https://are.ui.ac.ir/ Applied Research on English Language en daily 1 Sat, 01 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0330 Sat, 01 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0330 https://are.ui.ac.ir/article_30055.html https://are.ui.ac.ir/article_29569.html Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have emerged as transformative technologies in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education, offering immersive, adaptive environments that enhance learner engagement, retention, and motivation. This systematic review synthesized 48 peer-reviewed studies published between 2019 and 2024 to examine AR/VR applications, implementation strategies, challenges, and learning outcomes within EFL contexts. The researchers established inclusion criteria—English language studies published from 2019 onward in Scopus-indexed language teaching and learning journals, fully accessible online, and thematically aligned with research objectives—and applied exclusion criteria to studies that were non-English, dated before 2019, restricted in access, or published in low-impact or non-verified outlets. Data from the selected articles were imported into MAXQDA 24 for qualitative coding, yielding 64 open codes that were consolidated into 12 axial codes and further synthesized into six overarching themes: learner engagement, integration strategies, implementation practices, learner perceptions, adoption challenges, and language acquisition outcomes. Findings indicate AR/VR interventions significantly bolster engagement and linguistic competence when embedded within pedagogically sound frameworks, although technical constraints, cost considerations, and teacher readiness can hinder adoption. Educators should design scalable, user-friendly experiences and invest in targeted professional development to optimize outcomes. This review advances our understanding of AR/VR’s pedagogical potential in EFL settings by highlighting evidence-based practices and persistent challenges. It offers actionable recommendations for future research. https://are.ui.ac.ir/article_29752.html Teacher-researcher identity is commonly conceptualized as one of the central components of teachers’ professional identity. Such identity development is not only configured toward the past and present but also oriented toward the future. This retrospective duo-narrative inquiry aimed to portray such orientation by exploring the possible selves envisioned by two female Gen-Z EFL teachers upon the completion of their Master’s graduation theses in the Mekong Delta region. Informed by Possible Selves Theory, this study drew upon qualitative data collected from semi-structured interviews with two primary participants and two outsiders for data triangulation. Subsequently, data were analyzed utilizing thematic analysis for each case, followed by a cross-case analysis to identify convergences and divergences in their lived experiences. Findings revealed that participants reconstructed their teacher-researcher identity through three dimensions of possible selves, including the hoped-for, the ought-to-be, and the feared. They envisioned their identity as personally developed, institutionally grounded, yet potentially at risk of being contextually dissolved. The study was pedagogically significant for maintaining teachers’ motivation in the teaching profession through an envisioned sense of possible selves. Pedagogical implications were offered to inform Master’s students, teacher education programs, and tertiary institutions in Vietnamese contexts and beyond. https://are.ui.ac.ir/article_29799.html The integration of generative AI like ChatGPT into EFL pedagogy presents both opportunities for fostering higher-order thinking skills and risks to academic integrity. A research gap exists regarding the simultaneous impact of ChatGPT on the crucial triad of critical thinking, creativity, and self-reflection within the Indonesian EFL context. This study aimed to fill this gap by quantitatively measuring the effect of ChatGPT on these skills and qualitatively exploring students' perceptions of the learning process. The study used a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design. Participants were 100 undergraduate students, randomly assigned to either an experimental group (n=50) or a control group (n=50). Data were collected using three validated instruments: the Critical Thinking Scale, the Creative Thinking Scale, and the Reflective Thinking Scale. In addition, a semi-structured interview guide was used to obtain qualitative data. Quantitative data were analyzed using ANCOVA, and qualitative data using thematic analysis. The findings revealed that the ChatGPT group achieved statistically significant gains in critical, creative, and reflective thinking scores compared to the control group. Qualitative results revealed a duality in student perceptions; they valued the AI for fostering skills through idea generation and safe practice, but expressed concerns about risks such as cognitive offloading and skill atrophy. https://are.ui.ac.ir/article_29783.html Teacher accountability, referring to teachers’ responsibility for instructional effectiveness and student outcomes, is a fundamental concept in education. However, barriers to teacher accountability in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education in Iran have not been previously investigated. This study aimed to identify these barriers by developing and validating a context-specific instrument. A mixed-method approach was adopted, starting with semi-structured interviews with 60 EFL teachers to generate questionnaire items. Following the pilot study, a 27-item questionnaire was administered to 460 EFL teachers in private language institutes. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was run to develop an adjusted model of inhibitors to EFL teachers’ accountability and to assess the psychometric properties of the BTAS. Additionally, descriptive statistics explored teachers' perceptions of the identified barriers. The analysis supported a three-factor model of teacher accountability barriers: Internal obstacles, including motivational factors; external inhibitors, such as systemic constraints and assessment limitations; and environmental inhibitors related to cultural, sociocultural, and political constraints. The findings highlight the complex and interrelated motivational, institutional, and contextual challenges that hinder teacher accountability, and they present practical implications for policymakers and educational authorities to foster supportive environments that enhance teaching quality and learner achievement. https://are.ui.ac.ir/article_29962.html Teaching has recently received extensive attention as an emotionally charged profession, necessitating a deeper exploration of the psychological mechanisms underlying teachers’ practices. However, despite the evidence supporting the role of teachers’ emotion regulation (ER) in their autonomous control over both their practices and their ecological environment, the interplay between EFL teachers’ ER, agency, and autonomy is not yet fully clear. Grounded in positive psychology and ecological theories of agency, the present study tried to contribute to our understanding of this relationship. Accordingly, 232 EFL teachers in Iranian schools, targeted via snowball sampling, responded to an online survey, containing Emotion Regulation, Agency Related to Planning Teaching and Learning Activities, and Teaching Autonomy questionnaires. The results of Multiple Linear Regression and SEM confirmed a positive relationship between ER and agency (r = .724) as well as ER and autonomy (r = .713), while predicting 58% and 48% of changes in them, respectively, which demonstrates strong predictive power. The results support an integrated theoretical model, linking ER to teachers’ agentic and autonomous behaviors, and indicating that emotionally-regulated teachers are more likely to exercise control over their professional practices and environment. These findings offer implications for educational administrators and psychologists, as well as ELT practitioners who wish to improve educational practices by empowering teachers to foster sustained well-being and deal with burnout. Finally, the possibility of an updated construct of Agentic Autonomy is proposed to bridge ER with teachers’ ecological agency. https://are.ui.ac.ir/article_29972.html Native speakers of English use phrasal verbs (PhVs) profusely in daily life. Pedagogically, however, these elements pose formidable challenges for second/foreign language (L2) learners across the board. The issue is exacerbated by the arbitrariness of approaches prescribed by instructional materials. The current study aimed at comparing the pedagogical impacts of explicit versus implicit approaches to teaching PhVs, drawing on the PPP (Present, Practice, Production) model as an explicit framework and the TBI (task-based instruction) as an implicit one. In so doing, 62 university undergraduate students majoring in engineering courses from three distinct classes at Sharif University of Technology were recruited. Each class was randomly assigned to a condition: explicit (PPP), implicit (TBI), and control. The treatments were carried out over five 50-minute sessions for the experimental conditions. To acquire further objectivity on the impact of instructional conditions, more data were culled using the online methods of eye-tracking and reaction time. In the eye-tracking experiment, seven eye-movement metrics were measured by a desk-mounted eye-tracker. Following that, the learners' reaction time (RT) behavior was gauged in terms of three metrics. The offline findings – administered at three intervals – revealed that explicit and implicit groups outperformed the control group on the immediate and the first delayed posttests. However, the explicit framework proved longer lasting. Regarding the online measures, no difference was discerned between the two experimental conditions. The aggregate evidence suggests that a hybrid perspective drawing on a mix of explicit and implicit tasks can be a propitious approach to PhVs’ pedagogy. https://are.ui.ac.ir/article_29985.html Language teachers are professionally expected to serve as educational innovators, change agents, and particularly teacher-researchers. Teacher-researcher identity and its negotiation have received much attention from international scholars. In Vietnam, substantial research has been conducted to examine this concept and its influential factors among tertiary lecturers. Nevertheless, a research gap remains in understanding factors affecting teacher-researcher identity negotiation from other teacher demographics, particularly from an insider’s perspective. Therefore, this autobiographical introspective narrative inquiry addressed this gap by shedding light on the contextual influences on my teacher-researcher identity negotiated during the process of completing a Master’s graduation thesis. Guided by Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory of Human Development as the theoretical framework, the study gathered data from my autobiographical writings and semi-structured interviews with two purposefully-selected outsiders. The collected data were deductively analyzed through thematic analysis. Results revealed that contextual influences (personal, academic, institutional, and socio-cultural contributors) on my teacher-researcher identity negotiation were nested into an ecological system of four concentrated layers, including the micro-, meso-, exo-, and macro-systems, respectively. These findings further showed how the socio-academic condition of the Mekong Delta region affectionately nurtured my growing maturity as a qualitative teacher-researcher. Beyond its scholarly contribution, this study is also a testament to how one’s roots can illuminate the path toward becoming a teacher-researcher, offering inspiration for others walking a similar journey. https://are.ui.ac.ir/article_29986.html While gamification has been extensively examined as an innovative teaching strategy, its potential to strengthen reading comprehension, critical thinking, and self-directed learning (SDL) in Islamic higher education has not been fully explored. Much of the existing research focuses primarily on its motivational impact, with less attention given to how gamified learning management system (LMS) environments can simultaneously support cognitive and metacognitive development. To address this gap, the present study evaluated the effectiveness of an LMS-based gamified reading comprehension course on undergraduate students’ learning outcomes at STAI Diponegoro Tulungagung, Indonesia. A quasi-experimental design was applied, involving 70 students who were randomly assigned to an experimental group (n = 35) and a control group (n = 35). Data were collected through pretest and posttest on reading comprehension and critical thinking, a structured SDL questionnaire based on Garrison’s (1997) framework (self-management, self-motivation, and self-monitoring), and follow-up interviews with six purposively selected students from the experimental group. Results indicated that students exposed to the gamified LMS course showed significantly higher gains in comprehension, critical thinking, and SDL than those in the control group. Qualitative findings further suggested that gamification fostered continuous engagement and sustained motivation, though certain challenges, including technological constraints and external distractions. Overall, the study underscores the promise of integrating gamification into LMS-based reading courses to support cognitive, affective, and metacognitive advancement in Islamic higher education. https://are.ui.ac.ir/article_30023.html The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education has transformed writing instruction. Still, little is known about how AI-supported collaboration shapes first-year students’ emotional experiences during argumentative essay writing. Emotions influence students’ engagement, idea negotiation, and overall writing performance, particularly in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. This study investigates EFL freshmen’s emotions and emotion regulation strategies in AI-supported collaborative argumentative essay writing across the stages of planning, execution, and evaluation. Using a multiple case study design, seven EFL freshmen from a private Indonesian university participated. Data were gathered through reflective journals and in-depth interviews, and were analyzed thematically. The findings show that students experienced both positive and negative emotions throughout the writing process, with negative emotions, such as anxiety, confusion, overwhelm, and stress, being more dominant. These emotions were linked to cognitive demands, including topic selection, evidence integration, and revision, as well as social factors such as unequal contribution and fear of negative judgment. Although AI tools helped with linguistic accuracy and text organization, they did not fully address deeper emotional and motivational challenges. Students used various regulation strategies, including attention deployment (seeking online sources), cognitive change (breaking tasks into smaller ones, positive self-talk, task prioritization), and response modulation (taking breaks, consulting AI tools). The study highlights the need for pedagogical frameworks that combine emotional support with cognitive skill development to promote equitable and reflective collaboration in AI-supported EFL writing. https://are.ui.ac.ir/article_30025.html The hospitality industry in Bangladesh is expanding rapidly, with three-star and four-star hotels in Dhaka increasingly serving international guests. In this regard, English language proficiency has become a crucial skill for hotel employees to ensure effective service delivery and guest satisfaction. However, English language training is still largely neglected, leaving employees with communication barriers that hinder their professional performance, as well as the quality of their overall service. This study adopts a case study approach, focusing specifically on four well-established hotels in Dhaka city to investigate the English language needs of their employees. Using a mixed-method design, data were collected from 26 participants through semi-structured interviews and online survey questionnaires, representing key operational divisions such as front desk, room service, and customer relations. Findings reveal that speaking and listening skills are the most important yet challenging skills for employees because these are directly tied to guest interaction. Employees also showed a considerable interest in structured English courses in workplace contexts, with a special focus on vocabulary in the area of hospitality and communicative tasks. The study contributes to the field by providing empirically grounded recommendations for an industry-oriented ESP syllabus with practical implications for hotel authorities, curriculum designers, and policy makers for strengthening workforce competence. These findings also contribute to the field by moving beyond general assumptions to provide actionable recommendations for improving professional competencies and guest satisfaction within this particular industry context. https://are.ui.ac.ir/article_30069.html Self-regulated learning theories emphasize individual autonomy, yet their applicability in collectivist educational contexts where teacher authority prevails remains theoretically contested. This study uniquely applies Bayesian structural equation modeling to examine culturally-mediated self-regulated learning in Vietnamese English as a Foreign Language contexts. Using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, stratified purposive sampling across institutional types recruited 329 participants from three Vietnamese universities during designated class periods. Bayesian structural equation modeling analyzed quantitative data, followed by reflexive thematic analysis of 24 semi-structured interviews. Teacher support emerged as the strongest predictor of self-regulated learning (β = 0.51), with technology acceptance demonstrating moderate effects (β = 0.34). A significant interaction effect (β = 0.19) revealed synergistic relationships, with students exhibiting 1.7 times greater self-regulatory behaviors when both variables operated at high levels. The combined model explained 45% of the variance. Qualitative findings revealed that Vietnamese students conceptualize learning autonomy as inherently social, requiring instructor scaffolding rather than independence from external guidance. Students distinguished between "guided technology use" that enhanced learning and "assigned technology use" that produced compliance without benefits. These findings challenge individualistic assumptions underlying self-regulated learning models by demonstrating that effective autonomy development operates through culturally-mediated mechanisms. The study contributes methodologically by demonstrating Bayesian approaches' analytical advantages while revealing fundamental limitations in universal learning theories when applied across diverse cultural contexts. https://are.ui.ac.ir/article_30176.html This paper examines the interaction of intercultural communication skills (ICCS), digital informal learning (IDLE), L2 motivation, enjoyment, and willingness to communicate (WTC) of netizens in English as a second/ foreign language (L2) via social media. The main purpose is to comprehend the roles of these factors shaping the learners’ L2 WTC in virtual space. Questionnaires were administered to five hundred and four Vietnamese EFL university students. Following data cleaning, data were analyzed through structural equation modeling on 416 participants. The results show that ICCS and IDLE, as independent variables, had positive effects on WTC in English L2 on social media, with enjoyment and motivation as meditators. In particular, learners who had greater ICCS felt more motivated and liked communicating in English resulting in higher WTC. Also, IDLE activities encouraged enjoyment and motivation which, in turn, enhanced L2 WTC. The findings suggest the incorporation of technology and social media into the curriculum of L2 English learning to enhance learners’ communicative practices in the real-world discourse. https://are.ui.ac.ir/article_30215.html Teacher resilience, as a context-specific variable, has become a prominent research priority in teacher education, especially in challenging educational settings. This study aimed to construct and validate a questionnaire to measure teacher resilience among Iranian EFL teachers. In an exploratory sequential design, two groups of English language teachers were selected as the samples of the study: The first sample, comprising 27 English teachers, participated in semi-structured interviews, and the second sample, consisting of 308 English teachers, completed a questionnaire. Based on the thematic analysis of the interview data, an initial draft of the questionnaire, containing 41 items, was administered to the second sample. An Exploratory Factor Analysis, using Principal Components Analysis with Varimax Rotation, supported a four-factor model—comprising Contextual, Personal, Professional, and Sociocultural factors—which explained 72.26% of the total variance. All 41 items loaded cleanly (>.54) on their intended factors. The results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis, using SmartPLS, confirmed the four-factor measurement model, demonstrating strong composite reliability (CR > 0.70), convergent validity (AVE > 0.50), and discriminant validity (HTMT ratios < 0.58), thus establishing robust psychometric properties for the instrument. The validated questionnaire provides Iranian EFL administrators with a reliable, context-specific tool to measure resilience levels and design targeted support programs.