درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

It is necessary to establish mutual relationships between suppliers and demanders to ensure the quality of services. As English is the language of international communications, and the linguistic competence can greatly help develop the tourism industry, this study aimed to analyze the effects of learning English listening, speaking, reading, and writing on tourism development in Iran through the mediating roles of effective communications and teaching in English. The study is applied regarding purpose, and descriptive-survey study of correlation type regarding method. The population consisted of the professors and students of tourism management of Iran's universities, tourism faculties of Tehran, Mashhad, Semnan, Ahvaz, Babolsar, Yazd, and Kerman, as well as the experts in the tourism industry of Iran and foreign tourists. Data collection was field and library method done by distributing a questionnaire online and in person to 351 participants to complete them. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling techniques were used to analyze the collected data. The research findings indicated that listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills have a significant effect on effective communication and education in English. On the other hand, effective communication and teaching in English affect tourism development. The results indicate the essential role of linguistic competence in developing the tourism industry. For better understanding, recognition and learning the international environment and the development of the tourism industry, Iran needs to deal with this challenge, learning English, maintain its competitiveness in the globalization stage.

This comparative study aimed at finding out the types of grammatical shifts which have occurred in two English translations of the Quranic rhetorical questions, and the impact of such shifts on the said rhetorical questions. For these purposes, the study firstly analyzed the Arabic and English texts syntactically using the x-bar theory for Haegeman (2006) and then classified the grammatical shifts according to Catford’s (1965) kinds of shifts. The X theory has been applied as a tree diagram and liner structure. Where necessary “al-Gadwal fi i’arab al-Quran”/the Quran grammatical analysis” of Safi published in (1995) has been used. The two English translations used in the study were “the Koran Interpreted” by Arberry (1955) and “the Noble Quran: English translation of the meanings and commentary” (1996) by al-Hilali and Khan. According to the analysis, different types of grammatical shifts, e.g. class, unit, structural and level shifts have occurred in the two translations. Further, another kind of shift has appeared in the two translations. This refers to the syntactic shift where a question has been changed into a statement. With respect to the impact of such shifts on the meanings of the Quranic rhetorical questions, sometimes the entire meaning of the ST rhetorical questions is distorted like in al-Hilali and Khan’s translation. In addition, the intended reason of the function is changed like in Arberry’s translation. By and large, it can be argued that the shifts committed by Arberry affected the ST rhetorical questions more than those made by al-Hilali and Khan.

This study aimed to analyze high school EFL teachers’ attitudes toward collaborative action research (CAR). This study was of both qualitative and quantitative types. The number of the selected samples of this research, based on the convenience sampling method, were 20 male and female EFL teachers teaching at the Education and Training Organization of Isfahan Province. As the instrument of this research, they were given the standard questionnaire of Savaskan (2013) and Byrnes (2009) to fill. Then, the data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and t-test through SPSS Software, version 25. According to the obtained results, based on descriptive statistics, both male and female teachers had a positive attitude toward collaborative action research. (56.25% of the answers were under average (3) which showd a more positive attitude). Also, in comparison with the female teachers, male ones had a more positive attitude toward collaborative action research (2.70˂2.95). Conducting such research in this realm paves the way to make sure about the right selection of the teaching techniques in general, and collaborative action research and its subcategories in particular.

This study aimed to overcome the researchers' extreme attention to essentially qualitative methods in research on language learners' imagined communities and move towards quantification in order to achieve a more tangible image of this construct. To do so, the present researchers followed three main phases. First, a hypothesized model of language learners' imagined communities with eight components was developed for the Iranian context based on the wide-ranging readings of the literature on imagined communities, consultations with experts and interviews with language learners. Second, a questionnaire was developed and validated based on the model to represent its components. Finally, the data collected through the questionnaire were fed into the model to see to what extent the model fit the data. The initial results showed poor values; however, the model was trimmed by removing one item from the questionnaire, and final statistical indices showed that the model was fit.

Writing is thought as the most complicated skill in second language acquisition; therefore, L2 researchers have always been in pursuit of discovering an effective approach to improve it. One of the most debated ways is feedback which has a key role in improving the quality of writing. Much of the previous research on feedback has focused on analyzing different types of feedback and their effect on the learners’ writings and few studies have examined the effectiveness of computer feedback. Therefore, the present study was conducted to 1) determine what aspects of students’ writings receive computer feedback, 2) examine the difference in the effect of computer-generatedfeedback (CBF) and Teacher-based feedback (TBF) on improving the students’ writing quality and 3) compare the differences in Depth of Processing (DOP) in processing computer and teacher feedback. The results indicated that content, style and organization of their essays received feedback from the teacher and the computer. Teacher feedback was more effective in terms of its impact on improving the quality of the writing of the students than computer-generatedfeedback and it resulted in deeper processing of lexical items, whereas computer-generated feedback invoked medium processing on grammar.   

The application of zone of proximal development (ZPD), as a major tenet of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (SCT, 1978), has recently been invited in the L2 learning/teaching profession. This study mainly examined whether Iranian EFL learners’ interactions in diverse ZPD-activated proximal contexts through the use of storytelling instruction could improve their oral (speaking) proficiency and attitudes towards speaking in ZPD-based learning context. A pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design was used with 60 intermediate EFL participants selected from Asre-no English Language Institute in Iran, after administering the OQPT. Then, the participants were assigned into 2 experimental groups (ZPD-activated equal and unequal groups), and 1 control group, with 20 participants in each group. The students in both experimental groups were exposed to the storytelling-based instruction within different ZPD-activated proximal contexts (equal and unequal), but in the control group the traditional teacher-fronted instruction within a non-ZPD context was conducted. A semistructured interview and a questionnaire were used to assess the participants’ speaking proficiency and attitudes before and after the instruction. The findings from the analysis of covariance and t test suggested that using storytelling instruction within ZPD-activated contexts significantly improved both the participants’ speaking proficiency and their attitudes. Further data analysis of the ZPD participants’ performance indicated that no significant difference between the learners’ speaking proficiency development of equal and unequal peer groups was found. By implication, ZPD-based pair work and storytelling-based instruction, interwoven with each other in a balanced manner, would be highly fruitful in developing EFL learners’ speaking skill and their attitudes.

Psychophysiological studies and MRI neuro-imaging findings provide evidence that heart rate variability (HRV) which is in control of our emotions affects our brain cognitive centers. It has been shown that coherent heart-brain interaction can change the pattern of the afferent cardiac input that is sent to the brain. For this purpose, the Institute of HeartMath (IHM) has proposed a kind of biofeedback training, the TestEdge program, which self-regulates negative emotional learning impediments by increasing HRV measures. It leads to an optimal self-generated psychophysiological state that has an important role in cognitive development through autonomic nervous system dynamics. In the present study, through using IHM self-regulated techniques and tools, the TestEdge program was performed on 63 Iranian EFL learners. In particular, the main purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of HRV measures on reading comprehension performance. The data was measured and recorded by emWave Desktop device. The results confirmed that the intentional heart-focus techniques led to a beneficial mode of psychophysiological coherence of heart-brain interaction. The results indicated significant differences among EFL students with different levels of high, mid, and low coherence and their reading performance.