درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The Arbaeen procession has gradually become a cultural and social factor in Iran-Iraq relations. Every year, millions of Iranian people go to Iraq to participate in the Arbaeen procession, showing different kinds of social and cultural interactions with Iraqi people. In addition, this religous practice can have impacts on Iran-Iraq political interaction, which is not properly addressed in the academic research. Based on this assumption, the article probe the effects of Arbaeen march on Iran's soft power in Iraq. The role of practice in foreign policy has been analyzed by some IR scholars like Iver Neumann. However, in recent years, there is a practice turn in international relations theory which emphasizes the importance of practice analysis, complementing discourse analysis. This article investigates the effects of Arbaeen procession on Iran's soft power in Iraq by using the conceptual concept of practice theory. In this article, data have been collected from books, reports and articles regarding this subject. More importantly, first-hand data have been collected and analyzed through interviews with Iranian and Iraqi elites and officials engaged in the Arbaeen procession. The article found that the Arbaeen procession strengthens Iran's soft power in Iraq by creating social ties between two countries and triggers cooperation between Iran and some Iraqi Shiite groups to manage the ceremony.

To date, with the everyday growth of technology and the increase of online classes, busy modern teachers seek to lighten their burdens and boost their learners’ autonomy. Thus, this multi-method action research aimed to probe the differences between receiving computer-generated and direct corrective feedback (CF) on the syntactic accuracy and complexity of female adolescent Iranian EFL learners’ writing. Two intact classes took part in the study; one group (Group C) received CF from an AWE (Automated Writing Evaluation) tool, called Ginger software, and the other group (Group T) received CF from their teacher. Subject-verb agreement and verb form errors were considered to measure the syntactic accuracy while the average sentence length and verb form variation were regarded as the syntactic complexity. Moreover, via a questionnaire, the students’ perceptions of the kind of CF they had received were taken into account to see which one was more effective. Findings obtained from MANOVA revealed that both groups made significant improvements regarding syntactic accuracy. Group C produced more complex outputs after being exposed to the treatment while Group T didn’t make such progress. The results obtained from the questionnaire also indicated that both groups found the CF satisfactory. However, Group C held more positive attitudes. Not only was the Ginger application effective in decreasing the number of students’ writing errors but also it motivated them to be better writers and write more. The study further points to the likely merits of technology-enhanced feedback in improving EFL learners' writing ability in general, and their written syntactic accuracy/complexity in particular.