درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Recent interest in teaching thinking has lead different researchers to examine different approaches in education to find effective methods and approaches for teaching thinking. Through a qualitative case analysis, this study attempted to identify the effects of the infusion model of teaching thinking implemented through a dialogic approach on a PhD candidate’s critical thinking skills. The study occurred over a semester in a PhD course which aimed at reviewing and discussing language teaching issues critically. A number of interactions and reflective journals produced by the participant during the course was analyzed qualitatively for finding different thinking abilities and elements. A number of thinking abilities and elements proposed by Paul and Nosich (1993) in a higher order thinking assessment model was used for analysis. Analysis of the interactions and reflective journals showed that the number of thinking abilities and elements increased over the course which was indicative of the effectiveness of the infusion model used through a dialogic teaching approach in developing critical thinking skills.

This study investigated the validity of processability theory proposed by Pienemann (1998/2015) among Iranian EFL learners’ oral performance. The theory defines six procedural stages for learners in the process of second language acquisition. In order to conduct the study, 10 intermediate EFL learners were selected based on their performance on Oxford Placement Test. Then, they participated in five tasks; namely, interview, spot-the- difference task, picture description, picture identification and story-telling task. Their speech was recorded and then transcribed according to predetermined structures (i.e., interrogatives, word order, and negation) called target structures. The frequency of the occurrence of target structures was calculated based on the emergence criterion. The results showed that Iranian EFL learners produced language structures in the predicted procedural stages as proposed by processability theory. Thus, processability theory can be valid for Iranian EFL learners too.

This study focuses on realizations and discourse functions of the organizational linkers in the writing of research article abstracts from four disciplines. To this end, 120 research article abstracts from four disciplines namely, Applied Linguistics, Economics, Agriculture, and Applied Physics (30 from each discipline) were selected. All research article abstracts were extracted from empirical research articles published in international high impact journals. The corpus was analyzed adopting Gosden (1992) taxonomy. The most striking result is that the realizations and discourse functions of the organizational linkers, to a large extent, are guided by the nature of research article and discipline. This result adds substantially to the comparative understanding of research article writing across disciplines and evidences the need to tailor writing according to English for specific needs.

This study aims to investigate the semantic and syntactic features of verbs used in the introduction section of Applied Linguistics research articles published in Iranian and international journals. A corpus of 20 research article introductions (10 from each journal) was used. The corpus was analysed for the syntactic features (tense, aspect and voice) and semantic meaning of verbs. The findings showed that in both groups of introductions, the common tenses were the present and past, rather than future. In introductions published in the international journal, the present tense was used more often than in those published in the Iranian journal, whereas past tense was used twice as frequently in Iranian journal introductions. Regarding the aspect of verbs, the simple aspect was common in both groups of introductions, but more frequent in Iranian journal introductions. The perfect aspect was more common in international journal introductions. Concerning voice, the active voice was predominant in both groups of introductions. Semantically, verbs with mental, activity, communication and existence meanings were common in both groups. The semantic meanings of verbs were not significantly different in the two groups of introductions. The findings of this study can have implications for novice, non-native writers in Applied Linguistics in helping them design and write more appropriate research article introductions.

This study investigates the effect of four types of oral corrective feedback, namely, explicit elicitation, implicit elicitation, explicit recast and implicit recast on the most commonly mispronounced phonological features among Iranian EFL learners through immediate uptake and retention. Five classes were randomly categorized into four experimental groups and one control group, each with 18 intermediate-level male learners. The treatment was conducted in the form of a retelling task in nine sessions. During the feedback sessions, the learners’ uptake was recorded. The learners’ retention was also perused in one immediate and one delayed post-test. The results revealed that those learners who received explicit recast obtained the highest score in terms of correct uptake, and that the groups performed differently across different time periods. The learners’ scores enhanced over time; however, the increase then leveled off and even dropped in the delayed post-test in all the experimental groups except for the group which received explicit elicitation, apparently leading to more retention of the target phonological features. The study offers insights to teachers regarding the effect of recast and elicitation in their explicit and implicit form on L2 pronunciation.

Nowadays computers are increasingly being incorporated into school curriculums and serious games are occupying the educational games markets. This article addressed the integration of serious games as tools for learning and teaching English in Iranian schools to zero-beginner students. An experiment was concluded using Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) to investigate the effectiveness of using serious games; namely, Mingoville English as an educational aid and also to examine parents, students and instructors’ attitudes towards using serious games. To this end, 60 female students were chosen and divided into two groups. The control group was taught in the conventional way and the experimental group received the educational aiding material Mingoville, a web-based serious game program, as the treatment. The results of the analyses revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group as the method of teaching was changed. The study also showed the willingness of children, their parents, and teachers toward using such games. It can be concluded that using serious games such as Mingoville can be regarded as an effective tool in teaching English to Iranian EFL children at schools and language institutes. The study can benefit teachers and heads of institutes to add serious games as aiding instructional materials to their English classes.

This research chiefly focused on the application of mitigation strategies and traditional form of feedback in writing development of the fifth semester University students majoring in TEFL and English Translation fields based on Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory in general and the notion of “Zone of Proximal Development” in particular. To that end, this study relied on a pre-posttest experimental design which was mediated by different written types of feedback such as mitigation strategies vs. error correction to find out if any gains in writing development of participants could be achieved. It is to be noted that participants of this inquiry were 125 fifth semester university students who were chosen and assigned to four experimental and one control groups. The materials of this study consisted of a textbook called Writing Power by Nancy White (2002) that the teacher taught during the course of instruction; a standard writing test of IELTS (2007) as a pretest; another standard writing test of IELTS (2007) as a posttest. The results showed that although homogeneity among the groups was observed on the pretest, writing scores of those groups which received corrective feedback and paired comments outscored those of the other groups. On the other hand, the interrogative forms and personal attributions had the least increase from the pretest to the posttest. Hence, it is recommended that some teacher training courses regarding the appropriate use of these strategies be held in educational settings in a way that teachers can apply these techniques in the best possible ways in their writing classes.

The quality of political participation of women is one of the main indictors of political and social development, which paves the way for sustainable development as well. One of the most important manifestations of this participation is taking part in voting to elect people’s representatives in various institutions. Women’s votes can be considered a basic factor that can lead to important changes in legislative capacities in order to improve women’s situation in various areas. Representatives, who take charge of decision-making and executive posts through women’s votes, will naturally or under women’s pressure have to be more careful about decisions that pertain to women. However, promoting women’s participation in practice depends on a variety of factors. If the society is to benefit from political participation of women, these factors should be identified and assessed. One of the most important factors is the general course of political developments in the country. This article’s core question is: What factors affect quality of women’s political participation in Iran? Our central argument is that mass political participation of the Iranian women was growing during 2001-2011 through the strong role that women played in various elections. The method applied in this paper blends descriptive and analytical approaches.

Dr. Mohammad Javad Zarif, former Iranian Ambassador/Permanent Representative to the United Nations (New York), is now the Foreign Minister, and quite a celebrity, inside the country and at the international level. Mr. Ambassador: Conversation with Mohammd Javad Zarif – Former Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations is a book written by Mohammad Mehdi Raji, and is a product of more than 40 hours of exchange. Zarif’s detailed and patient replies to the interviewer’s numerous questions, portrays a good picture of the personality, line of thinking, the ever-present smile and even frequent hearty laughs. “Mr. Ambassador” contains a rich litany of substantial material in a number of fields and at several levels. At the most rudimentary level, it lays out the life journey of Javad Zarif, and in deeper levels, it focuses on his multilateralism.  Zarif’s objective and candid is extremely educational. For sure he is a go-getter, you may disagree with him, but he is a man to respect and even love; a man for all seasons for Iranian diplomacy in an age of the supremacy of individual-collective human failings and even sheer lunacy. This article reviews the book Mr. Ambassador on a more personal level, and gives deeper insights both on the narrative, and on Javad Zarif’s real life.

The complex and multi-faceted geopolitical environment created in Syria and the Middle East today makes it extremely difficult for the United States and its Western and regional allies to continue its policy of calling for the removal of the Assad regime. Arguably, Assad’s departure from power at this time would prove to be a critical mistake, with the scope of its ramifications largely unknown. In this essay, we will engage first in discussing the lack of a detailed and comprehensive day-after strategy by Western powers to be implemented in Syria, should Assad be removed, and how this could lead to a multitude of complicated problems. We will then analyze Syria’s role as a showground of strategic competition between many regional and world powers, and how Assad’s departure could result in a much more intensified rivalry between and among these powers. We conclude that there are many inevitable trade-offs involved in ending the Syrian civil war, but that for now the growing threat ISIS poses to the world renders defeating the Islamic State a higher priority over advocating a regime change in Syria.  Moving forward, the essay examines nonviolent alternatives to the military intervention/strike in Syria.