No abstract

This paper discusses the significance of learning and teaching culture as an inseparable part of language and invites language teachers to integrate cultural points into the syllabus of language programs. A learner may have a good command of grammar and lexicon, but have difficulty in comprehending the message. Understanding why communication is possible for certain readers but not for others can partly lie in the cultural shades of the words and events. For some nationalities, gestures, names, numbers, and colors are suggestive of ill manners, while in others, they are welcome. This study justifies the importance of including culture in the language teaching programs because familiarity with the cultural features of the target language people can help the learners see the world with open eyes and modify their attitude toward other cultures. This can generally enhance their tolerance not only as a language learner but also as a human being

There is dearth of research on disclosing the ethos of Appreciative Inquiry (AI)-based pedagogy application in language education settings (Johnson, 2014), especially amid the Covid-19 pandemic era. To disclose the ethos in AI-based pedagogy as an appropriate pandemic pedagogy, the present study attempts to uncover the Iranian EFL learners' narratives on their lived experiences of a pedagogical shift in an English language school in northern Iran when dealing with an online class during the pandemic. Embedded in 4-D ethos of AI-based pedagogy, namely Discovery, Dream, Design, and Destiny, this study utilizes data from observational field notes and interviews in shaping narratives. It was shown that the online language lesson agenda is a dynamic resource that emerges from content development and can be planned to confirm the learner's knowledge. More creative ways of learners' assessment are also yearned for to neutralize cheating possibilities. In addition, new modes of meaning in language education are envisaged to be designed. Learners position themselves as enriched multimodal text repertoires in a dynamic not static language community of practice. The current study has some implications for online language practice, especially in periods of crisis such as a pandemic.

In recent years, interdisciplinary studies have become one of the most inspiring and productive of human pursuits so that it can provide a format for connections and conversations giving rise to new knowledge. Such a wedding interest has also been gleaned in issues of English in Education from New literacy perspective and emerged an overgrowing field named English language and literacy education. However, understanding of what constitutes English literacy and who is a literate person in English in the 21 century has become a complex puzzle. A paucity of an integrated pattern or more plausible definition of literacy has brought about many challenging approaches to those working in the newly- made field. Scrutinizing most approaches which have so far posed can bring them under the wing of two different views i.e. cognitive and sociocultural approaches to the language and literacy education. This explanatory study is to take into account some of the main heeds of these two general approaches. Such a task can provide a more integrated definitional pattern for all those who are in the front. It can also act as a conceptual construct for curriculum developer, teachers and all educational practitioners to move consciously in achieving a more durable learning and teaching in the educational terrain.

Recently, researchers have shown an increased interest in achievement goal orientation correlates. What is not yet clear is the detailed relationships among students’ goal orientation, students’ personality traits, and parenting style. In so doing, this research responds to the need to analyze the importance of parenting styles (permissive, authoritative, and authoritarian) and students’ traits (psychoticism, neuroticism, and extraversion) in explaining the achievement goal orientations (mastery approach, mastery avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance). In the exploratory correlational study, 586 Iranian students along with their parents were selected as the sample so as to evaluate the structure of the relationships between these variables. The results indicate that students’ psychoticism and neuroticism predict students’ goal orientations (positively: performance and mastery avoidance and negatively: mastery and performance approach) while extraversion did not. Only the authoritative style predicts mastery approach (positively) and psychoticism trait (negatively). Permissive and authoritarian styles do not directly or indirectly predict students’ goal orientations.