مطالب

Although EFL learners pass different courses in writing at university and are expected to be able to express their thoughts in various forms of writing, their texts suffer from many problems. Therefore, the current study aimed to identify the type of problems that postgraduate EFL learners encounter in writing their thesis proposals. To this end, first, the problems marked by supervisors in thirty-two proposals written by TEFL and Translation Studies students were classified into two general categories: macro and micro problems. Then, these problems were classified based on Halliday and Hassan’s (1976) and Tardy’s (2009) models of academic genre. After that, a questionnaire about writing problems was administered to participants to elicit their perceptions towards writing MA proposals. The responses were then analyzed according to Dornyei’s (2003) suggestions for analyzing qualitative data. The findings revealed that discoursal and linguistic problems were among the highest frequent problems. The analysis of the questionnaires also indicated that EFL postgraduate learners hold negative attitude towards proposal writing, and considered discoursal problems as their major challenge in writing. There was consistency between their ideas and the real problems.

INTRODUCTION: In times of crisis, the timely transfer of the injured to medical facilities is one of the most important stages of relief and one of the most widely used methods to achieve the transfer point designing goal. The transfer point in literature is a place to collect and transfer the optimal demand for a particular service. For example, in times of natural disasters such as earthquakes, the injured (customers) are transferred by ambulance to the transfer points and then by helicopter to the hospital (facility). METHODS: In this study, two single-objective and double-objective complex integer number programming models were presented for the problem of locating transfer points and optimal allocation to facilities, taking into account the limitations in facility capacity and transfer points as well as assuming two types of normal and bad injuries. FINDINGS: In the single-objective model, the reduction in the time of sending the injured in the relief chain, and in the double objective model, in addition to the previous goal, the reduction of the fine for not sending the injured were examined. It is only possible to transfer each injured person to the hospital using the transfer points, and the treatment of the normally injured individuals is performed at the transfer points. The models were solved with two approaches, mild and severe. In order to show the efficiency of the proposed models, a case study was conducted in districts 10, 11, and 17 of Tehran metropolis, Iran. CONCLUSION: Setting up transfer points has a great impact on speeding up the process of providing services to the injured. Additionally, given the disproportionality of the number of injured with the capacity of hospitals in severe crises, it is necessary to anticipate transfer points to manage relief and respond to all injured.