درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Thematic development refers to the way theme and rheme in the clause are developed. The theory of rhetorical structure can be defined as the strategies that follow specific ways to make writing more persuasive. The present study aimed to examine how Iraqi writers maintain cohesion in the text by analyzing the patterns of thematic progression in various rhetorical sections in an online Iraqi newspaper, Azzaman (Zaman). To carry out the study, the news articles were collected from January 2013 to June 2013. Actually, 2 opinion articles which focused on the most important political issues were taken each month, collected and analyzed. The analysis focused on the thematic progression and rhetorical structures. The results revealed that thematic progression patterns were used in every rhetorical section of the newspaper. The findings of the study showed the occurrence of thematic progression with different rhetorical patterns in writing English opinion articles and the influence of culture on the rhetorical structure.

South Africa is a water-scarce country that is highly dependent on agriculture. This means that the local impacts of climate altering phenomenon, such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), are critical to understand. At a broad scale, these systems are known to affect rainfall distribution, resulting in drought (flood) conditions during El Niño (La Niña) events in the majority of the country, and the converse in the southwestern Cape. However, fine resolution analyses of local impacts of these events have been restricted to the coastal zone, and little is known for the interior. We explore the uniformity in the transition of the climatic deviations [for minimum temperature (T_min) and maximum temperature (T_max), and rainfall] along a 12-site transect spanning the South African interior. The majority of the deviations determined were not statistically significant which suggests that the common understanding of the climatic impacts of ENSO events in South Africa is not well understood. However, it should be acknowledged that all the locations used in this research, aside from Hermanus, were located inland which may be the reason the deviations at these locations were not statistically significant.

This study aimed to investigate the effect of teaching discourse markers (DMs) on Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ speaking achievement. In the first step, 60 homogeneous intermediate students out of 110 were chosen from a private English language institute and randomly divided into two equal groups, namely an experimental group and a control group. Then they were pretested through a researcher-made speaking test. During the treatment, the experimental group was taught DMs by conversations. Then, they found the DMs in transcriptions of conversations. Also, the researcher used a researcher-made booklet containing the instructional materials related to DMs to be taught to the learners. On the other hand, there was not any direct instruction to DMs to the students in the control group. They only narrated the assigned storybook, and performed conversations by role play. These posters were used based on the related topics of the learner’s textbooks. After the treatment which took 12 sessions, the researcher administered the modified version of the mentioned pre-test as the post-test to find out the effect of the treatment on the participants’ speaking achievement. When the data were collected, one-way ANCOVA was run to analyze them. The results showed that there was no significant difference between experimental and control group in the post-test. Indeed, the findings indicated that teaching discourse markers (DMs) did not have any effect on Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ speaking achievement.

Recently, significant technological changes, greater customer demand and the rise of new business models have triggered a rapid increase in electronic service (e-service) innovations. Now, innovation in the provision of e-services has become one of the priorities of managers in order to gain a competitive advantage. However, few studies so far have explored the determinant factors needed in the organization in order to innovate and implement e-services. The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive framework that integrates the multiple factors of e-service innovation. Using the qualitative meta-synthesis research method and after a systematic review of the literature and examination of 61 articles, all factors needed for innovation in e-services have been identified and classified in 4 capabilities, 9 concepts, and 30 codes. The results show that e-service innovation depends on networking, informational, operational and supporting, and strategic capabilities. These capabilities create the required platform for innovation in e-services in the organization. This study contributes to current e-service researches by offering theoretical advances related to innovation in e-services. Furthermore, the capabilities, concepts, and codes identified in this study would be useful as a comprehensive conceptual framework for developers of e-service innovation to plan and evaluate their related initiatives.