درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Research on high-stakes tests indicates that increasing the stakes of large-scale English language tests will have consequential influence on teaching and learning performance and practices. However, evidence for influence on student ‘motivation for learning English (MLE)’ within such a context is still scarce. Taken this, the present study investigated the motivational level of high school students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in the context of university entrance requirement tests change in Iran (introducing high school national English achievement tests-NEATs- as new requirements for entrance into nation-state universities). For such a purpose, the MLE scale, taken from Gardner’s (2004) Attitude/Motivation Test Battery, was translated into Persian, administered among 451 randomly selected students supposed to take the NEATs for their admission to universities, and subjected to confirmatory factor analyses. The results obtained through within-group ANOVA comparisons of the construct-validated subscales revealed that under increased stakes of the NEATs the participants maintained moderately high level of motivation for the two components of ‘desire to learn English’ and ‘attitudes towards learning’; however, the level for the component of ‘motivational intensity’ was neutral/moderate. Similar result (i.e., moderate level) was found in the participants’ perspective of their overall MLE. The findings, overall, indicate that the NEATs-admission programme has not demotivated the learners yet they are not as highly motivated as intended by the change planners. Such a divergence between the ideal policies (i.e., high level of MLE) and what was observed in practice (i.e., neutral/moderate MLE level) has implications for test change contexts and their driving policies.

The existence of several causes of revelation for the first verses of Surat al-ʿAnkabūt and verse 60 of this surah, and talking about hypocrisy and migration (Hijrat) in this surah have caused some commentators to believe in the discrete revelation of it. While the multiplicity of causes of revelations about a verse leads to them becoming distrustful and invalid. Proposed reasons for rejecting these causes of revelations are: their multiplicity on a fixed subject, the existence of conflicting narrations, the anxiety in the mentioned narrations, having additional sections in some narrations compared to others, lack of coordination of cause of revelations in assigning the cause of the revelations to a specific verse or specific person, the existence of some causes of revelations of the excluded verses that shows they are Makki in opposition to the Quran and syntactic reasons based on the connection and coherence of the excluded verses with previous and subsequent verses. In this research, through descriptive-analytical method the causes of the excluded verses of Surat al-ʿAnkabūt have been criticized and the reasons of those who believe in exceptions have been rejected.

Nowadays, the generated and shared content on tourist perceptions in social media is considered a fresh and far-reaching way to introduce the concept of the destination image. Destination decision-makers attempt to use this content to provide a deep understanding of tourism supply and demand. Marketers have to be particular about it when defining a proper destination image. In this regard, many researchers have emphasized the importance of using social media to tap into tourists’ perceptions of destination because it not only helps to deepen the administrators’ understanding of the demands of this type of tourism and to propose new approaches to determine the customers’ preferences in destination marketing but also directs new products and services to satisfy the tourists to a greater extent. Depending on the type of tourism, the contexts and criteria for this kind of virtual investigation are different. For example, in cultural destinations, tourists’ perceptions of tangible and intangible cultural heritage and services and products offered in virtual contexts are regarded as a tool to assess the tourists’ perceptions of that destination. The present study assumes that a holistic approach toward the analysis of tourist perception in the virtual sphere could be a well-qualified alternative to determine tourists’ wants in cultural destinations. Content analysis, which is a practical method in analyzing visual and textual data and  therefore is quite pertinent to the analysis of tourist perceptions, was adopted as the data analysis instrument in this study. To collect the data, two frequently-visited and widely-used websites with easy access to tourists’ comments, namely TripAdvisor and Flickr , were selected so that tourists’ experiences and perceptions could be gathered more authentically and conveniently. The findings demonstrated that the analysis of perceived authenticity of cultural destinations in Iran could provide the content required to create a destination image for purposeful marketing in Iran. Perceived Authenticity was categorized into three main themes: emotional, sensational, and rational.

Despite its importance, a review of the related literature reveals not many studies have examined criticality in EAP. Accordingly, in the present study, whether critical approaches were followed in Iranian EAP classes were investigated among EAP teachers and students based on Benesch (1993). To do so, 40 EAP teachers and 150 EAP students were selected based on convenience sampling. The study drew on both qualitative and quantitative approaches as the participants completed a researcher-made questionnaire and attended an interview. The quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed through descriptive statistics and independent-samples t -tests and inductive content analysis respectively. The quantitative results indicated that Iranian EAP classes (from both teachers and students’ views) suffered low levels of criticality and that there was a significant difference between teachers’ and students’ perspectives on the existence of criticality in EAP classes. The qualitative findings also confirmed EAP teachers’ low familiarity with criticality in EAP courses. The inhibitors and facilitators in the journey towards criticality were finally identified based on the teachers’ perspectives.