درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

T his study attempts to examine the amounts, purposes, and reasons for using L1 by teachers as well as the amounts and purposes of its use by students in English as foreign language classrooms through investigating two pre-intermediate classes of an English language institute in Iran. Among students with an age range of 16-25 years, eight male and female students were in one class and 16 were in the other class (N = 24). Two native Persian teachers with master's degrees in Teaching English as a Foreign Language participated in this study: One was 40 years old with 14 years of experience and the other one was 32 years old with nine years of experience. Eight 90-minute sessions of each teacher’s class were audio-recorded. Following that, the two teachers were interviewed to report on the reasons for which they used their first language. The findings obtained from the classroom audio transcriptions were analyzed using a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches through the lens of Activity Theory. Moreover, the teachers’ interviews were thematically analyzed and the results of these analyses indicated that the teachers and their students resorted to the first language as an important cognitive and pedagogical tool on different occasions wherever needed during their teaching. The findings also revealed that teachers in this study maintained that using the students’ first language supports second/foreign language learning and teaching processes in the pre-intermediate levels.

This study aims at investigating the Medical students’ English language needs as the first step for designing an alternative curriculum for teaching English for Medical Purposes (EMP). It also tries to examine if the needs of medical students are perceived differently by stakeholders in medical sciences. For so doing, a structured questionnaire was developed and distributed among 282 Medical Students, 12 instructors, and 15 practitioners studying and working at Birjand University of Medical Sciences, Iran. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS using statistical tests of Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis. The findings indicated that medical students need to be competent enough in all four language skills, considering the demanding nature of their profession in the future. They ranked the importance of language skills like reading, writing, speaking, and listening, respectively. Besides, the results of four Kruskal-Wallis tests indicated a statistically significant difference among the responses of the three groups regarding the importance of the subcomponents of speaking and listening skills. Six follow-up post hoc analyses showed that the differences lay between medical students and practitioners. The findings are discussed and the implications for policy and practice are made.   

Context/purpose: Factors affecting the technology, and innovation levels of crude oil treatment’s surface facilities, are numerous and extensive. Localization of surface facility as a high-tech Technology, which include oil and gas production and processing units, has always been one of the main issues, and technology management and innovation are essential priorities for these facilities. The purpose of this practical, heuristic, and quantitative research is to develop the studies and identify the current state of technology for crude oil treatment’s surface facility technology level in Iran and compare it with its global one. Methodology: Considering the wide range of factors that are used in evaluating technological and innovative capabilities with uncertainty. This research is applied in terms of purpose. Using a survey method and collecting qualitative data through a questionnaire, has led to descriptive results. This study by referring to experts and specialists, these factors according to their importance and priority in different classes of classification and then with statistical analysis, the relationship and correlation of these factors have been examined. For this purpose, 44 experts in oil and gas industry have been used for replying the qualitative questionnaire, then the fuzzy system model has been used to investigate the uncertainty in their answers and Quantitative results. Findings: The results of this study show that the most influential factors in surface facilities such as technological and innovative factors and managerial potential and human resources, etc. are not at an acceptable level compared to developed countries. Conclusion: The analysis of uncertainty between opinions of experts and factors investigated also confirms that attention to innovation and technology capacity and Technology capability and human resources in the National Iranian Oil Company should be increased.