مطالب

Geopolitical factors have always significantly influenced the politics and behavior of governments due to the continuity and stability of their effects. In Turkmenistan, due to the geopolitical characteristics of this country, examining and paying attention to these factors and their effects play an important role in terms of understanding and predicting the policies and behavior of Turkmenistan’s government. Also, these characteristics seem to become more important because of this country’s neighborhood and many commonalities with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The main question of this article is about the effects of Turkmenistan's geopolitics on the politics and the behavior of its government. Based on this study, it will be argued that Turkmenistan's geopolitics has, directly and indirectly, affected the politics and behavior of Turkmenistan’s government by creating threats and issues such as instability and insecurity. It has also caused authoritarianism and centralism in the government.

Abstract This research covers the differences in some of the interactional competence components, such as topic management, turn management, non-verbal behavior, breakdown repair, and interactive listening, among Iraqi elementary and advanced EFL learners. In relation to both the face-to-face and virtual environments, this article tries to divulge how the said competencies of these learners change with task types—opinion exchange and jigsaw tasks—and educational setting. A mixed-methods design was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data through recordings in both learning environments. Statistical comparison showed that there were significant differences between the interactional competence components for elementary and advanced learners across the two environments. Particularly, advanced learners took turns more efficiently and listened interactively more successfully in face-to-face than in virtual settings; elementary learners struggled to manage topics in virtual compared to face-to-face settings. These findings have implications for EFL pedagogy, particularly in the area of improving virtual learning environments for interactional competence development. The discussion addresses some implications related to instructional design, pedagogical practices, and language assessment in EFL contexts. A mixed-methods design was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data through recordings in both learning environments. Statistical comparison showed that there were significant differences between the interactional competence components for elementary and advanced learners across the two environments. Particularly, advanced learners took turns more efficiently and listened interactively more successfully in face-to-face than in virtual settings; elementary learners struggled to manage topics in virtual compared to face-to-face settings. These findings have implications for EFL pedagogy, particularly in the area of improving virtual learning environments for interactional competence development. The discussion addresses some implications related to instructional design, pedagogical practices, and language assessment in EFL contexts.

Foreign language (FL) teacher agency, as a significant part of teachers’ professional development, encompasses self-organized efforts to augment professional growth. This study aimed to develop an ecological FL teacher agency model through a sequential exploratory mixed methods design based on which an assessment scale measuring FL teachers' agency value was developed. In the qualitative phase, developing and validating the FL teacher agency model, firstly, an interview guide was developed and piloted in a group of 10 TEFL teacher educators from Farhangian Teacher Education University in Tehran. Then, 30 in-service EFL teachers were interviewed. The data were analyzed through MAXQDA to find the components of the tentative conceptual model of teacher agency.  Based on the interview analysis, the preliminary draft of the EFL teacher agency scale was developed.  The refined EFL teacher agency questionnaire encompassing the three components of Autonomy, Freedom, and Choice was administered to 354 randomly selected EFL teachers. The scale's reliability was gained through Cronbach's alpha, and its construct validity through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). The study findings could be used by foreign language teachers, teacher educators, and TEFL teacher agency researchers.