درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The objective was threefold: (a) to investigate the difference among online teaching performance of EFL student teachers at Iran University of Science and Technology who received peer feedback, expert feedback, and reflected on their own teaching practice; (b) to examine the difference between rating scores given by student teachers and those by instructor to online teaching; and (c) to determine student teachers’ best experiences, challenges, and lessons they learnt from expert feedback, peer observation, and reflection. The results of this mixed methods experimental research revealed no statistically significant difference in the three group’s scores on their second teaching practice; however, there was statistically significant difference between the scores of the first and second practices for all three groups. The results also showed that student teachers mostly underrated their first teaching, while they overrated their second teaching. The findings also indicated that their best experiences were related to using technological tools, working with Adobe Connect, making interesting materials, and using games and songs. Their challenges included lack of face-to-face communication, engaging all participants, and preparing suitable materials, whereas teaching new vocabulary in context, simplifying songs by pre-teaching their unknown words, and using online games and websites were the lessons they learnt.

Flow, introduced as one of the founding concepts in positive psychology by Csikszentmihalyi (1990), refers to the complete absorption in a challenging mental, emotional, or physical task to the exclusion of attention to any other surrounding thing. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, whole aspects of human life have changed, and language learning is no exception. The present study explored various obstacles in experiencing flow among Iranian EFL learners while completing tasks in three different modalities: face-to-face (F2F), text-based, and audio-based interaction during the Covid-19 pandemic. The data were elicited from 55 upper-intermediate learners divided into three groups completing the tasks in pairs, each through one of the three modalities, as a part of their classroom activity. Immediately following class time, they were interviewed individually or through group chats via WhatsApp. Under the three different modalities, the qualitative content analysis identified obstacles in achieving flow and categorized them into five themes. The results revealed that the main barriers in the face-to-face group were related to contextual or environmental factors as well as to task-induced issues. However, technological, task-based, and teacher-related factors gained higher percentages among text-based and audio-based interaction themes. The findings offer insight into flow perception by second language learners in different task modalities during the Covid-19 pandemic.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Over the Platforms (OTT) such as Netflix and Amazon multiplied their streaming and eased access to foreign content in India. The hybridity and transnational nature of the digital spaces allowed the audience to consume foreign content beyond the geographies of language and culture. This article aims to analyze the reception and perception of Iranian films in India during the Covid-19 pandemic. The study posits that the shift in the reception of Iranian film in India during the Covid-19 pandemic constructed a positive perception of Iran among the Indian audience. By applying the reception analysis and qualitative content analysis theories, the paper interrogates the way in which film acts as an agency to produce the perception of Iran as a nation among the Indian Audience. For the collection of data, the existing literature has been used. Furthermore, a purposive sample survey among Iranian film lovers had been conducted. The paper also carries a content analysis of the posts, comments, and reviews about Iranian films on social media pages. Iranian films have influenced the Indian audience to such a level that 80% of the respondents want to visit Iran once in a lifetime.

The growing number of migrants from Iran to the Western World during the past decades represents opportunities as well as challenges for both migrants and host communities. One of the issues that challenge Iranian migrants who move to Western countries is their unrealistic ideas about their presumed destination. This study aims to measure how accurate were the expectations of Iranians about life in Germany before their migration. We conducted two quantitative surveys among Iranians already living in Germany, as well as Iranians who intended to migrate to Germany. Comparing the results of the two sets of data, the study argued that in most cases (74%) the expectations before migration were over-optimistic. In 17% of the cases, they were realistic, and only in some cases (9%), they were under-optimistic. In addition, we found some correlations that suggest that factors such as gender, level of education, the reason for migration, and the preferred source of information of the participants can impact on the accuracy of the expectation.

: Peer review plays a vital and major role to determine the fate of manuscripts submitted to international academic journals. The present study analyzed the discourse structure and the language use of a corpus containing 43 peer review reports from journals from three disciplines (i.e., Applied Linguistics, Accounting, and Sociology). This study analyzed the most frequent discourse moves, negative, and positive expressions used in minor revisions, major revisions, and rejected manuscripts. The findings of this study showed that all discourse moves appeared in all peer review reports but two moves “Summarizing Judgment” and “Conclusion and Recommendation” were the most frequent discourse moves in all peer-review categories. The findings also revealed that the words “well”, “good”, and “original” were the most frequently-used positive words, while the words “unclear”, “inconsistent”, and “poor” were the most frequently-used negative words in the analyzed peer-review reports. The study recommends some points to be considered in future research on this topic.

Despite the voluminous body of research investigating linguistic, disciplinary, and cultural variations in citation practices in research articles, these practices have not been examined in light of the interplay between disciplinary conventions and research methodological underpinnings in the field of linguistics. Adopting a multi-faceted design, this study analyzed 180 research article introductions from two close-knit disciplines (Theoretical Linguistics and Applied Linguistics) to look into the contextualized citation functions and authorial evaluative stance toward citations. The corpus was purposively selected to sample three research methodologies. Comparisons were carried out at disciplinary, research methodological, and combinatory levels. The findings of the study show clear variations in the citation functions and evaluative stances taken toward citations. These variations are thought to be the result of the disciplinary conventions which authors must abide by as well as the paradigmatic underpinnings of the research methodologies which the articles are built upon, though the latter have greater impacts. As a partial contribution to the field of second language writing, a practical taxonomy is also proposed to account for the contextualized citation functions in the two disciplines. The study concludes with some pedagogical implications