اکرم رمضان زاده

The purpose of the present study is to explore the two concepts of time and space in postmodern lyric poetry of the two poets of the 1950s through the lens of the Heideggerian existential theory of time and space, which regards time as a horizon for understanding Being and distinguishes three different types of space: (1) world-space, (2) regions , and (3) Dasein's spatiality. To fulfill this objective, some selected poems of the two poets, including Allen Ginsberg and Ted Hughes, were analyzed temporally and spatially. The findings suggested that the two poets tend to treat time and space existentially and reject eternality. It was revealed that they are existential poets whose existence is manifested in their quest for identity within the immediate world or the global world as well as their concerns for their homeland and ideals. In their poems, time and space are intermingled with Being and reflect each individual’s relationship with the world. The result of the analysis of poems showed that their poetry is not just the language of imagination and perception, but also the language of existence. The world is regarded as an existential space-time continuum and being-in-the-world is the fundamental ontological situation for Dasein. Accordingly, the world, like poetry, is a disclosure of things in nearness or distance, which matters to human beings

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate speech acts performed by Iranian EFL learners on the social network of Facebook in their interaction with their teacher and with their peers in response to divergent and evaluative questions. A page was constructed for the students in order to provide the opportunity for their answering divergent and evaluative questions posed by the researchers. A total of 240 comments including 1680 speech acts were collected from five EFL students during an academic semester. Content analysis of the collected data revealed that participants primarily used expressive speech acts in response to divergent questions and directive speech acts in response to evaluative questions. The results also revealed differences in using emoticons regarding the difference in power relations between the teacher and students. Further findings and implications are discussed in the paper.

Overviewing the current literature on Western and Islamic orientations to English language education and illuminating the advantages and challenges of each orientation, this study endeavored to critically examine English language teaching in the context of Iran. In effect, this study elaborated on modernist, postmodernist, and Islamic orientations to language teaching. In tandem, this critical examination initiated from the modernist orientation because this orientation constituted the basis of contemporary academic disciplines. The findings revealed that there exists a strong similarity between postmodernist and Islamic orientations, when Islam is studied as an educational paradigm rather than a political issue. Moreover, the critical examination of the relevant studies on the context of Iran showed the prevalence of the native speaker ideology, systematicity, and standardisation as manifestations of the modernist orientation leading to unequal Englishes. In reality, unequal Englishes can be considered as a colonial enterprise illegitimizing non-native speakers and downplaying local varieties. Analyzing the concept of unequal Englishes, we have also argued that there is a real need to establish a dialogue across postmodernist and Islamic orientations to challenge power relations and foreground knowing as an act of identity. Accordingly, we called for an ontological turn in English language education in Iran, which revolves around super-diversity and perceives language as a practice situated in a social-cultural-historical context.

The present study explored the effect of a pedagogical blog on Iranian EFL learners’ creative and critical thinking skills using a mixed-methods approach. In the pedagogical blog, the researchers asked learners divergent and evaluative questions based on Lindley’s model (1993). The quantitative data were collected by administering Creativity Test Questionnaire (ATC) and the Persian version of the California Critical Thinking Skills Test and were analyzed using SPSS Version 16.0 software. The qualitative data consisted of the posts written by the participants of the study in the class blog and were analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings revealed that the pedagogical blog significantly improved the participants’ creative and critical thinking skills, which were represented in their posts by the main themes of fluency, elaboration, and flexibility as components of divergent thinking and inference, evaluation, induction, and reconstruction as features of open and active critical thinking skills. Further findings and implications are discussed in the paper.