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This article was written based on the key concept of polysystem theory which, in translating any literary text, emphasizes the transference of the social systems in which a text is embedded. As stated by Tynjanov (1978a), polysystem theory saw translated literature as a system operating in the larger social systems of the target text. Thus, the task of understanding as well as transferring such systems in their translations, which can certainly affect the readers’ adequate understanding of texts, is a challenging job for most of the literary translators. After identifying three main social systems in The Great Gatsby as the corpus which was ranked second in the lists of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century, the source and the target texts were studied attentively, to study the way the respective systems were translated by the Iranian literary translators. Therefore, the prominent element of Nord’s textual analysis (1991), macrostructure, was focused throughout data collection procedure. Then, it was demonstrated that especially through an appropriate transference of the major conflict between the two predominant classes in the novel, the translator has managed to suitably convey most of the text’s social systems in his translation. Finally, it could be deduced that most of the literary translators in Iran, somehow transferred the concerned systems into some significantly adequate equivalents in their works.

Intercultural communication takes place when individuals influenced by different cultural communities negotiate shared meanings in interaction. As every country has its own cultural value system; consequently, nonverbal communication is different from country to country. Therefore, having knowledge about the similarities and differences of nonverbal communication in different cultures increases the possibility of being understood and reduces the risk of being misunderstood and misinterpreted by people from different cultural backgrounds. The current paper aims to investigate and compare the interpretations of nonverbal messages between the findings of Pease and Pease (2004), two prominent figures in the field of nonverbal communication in Western societies and the Iranian students of English and non-English major as an example of an Eastern society. In this study, 32 body gestures were selected from among 170 pictures used by Pease and Pease (2004) and the Iranian students’ interpretations of those body gestures were investigated. The results showed that the interpretations were significantly different across Western and Iranian students; however, there was no significant difference between English and non-English major students’ interpretations.

Alternative assessment approaches received considerable attention soon after a discontent with traditional, one-shot testing. These approaches, however, have been used only to improve learners’ linguistic ability despite communicative models of language which pointed that knowledge of language also involves pragmatic ability (Bachman, 1990; Bachman & Palmer, 1996). The present study tries to explore the effect of two alternative assessment approaches (self-assessment and conference) on students’ production of four speech acts (apology, complaint, request, and refusal) plus politeness markers. A sample of 64 EFL students participated in this study. Metapragmatic explanations were given to three groups of university students studying English as a foreign language. The two treatment groups received instruction through self-assessment and conference and a comparison group was exposed to the conventional one-shot testing. The results of the One-Way ANOVA conducted after the treatment revealed an outperformance of alternative assessment approaches to the conventional one in the production of the four speech acts and politeness markers in WDCTs. A qualitative analysis of students’ self-ratings in the self-assessment group revealed that they focused more on linguistic criteria during the initial sessions and on pragmatic ones by the end of the treatment. It can be concluded that alternative assessment approaches are beneficial to students’ production of speech acts and politeness markers. In the end, the applicability and the positive effect of alternative approaches in pragmatic assessment are emphasized.

The aim of this study was to describe and find out motivational English language learning strategies through computers among Iranian EFL learners and find out how learners’ motivations change towards English language learning through computers.The mixed method approach (quantitative and qualitative) was employed in this study. A total of 84 (out of 130) female freshman university learners from a university in Isfahan were randomly selected to fill out the questionnaire reflecting their motivational English language learning strategies through computers.They were aged between 18 and 20 years old and were native speakers of Persian. They were all in intermediate level based on their English proficiency levels. Also, a group of 6 out of these 84 learners were purposefully selected for the semi-structured interview in order to get more in-depth information. The descriptive analysis revealed that the learners all used high level of motivational strategies while learning English as a foreign language. It also demonstrated that the learners' motivational strategies related to the use of learners' general feelings towards computers were more frequently identified. The findings of the interviews also revealed that the use of computers motivate and stimulate learners to learn their courses as well as to communicate with one another more effectively. The implication of this study is to use computers as a teaching tool in classes and the learning motivational strategies through computers should be utilized in learning environments

Usually writing teachers feel commitment to provide their learners with corrective feedback (CF) to their linguistic errors. The study investigated whether two types of written corrective feedback, indirect focused corrective feedback and indirect unfocused corrective feedback, produced differential effects on the accurate use of grammatical forms by high intermediate EFL learners. In this study, 54 female EFL learners formed two experimental groups and one control group. One experimental group received indirect focused written CF, and the other experimental group received indirect unfocused written CF for six weeks.  The control group, nevertheless, received no particular feedback within this period. Results of performing ANOVA with post-hoc tests revealed the accuracy development of both experimental groups.  However, unfocused group achieved the highest accuracy gain scores for simple past tense forms (copula past tense, regular past tense and irregular past tense) subject-verb agreement, articles, and prepositions. It was further found that unfocused feedback can contribute to grammatical accuracy but its long-term effectiveness is not quite as significant as its short-term effectiveness. The study also suggested that unfocused written CF reflects better teacher’s objective as it views writing correction as a whole rather than as a way of practicing grammar.

This study is a descriptive piece of research attempting to compare and contrast the use of two types of cohesive devices (i.e., lexical cohesion and ellipsis) in the original dialogues of a television series with the Persian subtitled and dubbed versions of the same dialogues. The data used in the study comprises the dialogues of 10 scenes randomly selected by the researcher from the television series Prison Break as well as the dubbed and subtitled counterparts of the dialogues of the same scenes. The study seeks two objectives: First, it attempts to investigate the original dialogues of the film in terms of the frequency of the use of the two mentioned types of cohesive devices and to compare them with the dubbed and subtitled versions; second, it aims to compare the two types of audio-visual translations (i.e., dubbing and subtitling) to find out how they have dealt with these cohesive devices and what difference exist between these two types of translation in terms of their handling lexical cohesion and ellipsis. For this purpose, the study employs the model proposed by Halliday and Hasan (1976). Also, in order to determine the interrater reliability of the analyses, Chi Square test is conducted. The findings reveal that repetition has the greatest frequency of use among lexical cohesion elements and clausal ellipsis has the greatest frequency among ellipsis types in the original dialogues. The findings also demonstrate that the two translated versions are relatively similar in their handling lexical cohesion but the dubbed version contains a substantially greater number of cases of ellipsis than the subtitled version does. The findings of this paper could provide audiovisual translators with information as to how the cohesive elements are differently used in the English dialogues and their Persian translations (subtitled and dubbed dialogues).

Critical pedagogy (CP), as a poststructuralist educational movement, challenges the asymmetrical, power-over nature of classroom discourse and seeks to accommodate multivocality in the classroom and in the society. This study probed the discourse architecture of EFL classrooms in Iran. Specifically, it aimed to explore to what extent Iranian EFL classrooms have stepped away from the teacher-dominant initiation-response-follow-up (IRF) discourse structure and welcomed CP-oriented dialogism and multivocality. To this end, a number of EFL classrooms in Isfahan and Shahrekord (Iran) were observed, and the running classroom discourse was audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. The results showed that discourse-construction opportunities were distributed unevenly in favor of teachers regarded as the sole authority in the classroom. Student-regulated symmetrical talks were seldom evidenced in the classrooms. The findings further demonstrated that the power-over IRF discourse architecture, despite its communicative inadequacies, still seems to be dominant in EFL classrooms in Iran. Finally, it is suggested that L2 practitioners should move towards transforming the status quo, include more elements of CP into L2 classrooms, and invest in dialogism and multivocality as essential mechanisms to de-silence the students.

Academic writing ability is an important goal that learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) or English as a Foreign Language (EFL) try to attain. While ESL students’ academic writings have been widely explored, owing to few studies investigating appraisal resources in EFL students’ argumentative writing, the gap still exists about EFL students’ academic writing. This study aimed to see how Kurdish-speaking learners of English employ appraisal resources in their writings. It further aimed to explore whether the appraisal framework can be utilized as an assessment scale for evaluating the students’ argumentative writing. To this end, the study investigated the argumentative essays written by 15 bilingual Kurdish-Iranian graduates of English within the framework of the appraisal theory. The instruments applied in this study consisted of a modified rating scale for assessing the essays in terms of the macrostructures exploited in them and the framework for the analysis of appraisal resources. Quantitative findings revealed high-graded essays employ more attitudinal items and fewer monoglossic resources than low-graded ones. Qualitatively, the high-graded essays articulated attitudinal values in nominal forms and sometimes in a backgrounded manner while these values were mostly presented by surge of feelings and in a foregrounded way in the low-graded essays. Regarding engagement, unlike the high-graded essays, the low-graded ones were poor in recognizing other voices and alternative positions. Inspired by the strength of the appraisal model evaluating writing, results suggest that high-graded essays are successful in positioning readers attitudinally and clarifying the ethical message to readers.