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Globalization as an increasingly influencing force has led English language to become the lingua franca of the world. However, the global spread of English is considered as linguistic and cultural imperialism of English speaking countries to exert their dominance, power, culture, ideology and language over the periphery countries. The devastating consequence of this hegemony, according to Canagarajah (2005) can be putting learners in danger of losing their languages, cultures, and identities, giving rise to the devaluation of their local knowledge and cultures. Here, the researchers administ interview to explore thirty-seven experienced Iranian EFL teachers’ (18males/19females) perceptions on English globalization and its hegemony, who were selected based on purposive sampling. The researchers’ adoption of Strauss and Corbin’s (1998) constant comparative method revealed that although Iranian English teachers admitted globalization as an inevitable reality and English language as a tool in the service of globalization to smooth communication among people, they took up a counter-hegemonic stance and resistance towards the values associated with its use. They also suggested some anti-hegemonic strategies to de-colonize the power, culture, values, and ideologies of the West which tries to marginalize other countries and people.

Self-assessment and peer-assessment have been appraised in a large number of studies, aiming at investigating their effectiveness in different contexts. However, the challenges of implementing self-assessment and peer-assessment have been investigated rather sporadically. Given that, the purpose of this study was to explore the challenges and probable solutions of implementing self-assessment and peer-assessment by delving into the perspectives of English language teaching (ELT) teachers and ELT students. In this study we used an emic methodology to examine the perspective of 11 ELT teachers and 56 undergraduate and graduate ELT students. We used MAXQDA to analyze the interviews and open-ended questions. The results reveled that on the part of ELT students, self and peer's subjective judgment, learners' lack of assessment literacy, and instructional problems were the most important challenges of implementing self-assessment and peer-assessment in writing courses. ELT teachers believed that these assessment types are not feasible in all cultures. They also admitted that ELT teachers' lack of assessment literacy is a challenge in implementing these assessment types. As for the probable solutions, both ELT teachers and students posited that ELT teachers need to increase their assessment knowledge and to participate in teacher training courses. Whereas ELT teachers believed that learner autonomy could be a solution, ELT students were against it. The article's conclusion bears some implications for ELT teachers while implementing self-assessment and peer-assessment in writing courses.

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to explore Iranian IELTS candidates' strengths and weaknesses in IELTS Speaking Test in terms of IELTS's four speaking assessment criteria, namely Fluency and Coherence (FlC), Lexical Resource (LR), Grammar Range and Accuracy (GRA), and Pronunciation (Pro). It also aimed to examine the discourse features of the candidates' performances in part 2 of IELTS Speaking across bands 5, 6, and 7. To this end, the oral performances of 59 IELTS candidates from a series of Mock IELTS Tests were collected, re-scored, and subjected to statistical investigation. Additionally, to better understand the ABOUT THE AUTHORS Laleh Dashti is a Ph.D. candidate of TEFL at Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran. She has dedicated more than a decade of her life to teaching and is currently an EFL teacher and IELTS trainer. Her research areas of interest include teacher education, curriculum, and instruction.

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