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This qualitative study, using an open interview, set out to investigate the roles six factors, including age, university education, teachers of English Language institutes, teaching English, dictionary, and note-taking, played in improving English speaking fluency of seventeen fluent Iranian EFL speakers. The participants were chosen purposefully based on the speaking scale of Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRL). The findings indicated that early age had a great impact on the participants’ speaking fluency. They mentioned that they could not pick up fluency if they had started learning English at older ages. Moreover, university education had no effect on enhancing their fluency. They stated that not having enough opportunities to speak English in classrooms, being exposed to wrong amounts of input from their classmates or even from some university instructors, having no access to English native speakers in English Language Departments, professors’ talking in native language out of classes, in their offices or even sometimes in classes all led to their losing motivation after entering the university. In contrast, teachers in English language institutes had a supportive role in increasing the participants’ English learning. Although two participants quit teaching English since it had a negative influence on their speaking, it had a positive impact on improving speaking ability of the rest. And finally, fruitful strategies were suggested on how to use dictionaries and note-takings.

Given the crucial role philosophical thinking can serve in enhancing the cultivation of mind, it seems urgent that prior to nurturing such thinking its status be investigated within individuals in various educational contexts. Moreover, since philosophy is characteristically a question-raising discipline, one way one’s philosophic-mindedness can be investigated is to see if s/he is capable to cast a philosophical look at a text and in turn pose philosophical questions on it.  Hence, the present paper aims at a) exploring the participants’ ability in making philosophical questions and b) finding out factors leading to producing and not-producing such questions. To this end, through accessible sampling, a group of 50 BA sophomore and junior students in an EFL context attended this study. The participants were asked to read two simple short passages and make any type of question(s) (text-based, beyond the text, etc.) that would occur to their mind in essay-type format. Then, using purposeful sampling, 17 out of 50 were selected for an open interview. Based on Cam’s (2006) question framework, the findings revealed that the majority of the participants were not able to produce philosophical questions and the factors leading to generating non-philosophical questions were memorization-based system, teacher-centered curriculum, non-liberal atmosphere of classes, unsuitable family environment, weak performance of mass media, irrational social customs, etc. On the contrary, the factors giving rise to producing philosophical questions were innate disposition towards thinking, introversion, appropriate family environment, proper nurturing conditions, adequate method of teaching, etc. Furthermore, the technique of question-making and question-analysis together with a question framework are introduced to be employed for realizing philosophic-mindedness. Finally, Philosophy-based Language Teaching is suggested as an approach for removing the obstacles to philosophical thinking.

The major goal of education, according to the educationalist Matthew Lipman (2003), is to culture students to become thoughtful by attaining excellent thinking power; i.e., critical, creative, and caring thinking ability. The purpose of this study was to examine the current status of excellent thinking among EFL students. Using accessible sampling, 41 EFL students at Shiraz University, Iran read two passages of various types and were asked to make a number of essay-type questions on each one. The results indicated that the majority of the questions were trivial reading comprehension ones with no sign of excellent thinking. The findings may imply that despite the significance of cultivating excellent thinking within students, no/scant attention is paid to this issue and EFL students have not still gained the necessary skills of excellent thinking.