مطالب

Today, urbanization (living at apartments) phenomenon as the most common type of residence of cities has been changed so that mainly reflects the chaos in this area. Too much attention paid to economic indicators compromised the balance in the housing sector and created a new type of buildings. The occurred changes indicate ignoring cultural characteristics, less attention paid to cultural concepts, moving away from Iranian traditional architecture and as a result, low quality of life in residential complexes. Low quality of life from all dimensions, spiritually, mentally, and physically, in residential complexes, due to its special circumstances such as high population density, caused discontent of residents which itself led to other types of problems including unfamiliarity and lack of willingness to communicate with others and the environment and in other word, low social interaction between people, etc. that needs to be addressed. The purpose of this paper is to assess satisfaction of residents of two residential complexes of Tehran International Tower and Nobonyad Tower, and identify factors affecting on it and as well effect of cultural indicators on it. The present study is an applied research in which about 20 residents of the two complexes were randomly studied. The residents' satisfaction with regard to the intended measures were evaluated and compared by questionnaires. The results suggest that there is a direct link between increased cultural indicators and higher quality of life and therefore satisfaction of the residents.

One of the psychological variables which may have a long-lasting effect on our life is labeling, and students’ accomplishments might be severely undermined through the teacher’s labeling. In spite of this issue, few studies have been carried out on the ramifications of labeling in the educational contexts, in general, and EFL classrooms, in particular. The current study is an attempt to investigate the occurrence possibility of negative labeling and how such labels eventually influence students’ psychological/academic potentials. Since it was not possible to expose the students to the experience of negative labels in their real situations, the 100 high-school female participants of the study were asked to make predictions on social/academic success of a fictitious student who was labeled as dyslexic (Hunt, 2006). Besides, they were given a modified 11-item questionnaire (Mwania & Muola, 2013) about their experiences of being labeled. The participants were also asked to fill in the Coopersmith Self-esteem Inventory (SEI) (1967) to determine if there is a relationship between their labeling experiences, their self-esteem and their reported academic achievements. The collected data was then processed using SPSS. The findings of the study indicate that teacher’s negative labeling was significantly related with students’ self-esteem, their academic potentials, and their future life/success/expectations.The study bears some significant implications for teachers’ education since the findings show that the negative ramifications of labeling in EFL contexts should be taken into more serious consideration in teaching.

Speaking is a significant skill that many foreign language learners are trying to master. In this study, the effectiveness of two different speaking activities, i.e. oral presentation vs. free discussion, was investigated from quantitative and qualitative points of view. To achieve this purpose, 44 intermediate learners from a language institute in Tehran participated in the study. Half of the participants experienced oral presentation while the other half (22 in two other classes) experienced free discussion for eight sessions. The two activities were exchanged between the two groups after the end of the quantitative phase of the study for eight more sessions. The results of an independent samples t-test performed on the scores ofthe speaking section of a sample Preliminary English Test (PET, 2012 ) after the first phase of the study (the first 8 sessions) indicated that the learners who experienced oral presentation significantly outperformed the learners who experienced free discussion though both activities proved to be significantly useful. Furthermore, the results of the interview with 10 participants from each activity through purposeful sampling, after the second phase of the study (the second 8 sessions) through thematic analysis indicated that both free discussion and oral presentation activities had some merits and demerits. Based on the results it can be advisable to include the two activities as complementary.