Nowadays, writing has received a great degree of attention not only because it plays a significant role in transforming knowledge and learning but also in fostering creativity and when acquiring of a special language skill is seen as important, its assessment becomes important as well and writing is no exception. This study intended to investigate the effect of portfolio assessment technique as a teaching, learning and assessment tool on writing performance of EFL learners. Writing sub-skills has also been taken into account. To this end, forty Iranian EFL learners who were all English teaching majors were randomly divided into two groups: experimental (n=20) and control (n=20). The experimental group received the treatment i.e. portfolio assessment while the control group underwent the traditional approach of writing assessment. The result of statistical analysis indicated that the students in experimental group outperformed the students in control group in their writing performance and its sub-skills of focus, elaboration, organization, conventions and vocabulary. The findings suggest that portfolio assessment technique improves writing ability of the students. The results have also some implications for assessment, teaching and learning of L2 writing.

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge of Iranian high school students. Nation's Vocabulary Level Test (VLT) was used to test students' knowledge of words drawn from the 2000, 3000 and 5000 most frequent occurring word families. Two morphological awareness tasks (a morpheme identification task and a morphological structure test) were also used to assess students' morphological awareness. The VLT results reveal that the students performed better at the 2000 level than the two higher frequency levels. There existed a significant relationship between the learners' performance on the vocabulary level test and the morphological awareness tasks. These findings implicate the importance of facilitating the students' morphological awareness in English vocabulary learning for EFL learners in Iran.

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This article was conducted on 150 EFL teachers investigating the conceptions of research. An understanding of this issue is very important to the development of conditions for encouraging teachers to be research engaged in order not to be subservient and take a much more pioneering role in curriculum development. Questionnaire responses were analyzed to determine the teachers' view of research. The findings of this research present that the teachers' conceptions of research are very close to conventional scientific theories and findings. Teachers also reported lack of time, knowledge, and institutional support as influential factors which restrict their abilities to be research engaged. On the whole, this research points to a number of attitudinal, conceptual, and external obstacles to teachers' research engagement. Understanding these is a necessary part of trying to make teachers' research engagement a more possible and doable activity in ELT.

The primary goal of this investigation was to explore the existence of any possible relationship between willingness to communicate (WTC) and emotional intelligence (EI) among 60 EFL learners. The data for the research were gathered using WTC and EI questionnaires which were presented in the participants' native language. The modified version of likert-type WTC questionnaire developed by MacIntyre, Baker, Clement, and Conrod (2001) was employed to assess the participants' degree of WTC. Students' EI was measured via a ninty-item Emotional Intelligence Inventory (EQ-i). The findings revealed that the EI profile of learners has a significant correlation with their willingness to participate in L2 communication and that the link between EI and WTC has been affected by gender. In general, as learners' EI increased, so did their willingness to use the L2 in class. The results of the present study can encourage authorities and EFL teachers to incorporate skills and abilities associated with EI in their curriculum and classroom activities.

In the present study, an attempt has been made to determine the demotives affecting EFL learning of Iranian Islamic seminary students and also to distinguish the motivated and demotivated EFL learners in terms of their EFL learning as the major focus of this study. Fifty Iranian EFL seminary students were investigated using two validated questionnaires. First a modified version of The Attitude/Motivation Test Battery Questionnaire (AMTB) originally developed by Gardner (2004) was used to determine the degree of learners' motivation. Second a modified version of Warrington's (2005) questionnaire was administered to determine the demotivating factors from the students' point of view. Then, the IOPT (Interchange Objective Placement Test) was administered to measure the general proficiency of the subjects under study. The comparison of the IOPT score means of the two groups revealed a significant difference in the results of IOPT of students with higher scores in the AMTB and those with lower scores. That is, the more motivated the students were, the higher their IOPT scores were. Furthermore, factors such as the improper method of English teaching, frequency of classes in a week, problems in understanding listening materials and lack of use of English in students' real life were found to be the essential demotivating factors among Iranian seminary students. Having known the barriers of learning, the teachers and Islamic Propagation Office materials developers can organize their activities so that they would lead to better understanding of the lessons and improvement of teaching programs.

This study investigated the impact of cooperative learning on Iranian high schoolEFL learners' critical thinking and motivation. To this end, 142 EFL students were selected based on their performance on the Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT), and divided into two heterogeneous experimental groups (EG) receiving treatment through STAD model of cooperative learning, and two control groups (CG) without any treatment. To recognize the entry behaviors of the participants, pretests were run. Then, the same educational content was taught to both groups during an educational term. Furthermore, in order to disclose the effect of treatment, a critical thinking post-test similar to the pretest but in rearranged order in options and items, and a motivation post-test were administered at the end of the instruction. The results obtained from the statistical analysis of the scores showed that cooperative learning has a significant effect on the critical thinking and motivation of the participants. The findings of the study are beneficial for EFL learners to improve their small group capabilities.

Abstract-This study basically aimed at identifying the problems of teaching and learning English in the high schools of Isfahan, Iran. The data needed for the study were extracted from the standardized questionnaires given to 200 randomly selected students from the high schools of Isfahan and their English teachers constituting the two groups of participants in this study. The instruments used to gather the data were two closed questionnaires, one for the students and the other one for the teachers. The questions included in the questionnaires covered some major problems on the part of the students, teachers, textbooks, teaching methods, and the tests. To analyze the data and specify the problems, the chi-square test was applied. The test was performed to see if the differences among the proportions of the participants who chose different responses to the same questions were significant. Through the statistical analysis of the results, numerous problems regarding the teachers, the learners, the textbooks and the methods were revealed, such as: teachers do not use teaching aids during teaching, school libraries are not well equipped to be of service for the learners of English, classrooms are poor in terms of facilities and physical conditions, the teachers do not teach in English, the English textbooks are not suitable for the students' level of proficiency, and the Ministry of Education does not honor the hard-working teachers, and many more. To remove the problems to the extent possible, some suggestions were provided.Index Terms-City of Isfahan, high schools, Iran, problems of teaching and learning English