Willingness to communicate is the most basic orientation toward communication. Almost anyone is likely to respond to a direct question, but many will not continue or initiate interaction. This paper investigates Iranian EFL learners' perceptions of their willingness to initiate communication across four types of context and three types of receiver. The study employed a questionnaire consisting of 20 situations in which a person might choose to communicate or not to communicate. The study concludes that learners were highly willing to communicate in two context-types (Group Discussion, & Meetings) and one receiver-type (Friend). They were not willing to initiate communication in other situations. The main reason is that majority of Iranians have the experience of communicating in English only in language classrooms in which they can have some group discussion, meetings, and friendly chat. They don't have an access to a native speaker or possibility to travel to an English speaking country. In general, it can be said that Iranian EFL learners are willing to initiate communication in situations experienced before, like group discussion or communicating with their friends. They don't feel confident enough to initiate communication in unfamiliar situations like public speaking. Therefore, context- and receiver-type familiarity is an effective factor for the situation in which a learner initiates communication

The development of critical thinking (CT) skills has become a key goal for educators in first and second language contexts. There is evidence that the use of such activities has still not become widespread in a number of ELT situations. One reason for this may be lack of awareness about how levels of thinking can be conceptualized in ELT activities. This paper will report on a program designed by the authors at a university in Iran, which used taxonomy of CT skills drawn up by Facione (1990) to probe the effect of critical thinking strategies training on reading comprehension of Iranian EFL students. In so doing, 240 male and female Iranian EFL students were selected and screened into two proficiency levels based on the TOEFL tests. Each proficiency group was divided into critical and non-critical group. The results suggested CT skills significantly affected EFL learners' reading comprehension performance. However, the effect of critical thinking strategy training didn't vary across different language proficiency levels. Overall, the findings provide empirical support for the facilitative effect of critical thinking strategy training on reading comprehension performance of EFL learners.

This study attempts to examine the use of English modals in terms of their frequency and functions. For this purpose, Form 4 and College students' argumentative compositions were extracted from the Malaysian Corpus of Students' Argumentative Writing (MCSAW). In order to analyze the data, this study employed discourse analysis and some descriptive statistics by using the WordSmith Tools Version 4.0. The findings of the study showed that Form 4 and College students used can and will more frequently in argumentative compositions compared to other modals. Moreover, the result illustrated the exploitation of present tense form of modal than the past tense form. Finally, it was also revealed that the modals of ability were the most frequent modals found in Form 4 and College students' compositions in terms of their appropriate function. In order to improve the teaching, learning and effective usage of modal auxiliaries among ESL learners, all the central modals must be emphasized repetitively to enhance students' understanding of modals and their functions.

Assessment has been taken to demonstrate that learning is aligned with external standards which is almost related to students' goals in a curriculum in English language teaching and it plays an integral role in the success of language learning program that is following by so many EFL teachers. Consistency in scoring (mid-term and final exams) highly depends on the way of conducting paper assessment, validation of the process, reliability, experience of teachers, and different interpretation of assessors to make justified decision. Hence, the present study was an attempt to probe Iranian EFL learners' perceptions toward paper assessment in mid-term and final exams in a language institute. To this end, a total of 100 participants (50 males and 50 females) between ages of 15 to 28 at intermediate level, were selected based on Nelson Proficiency Test. Data were collected through scores of two sequential semesters and a Likert scale questionnaire. The findings of this study indicated that there is a direct positive relation between learners' viewpoints on paper assessment and their progress. Generally speaking, paper assessment in both formative and summative assessment would be a great progress among female and male English language learners.

Micro level refers to those translation techniques which are applied for short textual segments and are usually of a prescriptive nature. In the other hand, the macro level refers to translation strategies as well as external factors that influence the decisions made by a translator and are of a descriptive nature. ISSN 2162-6952 2015 www.macrothink.org/jse Journal of Studies in Education 159The current paper is aimed at examining the components of translation competence and the ways to develop it in the translation courses. On this basis, the concept of translation competence and its components have been analyzed and various classifications made by translation scholars of translation errors and problems and conceptual tools to describe and teach them have been presented. Then, the external factors influencing translations and their manifestation in translation theories including Scopus theory by Vermeer, Holz-Mantari's translatorial action, Appiah's thick translation and in general, the poststructuralist and functionalist approaches to translation and the ways to teach them as well as the reasons for the shift of theories from source-orientation to target orientation and its pedagogical implications for translation courses have been investigated.