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This study aims to examine the cross-cultural similarities and differences in the use of rapport management strategies (rapport enhancement, rapport maintenance, rapport neglect, and rapport challenge) in the complaints during service encounters based on Spencer Oatey’s (2008) model. To this end, 90 participants (30 Persian native speakers, 30 Iranian EFL (English as a foreign language) learners, and 30 English speakers) were asked to complete a role-play Discourse Completion Task in four different situations. The study argues that: (1) the use of rapport management strategies is universal; all the groups used all kinds of rapport management strategies; (2) the use of rapport management strategies is culture-specific; the participants in each group differently used the intended strategies; and (3) the socio-pragmatic competence of EFL learners is sometimes different from that of the native speakers of English; it goes through developmental stages and is influenced by L1 norms. The study concludes that teachers should condition the communicative tasks used inside the class with factors such as the relationship among the interlocutors to help EFL learners develop a pragmatic competence comparable to that of the native speakers. Teachers can also resort to modern technologies to provide EFL learners with the opportunity to communicate with native speakers and receive feedback with regard to the cultural appropriacy of the forms produced.

The present Study aimed to examine the efficacy of using literary texts in promoting intercultural communication competence, and intercultural awareness and understanding within language teaching contexts. The participants were 50 Iranian undergraduate students of English Literature, 20 male and 30 female, with their ages ranging from 19 to 24 engaged in reading and discussing literary texts with an emphasis on their social and cultural themes and contents. 9 English and 2 Persian short stories were the main material implemented, and these were supplemented by 6 American and 2 Iranian movies with their screenplays adopted from literary works. The themes attended to included racial discrimination, social class, gender roles, and ethnic minorities.  Based on Byram’s (1997) proposed model of Intercultural Communication Competence (ICC), five factors of the students’ ICC development, Savoir Comprendre, Savoire Etre, Savoire S’engager, Savoirs and Savoire Apprendre/Faire, were observed throughout a 14-session course. A Content analysis of students’ writing assignments and an examination of how fruitful they found the tasks and materials in enhancing their cultural understanding demonstrated a noticeable involvement of all the studied ICC factors in reading, discussing and contemplating on the literary texts and their cultural content.

The roles and effects of changes in syntax on comprehension and processing effort, and the relationships between these two, comprise a large and separate field of inquiry, with the general belief now in place that such changes and variations bring about varied psycholinguistic and discursive implications for comprehension, manifesting themselves differently in different genres.The current study is a brief attempt at bringing out the differences in the complexity of the noun groups in two novels, one of which is a 19th century novel, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, and the other is a 21st century one, Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight. Each novel was analyzed for the ten longest nominal groups used in them, representative also of the complexity inherently evidenced by a long nominal group. It turned out that there is little difference between the size of noun groups in the two novels. Thus, the added complexity and challenge in processing and comprehending 19th century prose fiction can be explained by the generic tendency in such genre towards the deployment of a higher rate of rank-shifted embedded structures in the noun groups and more varied qualifiers that employ more non-finite clauses as post-nominal qualification. There is need to look into processing difficulty and interpretation challenge posed by different literary genres for different groups of learners, because, in line with a now common SLA understanding, full and conscious comprehension, parsing and interpretation of syntactic components play a marked role in rich and native-like writing for learners.

The article is devoted to linguo-imagological analysis of the image of Persia of the 19th century in the Russian language consciousness of the 19th and 20th centuries. The material for the study was the novel of the historian writer Yu. N. Tynianov's “Death of Vazir Mukhtar”, dedicated to the last year of life and the tragic death of the poet-diplomat A. S. Griboyedov. The subject of the description in the article was two realities of Persian being, usually the first arising in the minds of people who are not carriers of culture of that time-the Shah's harem and eunuchs. The key characteristic of the harem is the army, the eunuchs are emptiness. These realities, like all the others, are presented as objectively as possible, with artistic instructions on the cause and effect of all events, that is, Yu. N. Tynianov appears as a historian scientist and a talented writer.

With the rapid expansion of deploying mobile instant messaging applications such as Telegram for the purpose of language learning, it is quite apparent that language research in this regard is lagging behind the trend. This study addressed the matter by exploring how language learners utilize a Telegram group for the purpose of language learning. In this regard, the activities of a Telegram language learning group with 74 active members was observed and recorded for a week. To capture the patterns of utilization of the group, a thematic analysis was conducted on the compiled corpus of approximately 45000 words gathered by recording the messages posted by the group’s members. The analysis indicated that the themes of utilization of the Telegram language learning group were discussing content-based topics, seeking and sharing resources, recommending conversation opportunities, sharing learning strategies, and giving corrective feedback on each other’s language.  The findings of this research illustrated the potential of mobile messaging applications for creating opportunities for self-initiated and collaborative language learning.

Reading comprehension is one of the essential skills for learning in every language and in Iranian educational system, there seems a need to make some revisions in teaching reading comprehension. In an attempt to address this problem, this research set out to utilize Directed Reading –Thinking Activity (coined by Stauffer, 1969) as a teaching comprehension model which was expected to enhance students’ reading comprehension ability of graded readings. To do this end, 50 intermediate students from Zabansara Institute were randomly assigned to two groups (one control and one experimental) each consisting of 25 participants.  Drawing on a mixed-methods design, the two groups were compared in pre-test and post-test in the quantitative phase. In the qualitative stage, fifteen students from experimental group were interviewed on the effect of implementing DRTA based setting on their comprehension of graded readings (The implemented readings in this study were narrative texts). The findings of the study revealed that DRTA had significant effect on participants' reading comprehension of graded reading. The study provides some pedagogical implications for EFL teachers and students, and suggests some possible avenues for further studies as well.

The purpose of the study was to examine how teacher motivational practice might influence Iranian EFL Learners’ Request and Refusal Speech Acts Production. To this end, five instruments were used to provide appropriate responses to research questions: (a) Quick Placement Test (b) the Motivational Orientation of Language Teaching classroom observation scheme, (c) the Post-Lesson Teacher Evaluation scale, (d) student motivational state questionnaire and (e) Discourse Completion Task administered to 300 male students from 12 classes (upper intermediate senior high schools of 6 districts in Isfahan, Iran. The research indicates that, there is statistically significant difference between the students in high motivation index teachers’ (HMIT) classes and low motivation teachers’ (LMIT) classes with respect to their request speech act posttest scores. There was also a statistically significant difference between the students in HMIT and LMIT classes concerning their refusal speech act posttest scores. So it seems a must for the EFL curriculum developers at Iranian ministry of education and training to think about remedies for improving motivation among their EFL teachers for persuading their students to provide more practical and real opportunities to use English in a class and so on.

Second language (L2) theories have for long acknowledged the importance of focus on formulaicity or conventionalized lexical chunks. Yet, there has been little attempt to examine the impact of this on foreign language learners’ development of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) measures. The purpose of this study was twofold: First, to see whether lexis-based instruction had any significant effects on EFL learners' oral CAF, and, second, whether different types of lexis-based instructions (e.g., using corpus-based concordances, textual lexis enhancement, and audio-visual captioned lexis) had differential effects. Participants were 54 EFL undergraduates at an Iranian university. After checking the initial homogeneity, <em>2</em> groups of participants were randomly assigned to experimental (lexis) and control (non-lexis) groups. After pretesting on CAF, the lexis sub-groups received the <em>3</em> types of lexis-based instructions in a counterbalanced manner. After each lexis instruction, students’ oral data were also obtained. The control group received mainstream non-lexis instruction. One-way MANCOVA results pointed to the significant effects of lexis instruction on oral CAF measures. Specifically, repeated-measures MANOVA results revealed that audio-visual captioned lexis was the most effective modality in heightening formulaicity. The findings suggest that focus on lexis is beneficial to L2 learners’ oral skills. Further theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed.

It is now generally accepted that academic writing is a social activity by which the authors negotiate with their audience to gain community acceptance for their findings. One of the ways to achieve such an acceptance is by establishing intertextual links to prior research using citation. Despite a vast research on the topic and suggestion of typologies for the form and function of citation in academic writing, few studies have focused on the rhetorical functions of citations. Using Swales' (1990) and Samraj’s (2013) typologies and analyzing 45 research articles from five high impact factor journals in the field of Applied Linguistics, this paper aims to identity the forms and rhetorical functions of citations in the Discussion sections of these articles. The analysis of the forms shows an overwhelming tendency towards using non-integral citations. Studying the functions of citations indicates that citations are used with various rhetorical functions: to compare the findings; support the explanations; to support the interpretations; and to support the recommendations. It is concluded that by referring to literature, applied linguists contextualize their propositions and try to use it as a support for their research claims in order to persuade their audience of their research outcomes soundness. The findings can enhance our understanding of the reasons behind choosing citations in various parts of discussion section and can be turned into pedagogical materials and raise rhetorical consciousness through teaching those choices explicitly to ESL students