The Journal of Asia TEFL

THE JOURNAL OF ASIA TEFL Vol. 13, No. 2, Summer 2016, 90-101 http://dx.doi.org/10.18823/asiatefl.2016.13.2.2.90 The Journal of Asia TEFL http://journal.asiatefl.org/ e-issn 2466-1511 2004 AsiaTEFL.org. All rights reserved. Enhancing Critical Language Teacher Development Through Creating Reflective Opportunities Mehrshad Ahmadian Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran Parviz Maftoon Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran Following the postmethod pedagogy, the spotlight has turned to language teachers, and how their beliefs, experiences, and knowledge have been valued, because it is the teacher who knows both her learners and her classroom contexts best, and can also fulfill the postmethod promises. However, how can the field of language teaching cultivate language teachers who can have their own contextualized praxis? As such, the present study aims at taking deeper steps into the critical teacher education territory. The present researchers firmly believe that critical language teacher education is increasingly important to the success of individual language teachers. Therefore, as a possible contribution to the field of TESOL, this study may provide some insights into the preparation of much-needed critical language teachers by providing them with various types of opportunities informed by a Freirean critical pedagogy perspective. Keywords: Freirean critical pedagogy, postmethod pedagogy, praxis, teacher development, teacher education Introduction Postmethod pedagogy, introduced and expounded by Kumaravadivelu (1994, 2001, 2003a, 2003b, 2006a, 2006b) in a series of papers and books, "recognizes teachers prior knowledge as well as their potential to know not only how to teach but also how to act autonomously within the academic and administrative constraints imposed by institutions, curricula and textbooks" (Kumaravadivelu, 2006a, p. 178). Postmethod pedagogy, in fact, highlights the roles played by classroom practitioners and appreciates the significance of their knowledge, beliefs, and experiences. It goes on to emphasize that language teachers are able to put flesh 90

on the bare bones of classroom arenas. Therefore, postmethod teachers are encouraged to develop and create their own methods of teaching a certain class. In this sense, post-method teachers are autonomous professionals, analysts, strategic researchers, decision-makers, and, above all, critical practitioners. In other words, such teachers are reflective as they observe their own teaching practices, evaluate the results, identify problems, find solutions, and try new techniques (Can, 2012). Based on this premise, there is a movement in which teachers feel compelled to dissociate themselves from a top-down process and associate themselves with a bottom-up process as teachers theorize what they practice or practice what they theorize (Kumaravadivelu, 2003a, p. 37). In fact, this principle, called praxis, is one central tenet in Freire s (1970, 1998) works, where theory and practice come together to create action that leads to social and political change. However, how can today's TESOL nurture such much-wanted language teachers who are able to both theorize and practice their own contextual praxis? To put it simply, what type of teacher education program(s) may facilitate language teacher development and help them with their roles? What to Develop? Theories of learning, as Atay (2004) holds, are informed by two opposing knowledge paradigms: the positivist ("knowledge-centered") and the phenomenological ("person-centered") paradigms. These theories lead to differences in the act of teaching and the make-up of the teachers' knowledge. Furthermore, as Richards (1998) points out, the research focus on teacher education has undergone a shift. At first, teacher education was searching for better ways to train teachers. More recently, it has been trying to describe and understand the process of how teachers learn to teach through their self-awareness or reflection. This shift, in fact, recognizes the two knowledge-centered and person-centered paradigms mentioned above by Atay (2004). Such a shift reflects the recognition that teaching involves both action and the thought underlying it (Shulman, as cited in Ohata, 2007). Also, this shift, which involves the higher-level cognitive processes less amenable to direct instruction or training, are preferred to specific ways of behavioral techniques or skills (Richards & Nunan, 1990, p. xii). Teacher education programs inspired by a positivist paradigm are characterized by objectives that are motivated by deficit (Atay, 2004). Such programs believe that the characteristics of effective teaching are known and can be described in discrete terms, often as skills or competencies (Richards, 1989) which can be transmitted to prospective language teachers. In other words, training-oriented language teacher education programs do not view teaching as mainly individual or intuitive but as something reducible to general rules and principles that can be derived from pre-existing knowledge sources. Often these characteristics are identified with a specific method of teaching. This approach, according to Richards, is prescriptive in nature. As such, the language teacher training program is essentially theory-driven and top-down. As Richards further contends, the content of the language teacher training program, i.e., goals, topics, and subject matter that the program addresses, is generally pre-determined by the teacher educator. In this context, the role of the language teacher is reduced to that of a technician who would be concerned primarily with the successful accomplishment of goals and objectives decided by others (Zeichner & Liston, 1987). In other words, the effective teacher is viewed as a skilled performer of a number of prescribed tasks. On the other hand, teacher education programs inspired by the phenomenological paradigm are "developmentally" oriented. Johnston (2003, p. 95) believes that the term "teacher development" is used in rather different ways in the North American and European contexts. In North America, teacher development is usually seen as something done by teacher educators and teacher trainers for practicing teachers. That is to say, it usually takes the form of in-service workshops and/or courses. The North American context, in fact, 91

views teacher development as something that is "usually conducted by a teacher educator" and "presented to teachers" (Mann, 2005). Therefore, this view is inclined more towards the training form of teacher education. In contrast, the European context regards teacher development as a process that is guided and undertaken by teachers themselves. It is this understanding of teacher development that the present researchers use in this study. Teachers are handed the reins in the European view of teacher development. In this understanding, teacher development is a process that teachers themselves initiate and pursue; other people, such as colleagues, can help and guide teachers, but others cannot tell teachers what they need or what they should do. It is a very deeply-held value that teachers must always be seen to be in charge of their own development (Johnston, 2003). The core feature of this European view is that it places self-development at the centre of its definition of language teacher development (Mann, 2005). All in all, the essential difference between teacher training and development is whether the element of personal growth is involved in the teacher learning processes, since teacher development takes place when teachers, as individuals or a group, consciously take advantage of such resources to forward their own professional learning (Ur, 1996, p. 318). Why Develop? Language teacher training with its due activities, principles, and techniques, as Richards and Rodgers (2001) contend, is probably an essential starting point for novice language teachers. This is because, as the present authors agree, not only does training provide beginner language teachers the much-needed confidence they will require to face learners, but it also provides them with techniques and strategies to present lessons. However, the current authors believe that language teacher training is far from fulfilling 21 st century postmethod promises, particularly for higher levels of language teaching/learning, because it falls short of granting language teachers significant autonomy in the way they need to run today's upper-intermediate through advanced level language classrooms. As their roles are changing rapidly from a traditional perspective to a different Weltanschauung, language teachers can no longer follow new methodologies. Instead, they need to be the source of the theoretical bases of their own implementation techniques and become researchers within the territories of their own classrooms, so that they can live up to the fresh expectations of the classroom dynamics. Thus, teachers do need to become both the practitioners and theorists of today s language teaching profession. The gap between being a practitioner and being a theorist cannot be simply bridged by the insights gained by teacher training programs. This is because language teacher training programs, similar to language teaching methods, are both limited and limiting and because they view the whole process of language teacher education as finite. Both language teacher training programs and language teaching methods are based on idealistic concepts which are prepared for idealistic contexts (Kumaravadivelu, 2006a). In other words, they are both of the view that they can predict all the situational variables globally in advance in a top-down fashion. This may hold true for novice teachers who embark on language teaching. However, given the countless language learning and teaching needs, necessities, wants, lacks, teacher and teaching factors, learner factors, and institutional factors, neither any language teaching methods nor any language teacher training programs can envision all the variables beforehand to furnish contextualized proposals. To make situation-specific decisions, as Kumaravadivelu (2003a) further explains, language teachers need to be given a free rein "to tackle the challenges they confront every day of their professional lives" (p. 28) in a more bottom-up fashion. As such, language teacher training programs cannot satisfy the modern needs of the global village, which dictate there should be no terminal point in teacher education programs because language teachers need to learn how to tackle innumerable issues as they unfold every day. Accordingly, as 92

Hawkins and Norton (2009) rightly argue, if we are to cultivate teachers who can act autonomously within the academic and administrative constraints, we need to challenge the existing narrow view of teacher training and move towards a limitless quest for "critical language teacher education" (p. 32) in the hope that the required preparations for the multifarious particulars of the classroom arenas are made. The concept of critical, which gained prominence in the work of Paolo Freire (1970, 1998), attaches great significance to postmethod language teachers. Because language, culture, and identity are interrelated, language teachers, who assume the role of transformative intellectuals (Giroux, as cited in Kumaravadivelu, 2003a) in the third millennium, are in a key position to address educational inequality (Hawkins & Norton, 2009). There are, as Hawkins and Norton contend, two reasons behind this. Firstly, language teachers generally serve learners, many of whom may be marginalized members of the larger community. Secondly, the subject matter they teach, i.e., language, can itself serve to both empower and marginalize. These two happen in either unfamiliar immigrant societies, where the first contact of newcomer immigrants or refugees is with language teachers who play the role of language and culture informants and/or mediators, or in multilingual societies, where one language is regarded as the dominant or the mainstream language, and the remaining others are regarded as minor ones. In either of these two immigrant or multilingual contexts, language teachers and the language they use are conducive to constructing language learners' belief systems, values, and practices. As a result, both language teachers and the language they use have a strong say in the whole process of identity construction. How to Develop: Reflective Action What are the most effective instructional methods and classroom organizational structures for all students? In the early part of the twentieth century, Dewey (as cited in Grant & Zeichner, 1989) made an important distinction between human action that is reflective and that which is routine. Dewey contends that reflective action is "the behavior which involves active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or practice in light of the grounds that support it and the further consequences to which it leads" (p. 104). Routine action, on the other hand, is motivated by impulse, tradition, or authority (Hatton & Smith, 1995). Reflective action, to rephrase Dewey, involves a way of meeting and responding to problems, i.e., the implementation of solutions once problems had been thought through. Concerning education, reflective teachers actively reflect upon their teaching and upon the educational, social, and political contexts in which their teaching is contextualized (Grant & Zeichner, 1989).Much of what Dewey (as cited in Grant & Zeichner, 1989) asserted about reflective action still remains quite relevant for today's teachers. But how can teachers embark on becoming reflective? Dewey (as cited in Farrell, 1998) believes that growth comes from a "reconstruction of experience" (p. 8); therefore, by reflecting on our own experiences, we can reconstruct our own educational perspectives. To reconstruct experience, teachers need to be continually aware of and engaged in challenging assumptions, as well as to identify areas of practice which require careful consideration (Pollard, 2008). In other words, reflective practice is a tool that helps teachers to better understand the motivations, assumptions, and knowledge bases that underpin their practices. More importantly, as Pollard holds, reflective practice requires that teachers themselves remain lifelong learners, combining critical reading, critical thinking, and critical practice to ensure that they provide the best learning experiences possible for their learners. 93

Freirean Critical Pedagogy and Language Teacher Development Present researchers hold that Freire s (1998) philosophical orientation offers great theoretical value to debates about the role and preparation of teachers and teacher development programs. It does not, however, provide a procedural guideline for implementing critical pedagogy into a program of teacher education. Sharing this same position, Bercaw and Stooksberry (2004) believe there are three tenets inherent in the critical pedagogy perspective which are worth pursuing in the foundations of any teacher education programs: (1) reflection upon the individual s culture or lived experience; (2) development of voice through a critical look at one s world and society, which takes place in dialogue with others; and (3) transforming the society toward equality for all citizens through active participation in democratic imperatives. (p. 2) A careful look at these three tenets reveals that the focus of a critical pedagogy in teacher education, which is to prepare citizens for participation in a democratic society, is quite in line with the promises of the European view of teacher development. To reiterate, teacher development, in the sense favored by the current researchers, is a process of continual, intellectual, experiential, and attitudinal growth accompanied by institutionalizing an awareness of a need to change. The culmination of this sense of teacher development is personal growth. This is exactly what critical pedagogy strives for. Enlightened by both the development-as-personal-growth view and the critical pedagogy perspective, language teachers can act as transformative intellectuals. They have the ability to transform the very structure of the dominant culture through empowering those whose voices are silenced or marginalized by the societal norms of the dominant culture. To do that, teachers, however, must first understand what constitutes that culture and the inequality or oppression therein. Thus, teachers need to make schools "public spheres" (Giroux & McLaren, as cited in Bercaw & Stooksberry, 2004) by taking a critical stance and making existing norms problematic; i.e., they need to firstly pose problems and secondly try to solve them: to "problematize" (Freire, 1998, p. 13). The problematization process gives prominence to co-operative knowledge construction and democratic dialogue (Benade, 2009). In other words, teachers should not become the mere passive recipients of professional knowledge (Zeichner, 1983), nor are they technicians who simply transmit knowledge within a banking education system. Knowledge is no longer a transmittable consumer item, and the student is not a simple "client" anymore. Finally, Freire (1970) regards teachers as learners and learners as teachers in the dialogical search for knowledge and development of critical thinking. This search requires mutual respect for the freedom of the student and the authority of the teacher. The teacher s role has an ethical part, committed to aiding students in their journey from what Freire calls "ingenuous curiosity" to "epistemological curiosity" (p. 19), which is rigorous, precise, and critical. Freire argues vigorously that not only teachers but also teacher education should be prepared to help students to develop their curiosity from a state of naivety to a state of critical and functioning awareness. As such, both the critical examination of self and society, as well as the critical action upon the existing norms, need to be values worth persevering in the foundations of any teacher education program which strives for critical teacher development. 94

Providing Opportunities for ESL/EFL Teachers to Critically Reflect The narrow view of the dominant teacher training paradigm, though suitable both for novice teachers and beginning level EFL/ESL learning/teaching, does not pave the way for fulfilling the promises of the European view of teacher development, i.e., self-development and self-growth. It denies language teachers sufficient opportunities to develop the professional autonomy and reflectivity much needed in today's postmethod era. As a solution, the current study set out to delineate a tentative set of opportunities for critical language teacher education through juxtaposing language teacher development ideals with the Freirean critical pedagogy perspective. As a prerequisite to afford developmental opportunities, the current researchers needed to translate the lofty ideals of Freirean critical pedagogy into a practicable plan. As such, the authors made use of all ten teaching principles in practicing critical pedagogy derived and identified by Shor (1993). Shor believes that in any practice informed by Freirean critical pedagogy, practitioners, language teachers in the current study, need to be asked to participate (participatory principle) in their own learning processes from the very beginning (activist principle). The learning process favored in critical pedagogy needs to be interactive and cooperative (both democratic principle and dialogic principle) in a friendly and tension-free atmosphere (affective principle). As such, language teachers will reflect critically (critical principle) on their own knowledge and language, the subject matter, and the quality of their learning process, as well as the relation of knowledge to society (both situated principle and multilingual principle). Language teachers, therefore, are no longer passive recipients of knowledge (desocialized principle) and actively make inquiries into problems posed about daily experience, society, and academic materials (research-oriented principle). Informed by Shor's (1993) teaching principles, the present researchers have offered three sets of opportunities. Each set and various relevant activities are as follows: Set One: Forming Collaborative Professional and Critical Discussion Circles The first group of opportunities includes a group of teachers who should convene for regular meetings outside the walls of their classrooms. The members need to create discussion circles in which they can reflect on and talk about the details of both the theoretical and practical issues through a number of activities. The purpose of such activities is to create opportunities for circle members to share their ideas and experiences with one another. It is hoped that such exchanges of ideas ultimately pave the way for the circle members' reflectivity and criticality, as Freire (1998) argues: To live in openness toward others and to have an open-ended curiosity toward life and its challenges is essential to educational practice. To live this openness toward others respectfully and critically reflect on this openness ought to be an essential part of the adventure of teaching. (pp. 100-101) Another benefit of discussion circles, in addition to openness to dialog, is to help circle members practically engage in improving two of the essential qualities of their own critical practice, i.e., how to listen to and respect what others know. This is because, as Freire contends, in such situations, speaking "to" (p. 83), which is an authoritarian form of the world, is replaced by speaking "with" (p. 83), which is part and parcel of any democratic vision of the world. Set one employs two types of discussion circles: (1) Practical issues circle, in which language teachers need to exchange their experiences of their teaching practices to seek further advice/feedback. The members should try to analyze and evaluate what they and 95

other circle members do in their classrooms. The analysis and evaluation should be open-ended, and no definitive result is guaranteed. They will also discuss the strengths and weaknesses as language teachers, and inconsistencies and contradictions that occur in their classrooms. In addition, circle members will discuss their philosophy of teaching and the ways it affect their everyday practice. Circle members may also discuss how they take their students' needs, learning styles, and preferences into account in their classrooms. Furthermore, each circle member should pose such a socio-cultural or a socio-political problem as poverty, social justice, vandalism, corruption, or divorce, and see how the other circle members try to address the issues in their own classrooms. The purpose of this activity is to involve circle members in problem-posing and problem-solving activities, which are necessary for both their development and criticality. (2) Theoretical and language-related issues circle, in which circle members need to read previouslyselected papers and book chapters and discuss their contents with the other circle members in their regular meetings. This type of activity strives to provide a basis for the theoretical and language-related aspect of teacher development, reflective practice, and criticality of practicing language teachers through language teachers' familiarity with theories learned from research and the existing body of literature. This is because, as Freire (1998) further holds, the ideological nature of education entails "decision-making that is aware and conscientious" (p. 79) since in truth, critical awareness, or, to use Freirean terminology, conscientization "is one of the roads we have to follow if we are to deepen our awareness of our world, of facts, of events, of the demands of human consciousness to develop our capacity for epistemological curiosity" (p. 35) whose understanding "brings us to a critique and a refusal of the banking system of education" (p. 12). Set Two: Enhancing Professional and Reflective Practice Through Opening Classroom Doors to Non-Evaluative Peers As Moran, Deans, Reda, Ryan, Totaro, Dulac, Southwood, Stavchansky, Teig, and Wood, (1996) argue, seeing a teacher work in context, i.e., in a particular classroom, with a particular curriculum, and with particular students, is actually a powerful learning experience. Likewise, being visited and seeing oneself through the eyes of a visitor is also a powerful learning experience. In fact, when we visit each other's classes to observe, rather than to evaluate, and see each other in action, not only do we learn directly as apprentices, but we ourselves are also moved to reflect upon our own teaching practices. Furthermore, when we are visited, we are moved to reflect as well. This is because, as Proefriedt (as cited in Moran et al., 1996) believes, the type of knowledge that teachers find most beneficial and effective emanates from the informal and friendly atmosphere that is transmitted within a context in which teachers can share their difficulties and provide mutual support. As such, peer non-evaluative visits offer an invaluable route to the development of our practitioners. Set two enjoys two kinds of classroom visits: (1) Invited peer visit followed by post-visit conferences: Language teachers invite their volunteer peers to observe their classes. These visits aim at helping practicing language teachers to reflect on other teachers teaching practices and compare them with their own practices. The visiting peer can learn a great deal when she sees and reflects upon another teacher's making online decisions for moment-to-moment requirements of a certain teaching context. The whole process strives to raise the awareness of the visiting peer, and indirectly, that of the visited teacher, through detailed analysis of that teaching act in post-visit conferences. The visiting peers can practically see how the body of knowledge that the visited teacher has accumulated during the training period manifests itself in practice: the union of action and thought, i.e., praxis. 96

(2) Observation of teacher's video-taped classroom activities followed by open-ended discussions: This activity is similar to the previous one with the exception that one circle member chooses one of her language classes to be video-taped and then discuss her moves by the circle members in detail. Like the previous activity, all members are involved in a democratic, dialogic, critical, and affective atmosphere, unraveling all activities of that certain teacher. It must be borne in mind that circle members do not have any previously defined agenda when they have their discussions and wait to see what issues emerge spontaneously. Once more, the whole process does its best to arouse the circle members' awareness, or epistemological curiosity in Freirean (1970) terminology, needed for the conscious-raising process. Set Three: Enhancing Professional and Reflective Practice Through Teachers' Diaries "A teacher's diary is in fact a form of teaching journal which is an ongoing written account of observations, reflections, and other thoughts about teaching which serves as a source of discussion, reflection, or evaluation" (Richards & Farrell, 2005, p. 68). Furthermore, as Richards and Farrell contend, it may be used as a record of incidents, problems, and insights that have occurred during lessons; it may also be an account of a class that the teacher would like to review later, or it may be a source of information to be shared with others. Language teachers' diaries can provide practitioners with an opportunity to articulate their concerns or problems encountered during their teaching practices. As such, diaries can allow teachers to see their teaching from a more detached or objective viewpoint which, in turn, guides their teaching practices (Bailey; Bailey, Curtis, & Nunan, both as cited in Ohata, 2007). Keeping a personal, unanalyzed teaching report can be very informative; however, when they are analyzed critically by a circle of language teachers to look for various patterns, they can serve their original purpose of professional and critical development over due time. Set three employs two procedures for language teachers' diaries: (1) Language teachers' diaries of peers' practices, in which each circle member keeps a non-evaluative written record of best classroom events and observations she had carried out. In fact, without such a record, the teacher often has no substantial recollection of what has happened during a lesson and cannot use the experience of successful, and sometimes unsuccessful, teaching as a source for further learning (Richards & Farrell, 2005). It is believed that the very process of writing about others' best teaching practices and then sharing them with other circle members to critically analyze events often leads to new insights about those events and ones' own teaching practices as well. (2) Language teacher's diaries of self-appraisal, in which the language teacher writes on regular occasions how observations of other classes and participating in practical and theoretical discussion circles have changed their attitudes and teaching practicum in the direction of critical and reflective practices. It is strongly believed that this self-appraisal activity helps the much-needed conscious-raising process seriously sought by Freirean critical pedagogy. The proposed sets of opportunities for critical language teacher education can be schematically represented in Figure 1 as follows: 97

Figure 1. The proposed sets of opportunities for critical language teacher education. The proposed sets of opportunities emanate from a wealth of quantitative and qualitative data, to be published later in separate studies. Each group of opportunities is considered as a teacher development group that has provided its members with enriching opportunities to initiate, direct, and finally significantly develop into reflective practitioners. The analyses of the data, in fact, led the present researchers to unify and put forward their ideas of sets of opportunities or paths as a tentative model of critical language teacher education. All three components or sets of opportunities and their respective sub-components, along with due activities, do their best to actualize the ten teaching principles in practicing critical pedagogy mentioned by Shor (1993). The components of the proposed paths are not to be regarded as separate entities. All of them are interrelated and impact upon one another. Together, they create a whole. As such, for the proposed paths to bear fruit in a certain teacher education context, all components need to be given due weight, or the paths cease to exist. The proposed model for language teacher education will hopefully foster professional and critical development and improve the classroom practice of language teachers in English language teaching (ELT) contexts. Conclusion Two of the major changes that the second language teaching profession has undergone during the last thirty years or so are that, on the one hand, postmodernist philosophy has influenced TESOL in the form of postmethodism from the 1990s, when the postmethod condition was first officially identified by Kumaravadivelu (1994), while on the other hand, Freirean critical pedagogy was introduced to the realm of ELT (Canagarajah, 2005). These two changes have completely changed today s conceptualization of ESL/EFL teachers. Although some scholars, such as Wallace (as cited in Ohata, 2007) and Deyrich and Stunnel (2014), have done their best to delineate various models of teacher education and the "what" and "how" of teacher education programs, insubstantial effort has been made to translate the ideals of the postmethod pedagogy and the promises of critical pedagogy to a practical model incorporating all elements into a workable package. 98

As a result, the present researchers have delved into the realm of language teacher education through constructing tentative critical language teacher education paths in the hope that the paths will contribute to not only the field of TESOL, but also the Iranian ELT teacher education programs. This is because the authors are convinced that critical language teacher development has been gaining incremental significance for the success of individual language teachers and nations as well. To conclude, the authors are aware of one likely drawback of language teacher development which might also creep into the implementation of the current proposal. Self-growth and self-development do not happen overnight, neither do they happen with time. They happen with awareness, an awareness of a need to change. This means that self-growth requires much effort and determination on the part of not only both language teacher educators and language teachers, but also the Iranian education department. Therefore, if they want the present tentative paths to bear fruit in a certain context, both language teacher educators and language teachers in particular, and the Iranian education department in general, need to exercise ample patience and fortitude to promote the required epistemological curiosity needed for much-cherished professionalism and criticality. The Authors Mehrshad Ahmadian is currently doing his Ph. D. studies in TEFL at Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran. He is also a faculty member at Islamic Azad University, Qaemshahr Branch, Iran. His main research interests are teaching English as a foreign language, language teacher education, and syllabus design. English Department College of Foreign Languages and Literature Science and Research Branch Islamic Azad University Tehran, Iran Postal Code: 14746 94873 Tel: +98 21 444 06048 Email: mehrshadahmadian@gmail.com Parviz Maftoon (corresponding author) is an associate professor for teaching English at Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran. He received his Ph.D. degree from New York University in TESOL. His primary research interests concern second language acquisition, SL/FL language teaching methodologies, and language curriculum development. He has published nationally and internationally and written and edited a number of English books. He is currently on the editorial board of several language journals in Iran. English Department College of Foreign Languages and Literature Science and Research Branch Islamic Azad University Tehran, Iran Postal Code: 14746 94873 Tel: +98 21 444 06048 Email: pmaftoon@srbiau.ac.ir 99

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