 upper-intermediate and advance EFL students, from some language schools in Mashhad, Iran participated in the study. T...

Incidental vocabulary learning is one of the most significant sources of learning vocabulary for language learners )Laufer & Hulstjin, 2001). This study endeavored to investigate the effect of using online collaborative tasks on incidental vocabulary learning of impulsive vs. reflective Iranian EFL learners. To this end, Nelson vocabulary proficien...

This study reports on the perspectives of a group of Iranian EFL teachers about peer observation effects. The aim was to investigate if peer observation as a reflective tool could significantly affect EFL teachers’ professional development. It has been done based on a mixed method approach. The participants have stated their viewpoints on the effec...

Continuing Professional Development (CPD), in the area of teacher education, refers to the procedures, programs or strategies that help teachers encounter the challenges of their work and accomplish their own and their learning center’s goals. To this aim, the purpose of this study is to propose and validate an appropriate model of EFL teachers’ CP...

The aim of the present study was to investigate the Iranian EFL teachers’ awareness of classroom observation criteria. To this end, 123 Iranian EFL teachers at several language institutes and universities participated in this study. The participants were selected through the convenience sampling method. The instrument used for data collection was a...

The general purpose of the current study was to clarify the role and estimate the correlation of specific cognitive abilities with Second Language (L2) reading achievement of English Foreign Language (EFL) university students. Since there are not ample available studies about the cognitive correlates of reading comprehension in a second language, w...

This study examines Iranian EFL teachers’ sense of professional identity and their computer literacy. To these end, 718 EFL teachers from different cities in Iran filled out job satisfaction, occupational commitment, and computer literacy questionnaires. SPSS software was employed to summarize the collected data. Independent Sample t-test and Pears...

Review of the past literature on the characteristics of successful language learners indicates that more successful learners are those who apply more strategies. Although a sizeable number of studies were conducted on language learning strategies, there is a limited amount of research with focus on speaking strategies. This study aimed to investiga...

This study investigated the effect of listening to podcasts on Iranian upper-intermediate EFL learners' self-regulation ability and their perception toward the use of technology. To meet the objectives of the current stud y, 54 female Iranian EFL learners were selected. In experimental group they listened to podcast files while in the control group...

In Iran there is a need for the training of teachers of English in the oral-communicative approach, to keep pace with both Iranian students’ desire to speak English and with the needs of Iranian society as a whole. In this article we reflect on the Iran Trainer Training Project (ITTP), for Iranian ELT professionals, which aims to address this nee...

The present study aimed at investigating the possible significant effects of project-based instruction on the improvement of Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ awareness of 21st century skills. To this end, the sample population was selected from Iranian intermediate learners studying at Zabansara Language School, Mashhad, Iran. Therefore, 50 male...

In foreign language setting, there are some social psychological variables that can highly influence on the teachers' and learners performance. One of these important variables in language pedagogy is Self-efficacy “an individual’s confidence in his/her ability to engage in the social interactional tasks necessary to initiate and maintain interpers...

As Keesing-Style (2003) puts out, although the concept of critical pedagogy (CP) has been proposed for three decades, it has not been employed in the educational settings. This study investigated the effect of employing critical pedagogy on the improvement of Iranian EFL learners’ self-regulation and writing skill. To achieve this goal, a group of...

Teacher’s sense of humor is like a miracle in creating effective teaching and learning environments where there is no place for stress and anxiety but instead intrinsic motivation is enhanced. The present study aims mainly, to explore the effects of teachers’ sense of humor of EFL intermediate learners' reading comprehension ability. Having adminis...

Regarding the important instructional role of email exchanges between teachers and students in institutional environments, this study was conducted as an attempt to examine particular pragmatic features in emails sent by Iranian university students to their professors during the academic year 2012. Following Biesenbach-Lucas (2005), and Chalack et...

In foreign language setting, social psychological variables are very important. These variables can highly influence the learners’ and consequently teachers’ performance. One of the most influential psychosocial domains in language pedagogy is Self-efficacy. Another influential factor that is of utmost importance in teaching contexts is burnout. Th...

The current study aims at investigating the effect of Pot-Luck, the creative idea of the researcher, as an innovative technique of Project-Based Learning, on Iranian EFL learners’ autonomy in learning. The participants consisted of 52 upper-intermediate Iranian EFL learners in 2 groups of Experimental and Control. In order to collect data, three di...

Email has become a widespread medium of communication between students and their instructors, however; there is a limited amount of research on instructional role and uses of email in academic context. The present study investigated the communication strategies in email messages sent by Iranian EFL students to their male instructors in relation to...

Many studies have described aspects of gender which might affect teachers’ beliefs and attitudes toward their job and the quality of teachers’ performance within the classroom seems to be highly influenced by different factors in and out of the classroom. This study sets out to investigate the effect of received feedback from school leaders on sens...

The current study aims at investigating the concept of a good teacher from supervisors and teachers‟ point of view. To this end, two groups of EFL teachers and supervisors from two language schools in Mashhad (Iran) participated in the study. Thirty supervisors as well as 50 teachers were asked to fill up two teacher evaluation questionnaires, one...

The cultural influence of foreign languages has always been a matter of concern for the learners of languages. The present study aimed at examining the relationship between English Textbooks and the cultural attitudes of Iranian EFL learners at English language schools. To this end, two of the widely used series of English textbooks in Iranian cont...

This study aimed at exploring the role of task-based listening activities in augmenting EFL learners’ listening self-efficacy. To this end, 70 male and female Iranian EFL learners in Kish Air English Institute, Mashhad, Iran, participated in the study. To homogenize the participants’ level of proficiency, the Interchange/Passages Objective Placemen...

Many variables reasonably influence teachers’ education. One of these considering variables is being aware of the students’ learning styles. Dörnyei (2005) maintains that individual differences correlate strongly with L2 achievements. Keefe (1979) believes that learning styles might be thought of as cognitive, affective, and physiological traits th...

Teachers play different roles in multidimensional process of language teaching and their beliefs about language teaching might influence their practices. Donaghue (2003) stated that beliefs guide teachers in their practice. However, Argyris and Schon (1978) claimed that there is almost a discrepancy between teachers’ beliefs about language teaching...

The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of noticing, explicit focus on form on linguistic accuracy. To fulfill the purpose of the study, 44 Iranian pre-intermediate EFL learners of one of the language institutes were chosen by means of administering the KET homogeneity test. These learners were pretested through a structured inter...

The present study elaborated the relationship between Iranian higher intermediate EFL learners’ Emotional Intelligence (EI) and their performance on TOEFL/PBT. Advancement in emotional traits and self-awareness about ones likes and dislikes might increase motivation in learners. Furthermore, most English instructors, who prepare their students for...

Anxiety, which changes into stress and nervous tension while taking a test, is usually considered as a destructive factor for test-takers. Many EFL/ESL teachers and testing scholars have tried to reduce this debilitative anxiety (Tóth, 2007). Recently, there has been an increased motivation toward development of performance-based tests in most lang...

Gender has been a controversial issue, which affects the language learning process. McNamara (1996) has proposed that there are some variables affecting second language performance one of which is sex. In much the same way, it has been reported that gender plays a role in the area of language testing (Brown, 2003; Lumley & O'Sullivan, 2005; Motalle...

Technologies have been enhancing education all the time and new technologies have always been utilized firstly by education, especially with the emergence of computer related information technology (Devedzic, 2000). E-learning provides faster and greater access to information for education (Hamilton et al., 2001). Online training also creates a per...

The rapid developments in information and communication technologies (ICT) have created new opportunities to enhance the reach and quality of education. Mobile phones are new addition to the ICT for learning. This study attempts comprehensively to investigate the effect of Short Message Service (SMS) on the retention of collocations among Iranian l...

Mobile phones are the new addition to the information and communication technologies (ITC) for learning. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of SMS on vocabulary retention and reading comprehension ability of Iranian EFL learners. Forty university students were assigned into experimental and control groups. The participants in expe...

This study investigated the efficacy of integrating emailing tasks into EFL pre-intermediate reading classrooms. While students in experimental groups were provided with ten passages (ten tasks for each passage) through emails during 15 sessions of instruction, control groups were treated through similar passages and tasks in print. The instruments...

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the implementation of e-collaboration and e-tutoring will have any effect on students' writing proficiency. It is argued that interactional feedback (peer or tutor) including negotiation and recasts can facilitate writing skill development in L2 (Lynch, 2002). 83 male and female EFL students, taki...

Abtract How can translators compensate the loss of idiomaticity while translating idiomatic texts? Taking an English novel as the source text and its Persian translations as the target language, we aim to answer this question. For the sake of this study 61 idioms and 32 non-idioms were extracted from the first chapter of Mark Twain's Adventures of...

This paper investigates the various responses of professional and novice translators toward translating polysemous verbs. To this end, 20 students studying English Language and Translation Studies took a pretest as well as a posttest on translation. The data analysis showed that professional and novice translators react differently toward translati...

Many studies have been conducted to explore language learning strategies and their relations or effects on learners’ performances (Prokop, 1989;Oxford, 1990; Gallo-Crail & Zerwekh, 2002).This small-scale study tries to explore the full range to learning achievement, with an emphasis on the skill of reading. Reading comprehension is highly emphasize...

ABSTRACT: This study investigated the effect of weblog-based e-portfolio assessment on improving syntactic component of writing among Iranian intermediate EFL learners. It is argued that portfolios allow students to think critically and become active, independent and self-regulated learners (Abrami et al, 2008). Sixty female EFL students formed the...

Many ESL/EFL teachers in the Middle East and Central Asia find themselves isolated not only geographically but also professionally from ESL colleagues. They often teach at rural schools where, in some cases, they are the only ESL teachers in the school or even district. These teachers, unlike their counterparts in large urban settings and developed...

The nature of language proficiency has been the object of much theoretical discussion and empirical investigation for approximately 60 years. So far, different models of proficiency have been proposed to define language and language ability, either has approached it through a different prospective and meanwhile they have added more complications to...

The purpose of this article was to investigate the relationship between students' choice of reading strategies and their performance on task-based tests. Five hundred and eighty junior and senior undergraduate students of English translation and English literature and upper-intermediate students studying English in a number of private language scho...

Emotional Intelligence is about intelligent use of emotions and utilizing the power or information contained in emotion to make effective decisions (Ciarrochi & Mayer, 2007). The EQ concept argues that Intelligence Quotient (IQ), or conventional intelligence, is too narrow and that there are wider areas of emotional intelligence that dictate and en...