چكيده فارسي :
This inquiry was aimed at exploring Iranian English language teachers’ practices and perceptions of vocabulary teaching in language private institutes. This investigation adopted a basic qualitative research design. Four competent language teachers were purposefully selected and their perceptions of vocabulary teaching were investigated from several dimensions. A multiple qualitative data collection methods including semi-structured in-depth interviews, classroom observations, and stimulated recall technique were employed not only to gain an in-depth understanding of the participants’ perceptions about vocabulary teaching, but also to enhance trustworthiness of the results through cross-checking the collected data. Findings indicated that, although all EFL participant teachers agreed with the effectiveness of vocabulary strategy instruction, they believed that only limited approaches are applicable in the context of language schools in Iran. It was found that, EFL teachers employed decontextualized strategies more extensively than contextualized ones. It was also revealed that teacher participants hold an admissible vocabulary teaching knowledge and possessed two types of beliefs, i.e. real beliefs and modified beliefs.
As a matter of fact, teachers’ instructional practices were greatly congruent with their modified beliefs, but not with their real beliefs due to the context of language schools. Findings of this inquiry have several implications for both L2 teaching programs in language schools (to improve and develop shortcomings) and L2 teacher education programs in Iran (to ameliorate the quality of the programs and develop an effective knowledge base for L2 teacher education).
