EAP Assessment through the AI-Integrated and Communicative Lens: The Case of English for Industrial Engineering in Iran

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Institute of Languages, UCSI University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

2 Department of Foreign Languages, Language Center, Imam Sadiq University, Tehran, Iran.

3 Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ershad Damavand, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

This study examines testing practices employed by Iranian content and language teachers teaching Industrial Engineering in the Iranian higher education context through the lens of task types and approaches. The present study also explores challenges these EAP and ESP teachers face in assessing their students. For the purposes of this study, to these ends, a qualitative research design was adopted with a total of 12 language and content teachers selected as participants. Data were gathered through interviews, observations, and document analysis to explore their assessment practices. The study identified several testing formats used by the teachers, including paragraph writing, reading comprehension passages, translation tasks, multiple-choice questions, and cloze tests. Three dominant assessment methods emerged that included integrative, structural, and traditional. Although traditional methods remained common, there was a growing move toward incorporating communicative and AI-enhanced assessment practices. With regard to challenges in assessing English language skills for engineering students, the themes included deficiencies in the EAP curriculum, the absence of a standardized test, a lack of research-based EAP practice and evaluation, ambiguities in writing syllabuses, unclear goals, the absence of authentic assessment methods, undefined and non-standardized objectives, and a lack of student feedback. This study has implications for the training of EAP educators in developing more effective assessment strategies that align with contemporary technological advances and students’ communicative needs in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Keywords

Main Subjects

Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). Published by the Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages at the University of Mazandaran. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.

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History

  • Receive Date: 19 September 2025
  • Revise Date: 04 December 2025
  • Accept Date: 10 December 2025
  • First Publish Date: 15 December 2025
  • Publish Date: 15 December 2025

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