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Unidimensionality is an important assumption of measurement but it is violated very often. Most of the time, tests are deliberately constructed to be multidimensional to cover all aspects of the intended construct. In such situations, the application of unidimensional item response theory (IRT) models is not justified due to poor model fit and misleading results. Multidimensional IRT (MIRT) models can handle several dimensions simultaneously and yield person ability parameters on several dimensions which is helpful for diagnostic purposes too. Furthermore, MIRT models use the correlation between the dimensions to enhance the precision of the measurement. In this study a reading comprehension test is modelled with the multidimensional Rasch model. The findings showed that a correlated 2-dimensional model has the best fit to the data. The bifactor model revealed some interesting information about the structure of reading comprehension and the reading curriculum. Implications of the study for the testing and teaching of reading comprehension are discussed.

This paper aimsto reveal how the universals of translation (henceforth, UsT) can beregarded as a manner to examine the translator'sstyle in the TL. In doing so, this paper examines how Saleh Hosseini, as an Iranian literary translator,  made his style through the changes he completed at each micro-and macro-levels shift to result in his discursive presence and/or style in the novels he has translated into Persian. After having reviewed the main theories on shifts  including Nida, Catford, Leuven-Zwart, and Baker, this paper takes Baker’s definition of style as the translator’s ‘thumbprint’ as a way to approach the UsT in Hosseini’s Persian translations. Having occurred with the translated texts than with the original, the UsT are: ‘explicitation’, ‘normalization’, ‘levelling out’, and ‘simplification’ (Baker, 1996). Having selected 44 sentences from the three translated novels into Persian by Hosseini as a corpus, this paper indicates that the ratio of ‘normalization’ is much higher than the other three universals, meaning that Hosseini, through adhering to the norms of the Persian language, came to this universal as one of the signposts of his discursive presence, voice, and style in his translations.

Anti-racism novels, portraying racism in all areas of wealth and income, education, health care, civil rights, life in North America and apartheid in South Africa, can create awareness toward different kinds of oppression that people suffered during different periods. The purpose of this study is to present a thematic analysis of Persian translations of Morrison’s Beloved (1987) from English between 1978 and 2005/ 1357 and 1384 by Gulrukh Sa’īdnīyā, Sānāz Sihatī, and Shīrīndukht Daghīghīān applying the theory of the structure of feeling by Williams (1983). In order to do this study, sentimental scenes of Beloved, examining the destructive legacy of slavery, which were translated during the period under study were examined. Persian translations of these scenes were identified, and the representations of the feelings in the identified scenes were analyzed based on the theory of the structure of feeling by Williams (1983). Based on the findings, it can be concluded that the three translators seemed to be able to transfer the representations of the identified sentimental scenes, such as fury and resentment into Persian. Furthermore, the findings suggest that translation of anti-racism novels plays a significant role in transferring representation of feelings of oppressed people into other nations.

This study aimed to examine the translation of legal discourse structures in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and their impact on the creation, maintenance, and alteration of power relations. The researchers used Fairclough's model for this study. The findings indicated that the Persian translated text (SL) contained some untranslated text, which was an omission strategy. Consequently, this omission resulted in translation errors. The discourse practice level error analysis revealed that the Persian translation had an error rate of 11%, which was statistically significant (P>0.05) for the Persian translation. On the other hand, the social practice level demonstrated that English terms and words were used in the Persian translation without explanation. However, according to Fairclough's model of CDA, there was a significant difference between the discourse knowledge produced by the Persian and English legal discourse structures of JCPOA. This variation was 6.00% for English verbs (30.8% English versus 24.8% Persian) and 1.6% for English adjectives/adverbs/nouns (13.8% English versus 12.2% Persian). The study discovered that there was a significant difference between the knowledge produced by English and Persian legal discourse in the official Persian translation of JCPOA, based on Fairclough's model (including genre, discourse, and style).

Using Critical Digital Pedagogy (CDP) acknowledges the recent advancements in technology in the field of education. As teachers should effectively deal with the needs of students with the help of educational technologies to increase their critical awareness, the level of digital literacy of Iranian teachers is not desirable and naturally teacher training in Iran should be in line with the latest changes in the world, this qualitative study aimed to find out how ELT experts perceive the CP technology-based EFL teacher preparation program in the Iranian context as part of a basic interpretative project. Thirty ELT experts with a Ph.D. in TEFL were selected through convenience sampling among experienced university professors who had relevant research expertise in the field. Consulting the related literature, the researcher developed a semi-structured interview in approximately three open-ended questions. The results analyzed by MAXQDA showed that perceptions of ELT experts were consistent with CP assumptions and the use of technology in education. The interpretation of the findings indicates a reconciliation between CP principles and technology. Participants perceived the valuable concepts of CP in light of technology used to shape a technology-based CP curriculum. Findings have implications for EFL teacher education administrators, curriculum planners, and educators. 

One of the main difficulties facing English as a Foreign Language learners in general and translation students in particular is their lack of mastery of the complexities of grammar in the target language they are learning. This study was an attempt to investigate the influence of categories of auxiliaries (auxiliaires) and present perfect (présent parfait) on Iranian sophomore translator trainees’ ability to use them in English. A total of 60 Iranian male and female sophomore EFL language learners participated in the study. They were chosen out of 90 participants through a piloted version of the Nelson-Danny Test as the homogeneity test. The selected participants were divided into two groups: an experimental group and a control group, with 30 students in each class. In the present study, the participants were subjected to a pretest, treatment, and posttest. Independent samples t-tests were used to analyze the data. The findings revealed that knowledge of French grammar, especially the présent parfait, significantly affected Iranian EFL learners' grammatical knowledge of the same notions in English. The findings could be employed by English teachers, EFL learners, and materials developers in the field of ELT in the Iranian context.

The present study aimed to investigate diachronic changes in the frequency and function of marked syntactic structures, namely passive constructions, preposing, and cleft sentences that manifest information structural elements in Persian. The study examined these structures across three periods of Persian, i.e., Middle Persian, Dari, and Modern Persian. The data for Middle Persian is sourced from The Mēnōg-ī Khrad and Oshnar-I Dana, while for Dari, Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī and Safarnāma by Nasir Khusraw are used. For Modern Persian, written resources from various genres, such as short stories and scientific articles, are analyzed. The samples from each period are analyzed to determine the function and frequency of marked syntactic structures, which are then compared to identify any potential changes in their usage over time. The findings indicated that the frequency and function of these syntactic structures have changed over time. The findings suggested that passive constructions were commonly used across all three periods to present the patient as the pragmatic topic and maintain the topic-focus order. However, in modern Persian, passive construction was also used to emphasize the patient as the focus. Cleft constructions were not found in Middle Persian, but the increase in frequency of cleft constructions in Dari can be attributed to the fact that in this period, cleft sentences were used similarly to preposing, in order to observe the principle of separation of role and reference, rather than focusing on specific elements. Nonetheless, in modern Persian, cleft constructions were used to exclude other possibilities and emphasize the selected element as the focus. Preposing structures were used to present an element as the topic and provide new information about it. This study contributes to our understanding of language change and provides insights into the evolution of Persian syntax over time.

The question of whether specific patterns of impairment across different language modalities are isolated, associated, or doubly dissociated has been a major theoretical issue in aphasiology. In this paper, we describe modality- and task-specific language impairments in a Persian-speaking patient (AG) with ischemic stroke. AG’s overall language impairments were evaluated using the bedside version of Persian Western Aphasia Battery (P-WAB-1), which indicated an Aphasia Quotient (AQ) index of 86. Moreover, his performance on the Reading subtests of the Persian Diagnostic Aphasia Battery (P-DAB-3) indicated a Language Quotient (LQ) index of 60. We also evaluated his word reading, sentence reading, and sentence repetition using the subtests of the Persian version of the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT). Based on his performance on these assessment tools during the chronic post-onset time, AG was diagnosed with transcortical motor aphasia. Notably, he exhibited two striking characteristics, namely, (a) a modality-specific dissociation, with severely impaired reading comprehension in the face of relatively spared auditory comprehension; and (b) a set of task-specific agrammatic symptoms in verbal expression and out-loud sentence reading in the context of relatively well-preserved sentence repetition. The general characteristics of our patient’s grammatical violations also highlight certain universal and language-specific agrammatic impairments. The present clinical linguistic data argue against the existence of monolithic speech-related regions in the brain.

Idioms and collocations are part of lexical phrases which are of high importance in lexicography. One of the criteria for distinguishing these two types of phrases from each other is the inflexibility of their constituent elements. Idioms, unlike collocations, are not flexible in terms of word order and are always used in a fixed and specific form. The purpose of the present article was to show firstly whether all Persian idioms are inflexible against syntactic changes or some are flexible; secondly, to indicate how a new lexical phrase is created as a result of converting an idiom into a collocation. To illustrate this phenomenon, a new and practical definition for idioms and collocations, based on syntactic criteria not merely semantic, was provided. According to Construction Grammar, idioms were analyzed based on four syntactic tests: ‘passivization’, ‘clefting’, ‘dislocation’, and ‘interrogation’. Two hundred idioms were collected from two of the most up-to-date and comprehensive sources, namely Farsi Amiyaneh Dictionary (Abolhassan Najafi, 2008) and the two-volume Dictionary of Kenayat-e Sokhan (Hassan Anvari, 2019). Some idioms were flexible to syntactic changes, and behaved similarly to collocations. The flexibility of idioms led to introducing a new definition of these phrases based on syntactic criteria. Thus, such phrases were considered a kind of collocation, not an idiom. The result showed that converting an idiom into a collocation always creates a lexical phrase or lexeme with a new meaning. Finally, a plan was introduced to represent such idioms practically in Persian dictionaries.

Objective: The present study sought to explore EFL teachers’ cognition of rapport establishment and maintenance, as one of the aspects of classroom management, in the context of Iran’s foreign language institutes’ face-to-face EFL classes.Method: The study involved 12 Iranian teachers who taught adult learners. The sample size was determined based on reaching saturation, and the participating teachers were selected through purposeful sampling. The main instrument utilized in this qualitative study was a semi-structured one-to-one in-person interview, which aimed to elicit the participants’ cognition of rapport development. These individual interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed thematically.Results: The findings revealed that the participants believed in the importance of rapport creation for efficient classroom management. Besides, they recommended strategies for establishing rapport with learners, such as familiarization, verbal immediacy, non-verbal immediacy, attention to learners’ emotions, judicious L1 use, playing games, and utilizing social media. Moreover, they held that teachers’ personality traits and communication skills could impact their approach to building rapport.Conclusion: Altogether, the participants had a sound cognition of rapport maintenance as one of the aspects of classroom management. The findings of the current study provide implications for teacher educators, teachers, and institutes’ supervisors.

Much of the research on the comprehension of passive sentences has targeted healthy adults, L1 acquirers and people with aphasia. However, a topic that lacks evidence is the comprehension challenges of EFL learners facing different passive structure types. Consequently, this study investigated the comprehension difficulty of different passive structures by 186 intermediate EFL learners. The participants’ task was to read a sentence and choose a corresponding answer in a multiple-choice format via a software application designed for this study. The answers were analyzed in terms of the comprehension accuracy and the reaction time. Compared with the passive sentences, the participants needed less time comprehending active sentences and had a higher success rate. The results suggested that different passive verb types (i.e., regular/irregular, action/state, double-object/single-object, negative/affirmative, and question/statement) imposed different degrees of comprehension challenge to EFL learners; passives with regular verbs (PR) were the least challenging and passives with double-object verbs (PDO) were the most demanding structures. It was also revealed that the participants’ comprehension of different passive structures was significantly different based on their reaction times. The study’s findings may be of insight for EFL instructors and material developers to possibly invest more time for the more challenging passive structures.