درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This investigation set out to look into the issue of teachers’ exercise of agency in the Iranian EFL context. More specifically, as part of a larger study, it reports on the ways two Iranian Ministry of Education teachers make sense of and operate in the country’s educational setting under the demands of a centralist system of education. Priestley, Biesta, & Robinson’s (2013) framework of teacher agency formed the conceptual backbone of the present study as well as guiding the data collection/analysis of the study. Qualitative data, from semi-structured interviews as well as follow-up data collection procedures, were gleaned from the participants over the course of an academic year and were subjected to analytical interpretation in the light of the said framework. The researchers came up with findings which, in the main, gave more weight to the well-roundedness of Priestly, Biesta, & Robinson’s model of teacher agency. The results also pointed to the highly situated nature of teacher responsiveness and action, thereby undermining the still prevalent views of the essentialist and idealized character of (teacher) agency. The results of the study are liable to be of use, among others, to case-based teacher education programs.

We deal with a wide range of colors in our daily life. They are such ubiquitous phenomena that is hard and next to impossible to imagine even a single entity (be it an object, place, living creature, etc) devoid of them. They are like death and tax which nobody can dispense with. This omnipresence of colors around us has also made its way through abstract and less tangible entities via the interaction between culture and cognition. In an attempt to shed further light on the way that color meanings could be extended in different languages and cultures, the present study sought to investigate the semantic extension of Persian and English color terms based on cultural data. The findings revealed the existence of both language-idiosyncratic and general tendencies for both Persian and English languages with respect to semantic extension of color terms. It was also shown that Persian and English speakers mostly use the same mechanisms of metonymy, metaphor and sense of opposite relation based on cultural data and their experience of the physical world to develop more and more color meanings. Furthermore, the study suggested that the direction and development of the semantic domain of a color term mainly depends on its already developed semantic properties and is not accidental. Two other accidental points were also found in the study. First, the borrowing, acceptance and the usage of a color expression from another language might depend on the already developed semantic properties of the related color term in the recipient language. Second, it is possible to predict the direction and development of the new connotations and meanings of a color term in a specific language.

The present study investigated the effect of single and multiple genre movies on listening comprehension of upper intermediate language learners. To this end, a language proficiency test was administered to 40 male and female postgraduates of different majors attending International English Language Testing System (IELTS) classes and ultimately 25 upper intermediate language learners were selected. The participants were tested based on two sets of multiple-choice post viewing questions which probed into their comprehension of the content and generic structure of the multiple genre movie Hide and Seek and the single genre documentary film Arctic Tale. The results showed that multiple genre movies are far more effective in promoting the participants’ listening comprehension than single-genre movies. Multiple genre movies depict a picture of our own life; hence, participants feel more connected to the movie content. The study suggests the important role of film genre in listening comprehension.

راهکارهای مربوط به رابطه ی سؤال و جواب (QAR) به دانش آموزان این امکان را می دهد تا آنچه را که می خوانند با موفقیت رمزگشایی کرده و بفهمند. در این مطالعه یک پروژه ی تحقیقاتیِ عملی به مدت ۱۸ روز با بیست و سه دانش آموز پیش دبستانی آغاز شد که در آن دانش آموزان با QAR در دو بخش ""داخل کتاب"" و ""خارج کتاب"" که شامل سوال هایی مشابه از دو داستان محبوب ازوپ بود روبه رو شدند. چالش ها و نتایج با تاکید بسیار بر آمادگی معلم، عکس العمل های معلم و اجرای عملی و آهسته ی پروژه انتخاب شده است. پس از خواندن The Tortoise and the Hare ، یک پیش آزمون شفاهی به عنوان ارزشیابی پایه برای تعیین سطح درک مطلب دانش آموزان برگزار شد. سپس، راهکارهای QAR با فراهم کردن فرصتی برای تمرین درک مطلب دانش آموزان با کمک والدین در گروه های کوچک و بزرگ به صراحت تدریس شد. اکثر دانش آموزان پس از بلند خوانی The Jay and the Peacock ، نمرات بالایی در پس آزمونِ درکِ مطلب گرفته و بعضی حتی نمره کامل دریافت کردند.