Rahman Sahragard

• PhD
• Lecturer at Shiraz University

Language teacher identity (LTI), and its essential component, teacher agency, are inextricably intertwined with emotion labour. This qualitative case study explored how the agency and LTI of an early-career Iranian female teacher of EFL (English as a foreign language) were affected by her engagement in emotion labour in two public schools. Data in...

Many controlled experiments, even in the realm of English language teaching (ELT), champion group work, in one form or another, as a magic bullet to educational problems, capable of improving achievement, motivation, and peace. However, it is not extensively used, so that its full benefits are reaped. Among the factors known to plague the use of gr...

Purpose: The efficacy of postmethod pedagogy (PMP) in Iran remains undetermined despite the growing attention being paid to it. A multitude of factors may contribute to differing levels of motivation among teachers in effectively implementing postmethod principles. The Achievement Goal Theory (AGT), rooted in a socio-cognitive perspective, provides...

The English language teaching profession has always witnessed the pendulum swings of language teaching methods throughout its life span. This evolving nature transformed from a method-based approach to a postmethodic orientation of language teaching; however, this shift received a mixed reaction across the community and Iranian EFL society is no ex...

Emotion labor is defined as any conflict between institutional demands and teachers' professional beliefs and preferences. Engaging in emotion labor is an inevitable aspect of becoming a language teacher. Scholars agree that language teacher agency and identity are closely tied to emotion labor. This fact particularly looms large for novice languag...

The purpose of this study was to compare Iranian EFL teachers in English language institutes and universities based on ethical and cultural values. The study was conducted in two phases. First, 40 EFL teachers were interviewed individually and the elicited responses were transcribed and coded using the three codification processes in grounded theor...

This study sought to compare Iranian EFL teachers regarding their ethical beliefs at Iranian English language institutes and universities. To this end, first, the grounded theory method was used to conduct some interviews with 40 EFL teachers (20 male, 20 female). They were randomly selected from about 140 teachers working at institutes and univers...

The present study investigated the interplay between language anxiety, locus of control, and language proficiency of EFL students in online classes. The participants of the study were 67 upper-intermediate students between 18 to 30 years old and were selected randomly from a few language institutes in Shiraz. Two questionnaires and a proficiency te...

This work reports on a classroom-based study that investigated the role of field independence in the effectiveness of processing instruction. From a high school in Iran, fifty six learners were recruited and randomly assigned to an experimental and a comparison group. The former was taught through processing instruction while the latter received tr...

The role of culture, especially the American culture, in group work is relatively understudied because it is often presumed to be no different from the colonialist West, or is alternatively stereotyped as individualistic and competitive. Thus, this paper studies English-language proverbs used in America, as culturally rich symbols, at three levels...

The present research investigates the effect of self-regulatory strategy instruction on Iranian EFL learners’ metadiscoursal writing abilities. To this purpose, 50 Iranian EFL intermediate learners were all native speakers of the Persian language learning the English language in an institute were selected via convenience random sampling. Self-regul...

Teachers need to keep up to date with a set of clear and common expectations and formidable challenges that arise in classroom assessment practices. Defining and conceptualizing of language assessment literacy have been the subject of much debate, especially with regard to detecting and defining the main components of language assessment literacy f...

This study examined the combined effects of two task complexity levels (i.e., high-and low-complex) and two planning conditions including pre-task planning and on-line planning on Iranian intermediate language learners’ speech production regarding complexity, accuracy, and fluency. To this end, 90 intermediate EFL learners from a language institute...

The current study set out to investigate the impact of the participatory approach on the language proficiency of EFL learners. Moreover, the study aimed at probing into the effect of the participatory approach on learning grammar and vocabulary. Additionally, the study sought to explore the attitudes of teachers in this regard. The initial particip...

The current research was an attempt to investigate the effect of self-regulatory strategy instruction on Iranian EFL learners’ metadiscoursal writing skill. To this end, 50 Iranian EFL intermediate learners, studying English language in an institute were selected through convenience random sampling. All of them were Persian native speakers. Three r...

Reconciliating the logics of Post-method Era, Critical Pedagogy, and Sociocultural Theory in its conceptual framework, this study postulated Iranian EFL teachers’ socio-pedagogical identity as comprising conformity, criticality, and conformity-criticality mediation in order to explore and model the different aspects of Iranian EFL teachers’ “transf...

The present study is an attempt to describe the development and validation of an inter-language pragmatic questionnaire to examine the kind of instructional approaches and techniques that EFL teachers use to practice the pragmatic features in their classes. The research made use of two theories; cognitive processing and language socialization theor...

The position of the English language in the world has recently underwent an enormous shift. The global spread of English has altered its status from being a homogeneous and standard language spoken by a few powerful countries into an international language or lingua franca spoken by a wide variety of speakers around the world (Llurda, 2014). The un...

In the neoliberal discourse of education, the notion of truth, as a fantasmatic concept, has a pivotal status. In order to actualise its non-existent yet highly captivating utopia of perfection, progress and prosperity, this discourse needs to present a homogeneous picture of human ontology whose needs and desires can be satisfied as far as s/he be...

The issues and the underlying motives behind second / foreign language teachers' professional development have been increasingly investigated by the experts and practitioners in the field due to its vital role in determining teachers' success. In line with such concerns, the current study was conducted to explore the underlying factors constituting...

Beliefs are formed through personal experiences and the interactions that individuals are involved in daily life (Hsieh, 2002). These beliefs can be transformed into attitudes, which in turn affect intentions, and decisions are formed through the intentions that lead to the action (Bauch,1984). The match or mismatch between instructors' beliefs and...

Textbooks in EFL/ESL classes have a crucial role in shaping the identities of the learners, as they encompass hidden ideologies imposed unintentionally on the learners. The aim of CDA is to shed light on these ideologies in order to foster awareness and prevent social and political unbalanced and injustice distribution of power. The purpose of this...

This study investigated the knowledge base of pre-service and in-service teacher education in Iran. In so doing, a teacher education knowledge base, and a knowledge base effectiveness questionnaire, developed by Jadidi and Bagheri (2014) were used. The participants selected through convenient sampling were 140 student teachers, the pre-service grou...

The aim of this study is to discover through qualitative and quantitative analysis of collected data to evaluate the effectiveness of supervisory process in EFL context and its role in their classroom decision making. The researchers also conducted classroom observations on teaching grammar and written corrective feedback. Teachers' practices and a...

The educational and pedagogical supervision reflect vital factors connecting in the functioning of the educational process. The body of pedagogical supervision of the supervisor plays an important role in the supervision and control of educational institutions. The study reports the result of qualitative and quantitative studies which stays directl...

It is an underestimated topic whether or not providing corrective feedback through portfolio-based writing instruction can be effective. Hence, the purpose of the current study was to investigate the effect of providing corrective feedback through portfolio-based writing instruction on the overall and componential writing performance of the Iranian...

In recent years, the line of research on the socio-pragmatic aspects of language and language use has been increasing very rigorously. In this regard, due to their significant role in impacting on the interactions among interlocutors, taboos as well euphemisms have been the subject of research in various societies and cultures from a vast variety o...

The present study was an attempt to refine a qualitatively proposed model of ELT discipline-specific reading strategies to provide a better interpretation of qualitative findings. Hence, in line with the components of the previous model, that is, 6 factors and 32 categories, a 6-hypothetical factor and a 33-item questionnaire were considered in the...

The selected textbook in the present research is Family and Friends series for young-learner students, that is, Family and Friends 5, (Naomi Simmons, Tamzin Thompson and Jenny Quintana, second edition) and Family and Friends 6, (Naomi Simmons, Tamzin Thompson and Jenny Quintana, second edition) were selected. Twenty instructors comprising of 10 mal...

This research investigated the implementation of inter-language pragmatics instruction which is less explored in the research literature of instructional pragmatics in EFL contexts. Specifically, it examined the extent to which instructors of private EFL institutes implement interlanguage pragmatic instruction in their classrooms in Iran. A mixed-m...

The aim of this study was to explore the concept of role identity among Iranian English language teachers. Narrative inquiry was adopted as an approach of the study. Twenty-one Iranian English language teachers from three educational contexts (university, school, and institute) were interviewed and provided their written narratives. Then, the colle...

One of the most influential approaches to discourse analysis is critical discourse analysis. Discourse analysis should have a critical dimension. (Van Dijk,2004). Royen Fowler reposed critical discourse analysis based on his work on language and ideology. Yarmohammadi (2004) defines critical discourse analysis as" a kind of discourse analysis which...

This investigation set out to look into the issue of teachers' exercise of agency in the Iranian EFL context. More specifically, as part of a larger study, it reports on the ways two Iranian Ministry of Education teachers make sense of and operate in the country's educational setting under the demands of a centralist system of education. Priestley,...

Classroom learning consists of a variety of pedagogic relations including teachers and learners' interactions, inclusions and exclusions of learners and evaluations. The purpose of this paper was to comprehensively examine the nature of these interactions using Rose (2014) pedagogic exchange model. The researchers qualitatively investigated the int...

The present study aimed to examine whether agent-based instruction would privilege English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners any better than mainstream approaches (e.g. analogical reasoning, guessing from context, image formation, semantic analysis, etc.) when it comes to the teaching of English idioms. It also sought to explore whether learning...

The theoretical underpinnings of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) enjoy a lot of shifts since when CALL has been introduced to second language acquisition (Chapelle, 2009). One of the least perused theories in this regard is sociocultural theory which purports that the practices human beings do can support language learning (Ortega, 2007)...

This investigation set out to look into the issue of teachers' exercise of agency in the Iranian EFL context. More specifically, as part of a larger study, it reports on the ways two Iranian Ministry of Education teachers make sense of and operate in the country's educational setting under the demands of a centralist system of education. Priestley,...

The structure of socio-culture encouraged the following study to investigate the ways participation in collaborative learning tasks can have an effect on the overall English proficiency of EFL students' academic achievement. The learners' engagement in learning and collaboration with others for achieving their goals often happen in participatory ap...

The aim of this study was to develop a questionnaire and to explore and confirm a model of teacher role identity among Iranian English language teachers in an EFL context. To achieve this aim, a questionnaire was developed and validated based on the literature, the theoretical framework, and the results of a qualitative study. The questionnaire was...

Although philosophy and spirituality are related to various branches of disciplines, they have not been subject to focused attention in foreign language teaching. In this paper, schools of educational philosophy, and spirituality in education were connected together to present the stance, viewpoint, and practice of these two constructs in English a...

The research methodology and research orientation of the studies published in the realm of teaching Persian to the speakers of other languages (hereafter TPSOL) have seldom been reported. That said, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the research methodology and research orientation of the papers published between 2012 and 2015 in...

The study aimed to investigate Iran national curriculum, foreign language part. The curriculum analyzed according to major documents of Iran; 20-year Iran’s vision plan and Comprehensive map of science. Moreover, it was analyzed based on current issues in language teaching. The qualitative study reached at some setback in curriculum. Curriculum cen...

The present study aimed to satisfy a twofold purpose: On the one hand, it sought to verify the postulation that agent-based instruction could offer a compromise approach to teaching L2 idioms where form and meaning would be equally emphasized during instruction. Given that anthropomorphism has not been much under scrutiny, this research, on the oth...

This study aims to investigate different types and trends of information provided by research titles published in the applied linguistics journals from 1975 to 2015. To this end, 428 research titles published in 63 issues of three applied linguistics journals, namely, Modern Language Journal, Language Learning, and Foreign Language Annals were extr...

There is no doubt concerning the interdependence of educational progress with human development, socio-economic growth, greater opportunities, welfare, and political stability. Hence,for further development and growth of education,transformations and reforms in curriculum are required to reflect the latest changes in theories and praxis of the mode...

The present study aimed at exploring the influence of a repeated exposure to the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (MALQ) on EFL learners’ level of metacognitive awareness. Participants of the study were forty intermediate university students who were randomly assigned to experimental (n=20) and control (n=20) groups. The experimental...

This study intends to evaluate a sample of ESP textbook materials published by SAMT Organization to be used at university level. The required data was gathered through seeking 30 ESP instructors' and 30 ESP students’ views. The results of the analysis indicate that there is a significant difference between the ideal situation and the present condit...

em>The purpose of this study is to critically analyze the discourse of the de facto inaugural speech presented by president Rouhani while receiving his presidential percept from the leader, to seek the ideology beyond his speech and to detect the point that to which of discourses, reformists’ or principalists’, Rouhani’s discourse belong to. Based...

The present study was conducted in order to overcome the problems associated to the unsatisfied assessment literacy needs of the university students with the aid of textbook monitoring procedure. To this end, using the teachers’ recommendations, the book entitled “testing language skills: from theory to practice” which is a well-known book be...

This investigation postulates Vygotsky’s (1978) concept of zone of proximal development (ZPD) and his related “scaffolding” metaphor as well as Norton’s (2006) principles of sociocultural identity as its theoretical foundation.This researchintends to scrutinize the socioculturally-oriented mediational mechanisms utilized in student-student and stud...

Recasts as a type of implicit feedback have been under the focus of extensive investigation in the field of SLA for many years. Thus far, a large number of studies scrutinized ineffectiveness or benefits of recasts but few of them have attempted to investigate this issue through making a comparison between two language classrooms which differ with...

This study investigated the representation of sociocultural identities in six textbooks selected from Top Notch and Summit series, to assess their potential to promote intercultural communicative competence in the learners. Ting- Toomey’s identity negotiation theory and Scollon and Scollon’s (2001) discourse system structure were used to assess the...

Although some piecemeal efforts have been made to investigate the validity and use of the Iranian PhD exam, no systematic project has been specifically carried out in this regard. The current study, hence, tried to attend to this void. As such, to ensure a balanced focus on test interpretation and test consequence, and to track evidence derived fro...

Reviewing the assessment literature, dynamic assessment is the most recently advocated type of assessment in that it not only argues for integration between assessment and instruction, but also takes into consideration the testees' past, present, and future potentials. However, as far as dynamic assessment is concerned, a key question is: How much...

Learners define the target culture differently hence each have certain attitudes towards the target language, determining how much they learn. This study assessed 244 Iranian EFL learners’ reactions to learning English cultural elements with a questionnaire developed based on Ely (1986) and Gardner’(1985) integrative and instrumental motivation, mo...

This study attempted to explore the preferred language learning styles of a group of Iranian EFL learners and differences in the styles of learners with different L2 writing proficiency levels. Moreover, the study examined differences between the more proficient and the less proficient writers’ self-assessment. The participants were 30 Iranian uppe...

The purpose of this study is to investigate interjections’ frequency of use in three different EFL course books. To this aim, the Student's Book and Teacher's Edition of Interchange 3, Top Notch 3A and 3B, and Touchstone Intermediate were examined. All the above books were studied carefully and the applied interjections were identified. Then the fr...

The present research is a follow-up to another study (Rasti & Sahragard, 2012) with an exclusive focus on political metaphor in general and specifically its (de)legitimatory role in the British paper The Economist. The Western paper takes an explicit sanctions-supportive stance on Iran's nuclear issue. With an eye to spotting instances of political...

The present study aimed to investigate the possible relationships between field of study, learning style preferences, and language learning strategies among university students majoring in the fields of arts and humanities, science, engineering, social sciences, and English as a foreign language. To this end, 376 university students completed the P...

A multitude of positive and negative factors affect the learning behaviours and learning outcomes of English language learners. The available literature, however, reveals that, in the context of Iran, researchers and practitioners have been more interested in investigating the effects of positive factors (e.g., Alavi, 2004; Asghari, 1998; Fazel, 20...

The present research aimed at spotting any possible biased coverage a typical Western newspaper such as The Economist gives to the issue of Iran’s nuclear power program at large and specifically to the way in which the main actors involved in the controversy are portrayed and the actions thereof – most notably, the act of delegitimating Iran’s nucl...

This study intended to find out the relationship between Iranian college students' language proficiency and their academic achievement. To achieve this goal, 151 female and male college students majoring in English Literature at Shiraz University participated in the study. The analysis of the data obtained from the sample revealed that there is a s...

This study aims at analyzing the conversation sections of Top Notch Fundamental textbooks from the pragmatic dimension of language functions and speech acts. For this purpose, 14 conversations from the entire 14 units of the books were selected randomly and the two pragmatic models of Halliday's (1978) language functions and Searle's (1976) speech...

This study sought to look at the relationship between locus of control (LOC) orientation and academic achievement (ACH) of university-age English Foreign Language (EFL) learners. LOC is the extent to which individuals attribute their achievements either to external influences such as fate or to their own efforts. The sample for the study included 1...

This study takes a critical discourse analysis approach to investigate the linguistic representation of male and female social actors and construction of gender identities in the Interchange Third Edition. The analytical models used are van Leeuwen's (1996) framework and Halliday's transitivity model (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004). The findings of...

In today's classrooms, textbooks play a very crucial role in the realm of language teaching and learning. And after teachers, they are considered to be the next important factor in the second/foreign language classroom. Therefore, selecting a proper textbook for a class has been one of the most important tasks for teachers. Whether the teacher shou...

In today's classrooms, textbooks play a very crucial role in the realm of language teaching and learning. And after teachers, they are considered to be the next important factor in the second/foreign language classroom. Therefore, selecting a proper textbook for a class has been one of the most important tasks for teacher. Whether the teacher shoul...

Critical Discourse Analysis endeavors to put forward an insight into the discursive structures of various texts and genres together with their socio-political effects. In an ideal world the gift of language would offer us only clear honest communication. Yet, it has developed a darker and more sinister potential: sophisticated linguistic techniques...

Vocabulary acquisition is crucial to second language acquisition. However, learning vocabulary is often perceived as a tedious and laborious process. This paper first discusses problems learners have learning vocabulary and offers some guidelines. It introduces language learning strategies that make vocabulary learning interesting and easy for lear...

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has become a very influential academic research activity across subjects in social, political, educational, and linguistic sciences. It scrutinizes the power relations, ideological manipulations, and hegemony. This paper is an attempt to explain how a single reality, that is the death of the Pope, John Paul II, is...

The present study sought to investigate the role of L2 proficiency in reading general purpose (GP) and academic purpose (AP) texts, and the predictability of reading performance on AP texts from performance on GP texts. It is hypothesized that performance on GP is predictive of performance on AP. To this end, two groups of medical students, each co...