Perception of General Pragmatic Characteristics of Online Sarcasm among Iranian EFL/ESL Learners and English Native Speakers

The present mixed-methods study had two aims: 1) measuring Iranian EFL teachers’ awareness of dialogic inquiry approach to language teaching, and 2) investigating the influence of the awareness of the approach on changing teachers’ classroom practices into dialogic. To this end, the study included two phases. For the first phase of the study, a researcher-made questionnaire was designed with 5-point Likert Scale and was piloted. Purposive sampling method was applied to select 150 EFL in Fars Province, Iran. The questionnaire was sent to them via e-mail. The results of the analysis of the quantitative data pointed out that EFL teachers’ awareness was not sufficient to practice the approach in their classes. To do the second phase of the research, which was a case study, three EFL teachers participated in an in-service course, which focused on constructivist approach to teachers’ professional development, to increase their awareness of dialogic inquiry approach. Afterwards, five video-recorded sessions of a 20-session term were observed. The data were utilized to score Joyce and Showers’ (2002) Levels of Transfer Scale for each teacher to identify if they changed their practice into dialogic. To triangulate the data, in-depth interview sessions were applied. In order to investigate amount of dialogic stance of their practice, The Dialogic Inquiry Tool (D-I-T) teachers’ rubric was applied. The results showed that teachers’ awareness of the approach positively influenced the teachers’ practice to shift from monologic into dialogic. However, their feedback showed some problems.