Taking the approach of interlanguage pragmatic analysis based on the theories of Speech Acts and Emotional Intelligence (EI), the main purpose of the present study was to find the interrelationships among components of EI, and awareness of request and apology strategies among Iranian TEFL students. The study was conducted on 200 English teaching majors from Mashhad universities. EI was measured through a translated form of Bar-On emotional quotient inventory and a self-developed questionnaire for measuring the apology and request strategies. The results of path analysis showed that among five sub-constructs of EI, four variables positively and significantly predict request strategies: Interpersonal (β= .40, p<.05), Intrapersonal (β= .16, p<.05), Adaptability (β= .17, p<.05), and Stress management (β= .15, p<.05). Moreover, among five sub-constructs of EI, three variables of Interpersonal (β= .16, p<.05), Intrapersonal (β= .22, p<.05), and Stress management (β= .12, p<.05) are predictors of apology strategy. The results also indicate that the proposed model had a perfect fit with the empirical data. Furthermore, the results of correlation showed that General Mood is positively and significantly correlated with apology and request. Thus, it is suggested that educators and policymakers consider the importance of EI in improving request and apology strategies.

Gardner’s (1983) Multiple Intelligences Theory (MIT) has been found to have profound implications in teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) in that it provides a way for teachers to recognize learners’ individual cognitive and affective differences by providing favorable motivational conditions for learning. However, little investigation has focused on the domains of cognition and affect in a single study. Therefore, this study investigates two facets: the relationship of Multiple Intelligences (MIs) with listening among Iranian TEFL university students and the possible relationship between the type of intelligence the students fall into and their attitudes toward learning English. In this study, McKenzie’s (1999) MI Inventory was used to identify 60 participants’ preferred intelligences. The participants comprised an intact group randomly assigned to the experiment. A Likert-type questionnaire was employed to elicit data about participants’ levels of personality traits that accounted for their attitudes to language-learning. Also, the participants’ listening comprehension proficiency was measured using the listening section of a retired TOEFL test. Data analysis using Pearson correlation revealed no significant relationship between the score of listening and any of the MIs. Similarly, the results indicated no significant difference between MIs and attitudes.

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Aiming at describing variation in second-language acquisition and particularly, addressing the role of linguistic features and tasks, this paper describes the use of Persian articles in the interlanguage (IL) produced by two adult English L1 learners of Persian L2. Using a combination of contrastive analysis and error analysis, it takes the stand of idiosyncrasy in meaning, rather than form and the notion of specificity-based articles to identify and predict some possible instances of transfer across six elicitation tasks. It also intends to investigate whether any of the contextual features may variably influence the learners’ IL. Providing evidence for the role of transferability from the viewpoint of semantic concerns, results describe the existence of variation in relation to task, rather than just linguistic form in the subjects’ IL system.   Keywords: Articles, English L1, L1 transferability, Persian L2, task-based variation.

While authenticity is recurrently associated with higher motivation, the question remains how an authentic context can affect reading motivation in an English for academic purposes (EAP) setting. To investigate the effect, two groups of 30 EAP students were selected through cluster random sampling as control and experimental groups. Having administered the pretest of the reading motivation questionnaire at the beginning of the study, the researchers administered the post-test after the 8-week intervention of providing an authentic context. The findings revealed that the experimental group (authentic context) had a higher reading motivation after the intervention as compared with the control group (traditional context). Moreover, the data from the diaries shed more light on the students' general views of the two contexts such as their impressions of the tasks and activities, impressions of what was enjoyable and what was not, and the reactions to the instructor and the peers.