The research contributions of metaphor as part of (critical) discourse studies have flourished during COVID-19; hence, it is necessary to consider their progress and foresee their future growth. To obtain a comprehensive understanding of COVID metaphor research in discourse and to identify the most recent research foci, bibliometric, network, thematic mapping and word cloud analyses were conducted in this study. The results showed that (1) research on COVID metaphors is largely shaped by Critical Discourse Analysis research approaches and methodologies; (2) the research production has investigated traditional genres such as news and emerging genres, including social media and multimodal data; and (3) research highlights the role played by metaphors in persuasion in public discourse. The findings of this study can assist future research in this or related fields by providing an overview of metaphor research in crisis communication.

This study explores the discourse of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics or medicine (STEM) fields produced by Twitter users on social media, with a particular focus on language usage and function in this discourse. The exploration of the women in STEM discourse was achieved by collecting a body of tweets using popular hashtags addressing women in STEM from the last week of October 2017. Following a corpus-based approach, this study analyzes the most frequent evaluative adjectives and 4-grams. Results from the analysis of evaluative adjectives show that Twitter users represent women in STEM fields positively by using positive adjectives such as great, amazing, inspirational etc. Furthermore, the analysis of the most frequent 4-grams reveals that Twitter users employ hashtags such as #ilooklikeasurgeon and #womeninSTEM to promote the work of women in STEM fields, show their appreciation of women working and studying in STEM and challenge prevalent gender stereotypes of STEM professions. It was found that the production of women in STEM discourse by most Twitter users has contributed to increasing the strength of women in the STEM community in social media, evidenced by their practices of advocacy, networking and challenging gender biases online. The discourse of women in STEM in social media is an example of discursive activism that focuses on the larger dialogue of women in STEM and highlights dominant forms of sexism and gendered stereotypes of women’s work in male dominated professions.

Recent research has shown that little attention has been paid to teachers' views regarding giving oral corrective feedback (Sepehrinia & Mehdizadeh, 2016). To fill this gap, this empirical study investigates the beliefs of Taif University's teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) about their feedback practices and their perception of the impact that these practices have on students' performance. An opinionnaire of 18 items was designed with closed-ended questions. A five-point Likert's scale was employed to measure three subscales: teachers' beliefs and practices about their corrective feedback; types of oral corrective feedback used by EFL teachers; and their perception of students' uptake. The survey was administered to fifty-seven English as foreign language (EFL) teachers at the English Language Centre (ELC), Taif University who were asked to fill in an online survey regarding their oral corrective feedback practices in the classroom. Their responses were analysed quantitatively. The findings of the study were that the participants allocated highest preferences to the techniques of elicitation, repetition and recast, and that they frequently use them in their classrooms.

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This paper aims to analyze the kinds of peer observation of teaching in Saudi English language institutes. The data revealed that three models of peer observation of teaching are used: evaluative, developmental and collaborative. It was apparent that the evaluative model is the dominant one. The analysis of the results showed that there is a negative attitude toward Peer Observation of Teaching (POT) among teachers. They do not welcome the idea of being monitored and judged. The authors realized that institutes could enhance the benefits of POT by providing teachers with clear guidelines and engaging them in the construction of institutional policies that welcome other POT models