Hossein Davari

Critical pedagogy (CP) as one of the most radical changes in English language teaching (ELT) has turned into a common theme of research and discussion in recent years. Despite its practical implications, however, most of the research on this issue has been limited to its theoretical and conceptual dimensions. Conceiving the importance of this approach as well as considering the practical and applied dimensions of this newly emergent shift in ELT, this study is an attempt to study the Iranian ELT community's attitudes to some practical implications of CP in ELT. To acquire the Iranian ELT community's attitudes, a mixed-method approach was conducted. In the first phase, an interview survey was conducted with 8 applied linguists. Enjoying the content analysis of the data as well as the available literature on the topic, especially Akbari's (2008b) suggestions, a 10 item Likert-scale was prepared. To check the Iranian ELT community in the second phase, a questionnaire survey was conducted on 86 participants. Findings of this phase, as the main source of study, reveals that critical pedagogy is going to find a position in Iranian ELT community.

The crucial role of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) textbooks, especially in situations where English is taught as a foreign language (EFL), and also their role as almost the only source of English language seem undeniable. In Dudley-Evans and St. John's (1998) words, considering such situations where learners need to extract their information from English-medium subject textbooks, a reading-only course could be suitable, but such textbooks should be developed in a way to maximize learners' exposure to language, to meet their needs, to increase their motivations and to facilitate their learning and recall of information. Therefore, in ESP materials development, graphic organizers, defined as visual displays in which the information is converted into a diagrammatic representation of important key words and concepts associated with the main study topic, could be used as an innovative technique to provide better learning opportunities and facilitate students' learning processes. Thus, this paper is an attempt to present the advantages of using graphic organizers as an advantageous technique in developing ESP textbooks as well as to report the personal observations and experiences of the researchers in teaching ESP through graphic organizers and also to give some useful recommendations to ESP teachers, textbooks designers and materials developers to resort to this efficient technique. © 2011 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.

Teaching through task or in Willis' (1996) words, "an activity which involves the use of language but in which the focus is on the outcome of the activity rather than on the language used to achieve that outcome" can create favorable learning conditions for the students of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses (Kavaliauskiené, 2005). Concerning the current inappropriate teaching methods dominant in Iranian ESP trend, this research aims to investigate the feasibility of integrating task-based language teaching (TBLT) as an alternative to the rather ineffective, yet widely practiced method known as Grammar Translation Method (GTM) on ESP reading comprehension of Iranian students majoring chemistry at two Iranian universities whose syllabus mostly focuses on this skill. To do so, two homogeneous groups as experimental and control at each university served as the participants of the study. Before treatment, pretest was performed in both groups. The participants in the control groups were required to read the texts, translate them into Persian and answer some traditional forms of reading comprehension questions, while the ones in the experimental groups studied the same passages but furnished with some patterns of task-based instruction and accompanied with exercises prepared within Willis' TBLT framework. At the end of the treatment, a post test was administered to them. Finally, drawing on t-test at the 0.05 level of significance, the researchers compared the students' performances to study the probable effectiveness of TBLT. The findings revealed the significant advantage of teaching ESP through tasks and integrating this approach as an innovative one in this trend. © 2011 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.