re-reading through the newly-issued ma program for teaching as a foreign language (tefl) students in iranian universities

Aimed at authenticating newly issued ma program for teaching english as a foreign language (tefl), the present researcher embarked on analyzing expert views on this program via a three-stage, sequential exploratory research design. accordingly, 17 experienced university professors in tefl across both public and private sectors were voluntarily invited to written interview sessions and a likert-scale questionnaire phase. based on the data gained from the first phase, a questionnaire with 21 items was piloted among 60 randomly selected ma students and recent graduates, who were reached through social networks (mainly google email groups, telegram and whatsapp social networks) in order to find out probable issues/concerns in this program. the results from the first two phases gave rise to some five main themes, which were reduced to two factors after going through confirmatory factor analysis (cfa). the themes included a) ma students’ substandard competency in speaking and writing, b) ma students’ lack of motivation, c) flaws in curriculum, d) logistic insufficiencies, and e) ma students’ substandard competency in reading and understanding specialized issues and the two reduced factors out of seven involved a) students’ inclination over practical courses as compulsory credits, and b) students’ views over technical issues in tefl.