Greetings,
With this special issue on English Education in Iran, we close out Volume 13 of TESL-EJ. It’s been a very busy year, and we have grown geometrically, if not exponentially. Just since last issue, we have brought on two more copy editors; Lida Baker and Seyyed Abdollah Shahrokni have been working to improve and polish the quality of our published work. We welcome and thank them.
In case you missed the announcement, we also published our second academic title: Reflective Writing: A Way to Lifelong Teacher Learning, edited by Jill Burton, Phil Quirke, Carla L. Reichmann, and Joy Kreeft Peyton. We are actively seeking potential titles for future publication. Do you have a book idea? Get in touch.
As always, we thank the many contributors, editors, reviewers, and readers who continue to make us successful beyond our dreams. Please continue reading for a statement from the editor of this special issue, and for an announcement of our next special issue.
Best wishes,
Maggie Sokolik, Editor
Thomas Robb, Co-Editor
Greta Vollmer, Submissions Editor
From the Guest Editor
A. Mehdi Riazi
Department of Linguistics
Macquarie University
Australia
I am happy to see the Special Issue of TESL-EJ on English Education in Iran is now out after about a year of collaboration among different people including the editor of TESL-EJ, contributors of articles, reviewers, and myself as Guest Editor. The articles in this Special Issue sketch a portrait of the English language education in Iran. The first article, by Farhady and his co-authors, introduces a general reflection on foreign language education in Iran. This article provides the readers with a good framework and context to trace how foreign language teaching has been developed in Iran over the last decades. The article comes to an end with a discussion of the problems in EFL education in Iran along with some suggested solutions to the problems.
While the first article provides a general and historical perspective on education in general, and foreign language education in Iran, the readers are then presented with articles which address the four commonplaces of English language education including the teacher and teaching, instructional materials (textbooks), learners, and context. There are three articles on teachers and teaching. The first article in this part by Akbari and Karimi Alvar investigates three teacher-related variables, that is, teaching style, teachers’ sense of efficacy, and teacher reflectivity to see how they relate to student achievement gains in an ELT context like Iran. The second article in this part, a case study by Fotovatian, provides an account of social integration and professional recognition of two Iranian teachers of English language in Australia. The study describes two Iranian post-graduate students of English teaching in an Australian university and their struggles over the construction of their social and professional identities. Gorjian and his co-authors studied how dramatic performance might enhance Iranian English language majors’ understanding of drama as compared to conventional methods of teaching drama.
As relates to instructional materials, Riazi and Mosallanejad analysed English language textbooks currently in use in Iranian high-school and pre-university classes. They used the cognitive domain of Bloom’s Taxonomy to investigate the learning objectives of these textbooks.
Two articles have learners and learning as their focus. The first one, by Behjat and Sadighi, aimed at finding out whether Linguistic Threshold Hypothesis (LTH) can account for the Iranian EFL learners’ grammar development. The second one, by Shokouhi and Mirsalari, intended to find out whether there is any correlation between collocational knowledge and general linguistic knowledge of Iranian EFL learners and which type(s) of collocation is or are more difficult for them to master.
Maftoon and his co-authors attend to the context of English language education in Iranian schools and address the feasibility of the privatisation of ELT enterprise in Iran.
The final two articles focus on writing and written texts. The first one, by Aryadoust, investigates the writing sub-skills using structural equation modelling (SEM). The second one, by Rashidi and Souzandehfar, draws upon contrastive rhetoric to compare and contrast two organizational metatexts as used in Persian and English economic texts.
I hope this Special Issue of TESL-EJ will be interesting to readers and I take this opportunity to thank the journal’s editor, Maggie Sokolik, for giving me this chance to guest edit this special issue. I would also thank all those who submitted articles, though we were not able to include all. Last but not least, my sincere gratitude to reviewers of the articles who took time to carefully read the articles and provide comments.
Call for Manuscripts
TESL-EJ Special Issue: Incorporating Instructional Pragmatics into ESL/EFL Teacher Education
Date of Publication: September 2011
Deadline for Submissions: Feb. 15, 2011
Guest Editor: Zohreh R. Eslami, Associate Professor, Texas A&M University
E-mail: zeslami@tamu.edu
September 2011 issue of TESL-EJ will focus on scholarly research perspectives and classroom-based practices related to Pragmatics and Teacher Education.
Pragmatic competence is one of the vital components of communicative competence that needs to be considered in L2 teacher education programs. Unfortunately, available teacher education sources on ESL methodology and assessment lack a focus on teaching the pragmatic aspects of language. Pragmatics has been identified as an important component of language teacher’s knowledge base and appears to have been incorporated into some teacher education programs in both ESL and EFL contexts. However, a recent nationwide survey (Vasquez & Sharpless, 2009) has found that the treatment of pragmatics in teacher training courses tends to center on theory rather than practical applications. Specific preparation focused on practical instructional pragmatics is needed for language teachers to be bale to effectively teach L2 pragmatics. To address such needs, this issue welcomes submissions of high-quality articles on topics relevant to the incorporation of instructional pragmatics into L2 teacher education in ESL and EFL contexts. The following are some suggested topics:
– Incorporating instructional pragmatics into L2 teacher education in ESL contexts
– Incorporating instructional pragmatics into L2 teacher education in EFL contexts
– In-service and pre-service teachers perceptions of pragmatics and teacher education
– Native and nonnative English speaking teachers (NNESTs) perceptions of pragmatics and teacher education
– Developments and challenges facing the integration of pragmatics into L2 teacher education programs
– Teacher education models used in the integration of instructional pragmatics into L2 teacher education courses
– Approaches and strategies used to incorporate instructional pragmatics into L2 teacher education
Send original and unpublished manuscripts on the related topics along with the author’s name, affiliation, email address, and a 50-word biographical statement to zeslami@tamu.edu.
All submissions must conform to regular TESL-EJ submission guidelines, which you will find linked on the TESL-EJ site.
The deadline for submitting a manuscript is Feb.15, 2011.