درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Despite widespread studies on language assessment literacy (LAL), there are still many unexplored areas about LAL (Gan & Lam, 2022). One of these areas is identifying various aspects of LAL regarding different language skills and scrutinizing the English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ involvement with these aspects. Accordingly, this study attempted to (a) explore Iranian EFL teachers’ perceptions, preferences, and difficulties of oral/aural skills LAL and (b) develop a scale to measure these teachers’ oral/aural skills LAL. The study was carried out in two phases. First, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 Iranian EFL teachers to identify their perceptions, preferences, and difficulties of oral/aural skills LAL. Second, the researchers developed a questionnaire based on a review of the literature on assessing oral/aural skills and the results of interviews. The questionnaire was reviewed by experts, revised accordingly, and administered to 150 Iranian EFL teachers who were selected through convenience sampling. The reliability of the questionnaire and its construct validity were then checked. The results of both phases of the study were compatible. The outcomes showed that almost all teachers represented dissatisfaction about their oral/aural skills LAL and they were enthusiastic to participate in assessment training courses. Furthermore, it was found that due to their lack of knowledge about oral/aural skills assessment, traditional techniques of assessment were widely used by Iranian EFL teachers.

Purpose- Village as a residential system has always suffered a lot of damage due to natural hazards such as drought throughout history, and due to the dependence of the rural economy on the agricultural sector, any threat against this sector leads to the weakening of the economic foundations, the village and eventually the economic stagnation of the country. Therefore, the aim of the current research is to evaluate the drought-resilient measures to reduce the vulnerability of rural households located in Rastaq district in Khalil-Abad City, Khorasan-Razavi Province.Design/methodology/approach- The type of research is applied research, and the data was collected by applying a descriptive-analytical method by using documentary sources and field studies (questionnaire). The statistical population of the research is comprised of the heads of rural households living in the study area. As a result, 337 people were selected using Cochran's method. For ranking and spatial analysis of the village, Copras and Vicor techniques were used, and Shannon technique and SPSS software were used for statistical data analysis.Findings- The results showed that among the weights obtained from the paired comparison of the dimensions raised in resilience measures with drought in reducing the vulnerability of rural households, modern irrigation measures with a score of (0.290) have the highest score in resilience measures. Avarane took over with the drought. Finally, in the study area, Niqab village performed better than other villages in terms of resilience measures in dealing with drought.Research limitations/implications- Not having access to statistical information when referring to Jihad Agriculture and Governorship, as well as filling out the questionnaire depending on the topic at the village level and the costs of conducting this research are among the challenges of the present research.Practical implications- In the end, according to the obtained results, it is considered necessary to provide solutions for the resilience of rural households at the level of the villages of this district and to implement the solutions.Originality / value- The present research is significant due to its expression and recognition of different issues surrounding the resilience of households in the face of drought. An important step can be taken in the direction of reducing the vulnerability of rural households to deal with drought in the coming years.

The ability to assess the language learners’ progress has been known as one of the most important parts of EFL/ESL teachers’ literacy. Language assessment literacy (LAL). The notion of LAL has evolved over time, as a large number of researchers showed to be enthusiastic to study this research area. However, the number of studies on teachers’ Writing Assessment Literacy (WAL) is scanty. As writing skill is very necessary for language learners to communicate with native speakers of the English language, it is very important for writing teachers to develop assessment tasks to positively contribute to the rate of learners’ progress in writing skill. Therefore, it is of much significance to review the related studies on assessment literacy, language assessment literacy, and writing assessment literacy. In this review study, the relevant studies were reviewed and further directions for writing assessment literacy of EFL/ESL teachers are suggested to the researchers interested in the field.

Human Identification has been widely implemented to enhance the efficiency of surveillance systems, however, systems based on common CCTV (closed-circuit television) cameras are mostly incompatible with the advanced identification algorithms which aim to extract the facial features or speech of an individual for identification. Gait (i.e., an individual’s unique walking pattern/style) is a leading exponent when compared to first-generation biometric modalities as it is unobtrusive (i.e., it requires no contact with the individual), hence proving gait to be an optimal solution to human identification at a distance. This paper proposes an automatic identification system that analyzes gait to identify humans at a distance and predicts the strength of the match (i.e., probability of the match being positive) between two gait profiles. This is achieved by incorporating computer vision, digital image processing, vectorization, artificial intelligence, and multi-threading. The proposed model extracts gait profiles (from low-resolution camera feeds) by breaking down the complete gait cycle into four quarter-cycles using the variations in the width of the region-of-interest and then saves the gait profile in the form of four distinct projections (i.e., vectors) of length 20 units each, thus, summing up to 80 features for each individual’s gait profile. The focus of this study revolved around the speed-accuracy tradeoff of the proposed model where, with a limited dataset and training, the model runs at a speed of 30Hz and yields 85% accurate results on average. A Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (ROC) is obtained for comparison of the proposed model with other machine learning models to better understand the efficiency of the system

Numerous academics in the domains of language instruction, cultural studies, communication studies, ethnic studies, gender studies, etc. have focused on critical cultural awareness (CCA) as a crucial element of intercultural competency. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate whether the cultural elements in Iranian high school coursebooks (Vision Series) have been (un)touched by the ministry of education. To this end, the conversation contents of the Vision Series (levels 1-3) were examined by the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to evaluate possible intercultural competence used in Vision Series. It was found that the content was biased toward the source culture in general. Finally, some ideal ways of presenting culture in the coursebooks were put forward in the form of a cultural rubric. The pedagogical implications of this study are discussed.       

The study scrutinized the probable significant relationship between Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Translation Competence (TC) in the Iranian students of Translation Studies. The first stage of the study followed a conventional statistical approach, in which the significant relationship between the variables as well as the predicting role of emotional intelligence for translation competence of the participants was examined through Pearson correlation and linear regression analyses. Two questionnaires of emotional competence, derived from Bar-On (1997), and translation competence, derived from Alavi and Ghaemi (2013), were utilized in the study. The findings of the initial phase revealed the significant relationship between the participants’ emotional intelligence and translation competence. In the second stage, modeling approach was employed to probe the relation between emotional intelligence and translation competence through structural equation modeling, using LISREL. The results demonstrated a significant relationship between EI and TC, justifying the results of the first non-modeling stage. The findings are of significance as the association between translation competence and emotional intelligence has been scarcely explored. Moreover, the relation between two variables was deeply explored through using non-modeling as well as modeling approach, adding the novelty of research. The results reflected that emotional intelligence plays a significant role in predicting the language learners’ translation competence. The results have some implications for language teaching. Language teachers can promote language learners’ emotional intelligence to reach successful learning outcomes. Through using useful techniques such as discussion, group-work activities, answering questionnaires, the learners' emotional intelligence can be significantly improved, leading to effective translation achievement.