Three components have been introduced for foreign language learning anxiety in the literature: Test anxiety, fear of negative evaluation and communication apprehension. This study teases out the first of the three components with special focus on listening comprehension test to investigate the correlation between listening test results and foreign language anxiety. More importantly, the study aims at questioning the role teachers can play in either alleviating or aggravating the anxiety which has been triggered in the listening test takers. For this purpose, a number of 60 intermediate-level EFL learners participated in the study. To measure the level of anxiety in the testees, a modified and translated version of foreign language class anxiety scale (FLCAS) (developed by Horwtiz, Horwitz, and Cope, p. 1986) was used to be correlated with the testees' scores in listening comprehension test. The results showed a moderate but significant negative correlation between FLCAS and listening comprehension (r=-.469). To answer the second research question, the high anxious participants underwent a treatment, which was designed to alleviate their foreign language learning anxiety. Immediately after the treatment, another listening comprehension test was administered to them to find out whether the treatment session can influence the test results. Using the statistical technique of t-test, the results showed that the high anxious informants had a significant improvement in the second listening comprehension test results due to the reduction of their level of anxiety in the treatment session. Finally, some suggestions were made to the teachers who seek to alleviate the amount of anxiety in their students.

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This study investigates how Iranian speakers of Persian realize the speech act of refusals to the initiating acts of offers, suggestions, invitations and requests. Two hundred and eight acts of refusals were naturally collected and classified according to the refusal classification scheme proposed by Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss‐Weltz. The results showed that Iranian Persian speakers employ indirect strategies and a combination of direct and indirect strategies more than direct ones in refusals, in communication with the interactants with whom they have ongoing relationship. ‘Reason’ and ‘gratitude’ were the most frequent strategies in the data. Returning the act was found to be a new strategy. Finally, the socio‐cultural implications of the variety in the production of refusals are discussed.

Taking up the role of examiner in PhD dissertation defense sessions involves dealing with two contradictory desires; namely, effective delivery of criticisms and maintaining a positive interpersonal relationship with the recipients of those criticisms. This study explores the discourse strategies examiners use to express the speech act of criticism in the context of Iranian dissertation defense sessions in English for Academic Purposes. The data come from simplified transcriptions of twelve video-recorded sessions of PhD dissertation defense sessions (DDs) from 63 to 123 minutes long. The examiners’ criticisms, which are delivered in the Question-Answer (Q-A) part of defense sessions, are selected for analysis. Consulting taxonomies of criticisms provided by previous studies as the point of departure, the study also provides a taxonomy of criticisms which best fits its purpose. The identified 120 acts are classified into 10 strategy types. The analyses reveal a ‘mixed message’ in criticism acts in that they ambivalently include elements of negativity and positivity. Most criticisms include a number of mitigating strategies as well as aggravating strategies. In addition, they include strategies which ambivalently mitigate and aggravate. It is therefore argued that examiners ambivalently establish relational connection with and separation from the candidates (and their supervisors) through criticisms.