مطالب

In L2 development, the cognitive complexity of tasks plays a crucial role in task performance and language features produced. However, there have only been few studies addressing the impact of task complexity on EFL learners' attention to L2 system and form-focused self-repairs (FFS).This study explores the role of increasing cognitive task complexity in EFL learners' form-focused attention (FFA) to L2 system (i.e. grammar, lexis, and phonology) and FFS and the effect of increasing procedural task complexity on EFL learners' FFA to L2 system and FFS. The participants comprised one hundred EFL junior students of TEFL. The sample was chosen from the cohort of EFL students at Islamic Azad and state universities in Isfahan and Shahrekod. The participants performed under task conditions of−/+ casual reasoning and −/+ planning time. After each stage, each participant filled in a Likert-type scale to examine his/her attention to different aspects of L2 system .Finally, Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was used to compare the learners’ instances of of self-repairs at un-increased and increased task complexity occasions. Repeated-Measures ANOVA was used to examine the data. Results showed an overall effect of task complexity on EFL learners' attention to L2 system and FFA behavior across task types.

Foreign language learners tend to avoid phonological difficulties and simply transfer sounds whether from their L1 or any pre-existing L2. Phonological awareness (PA) gives students an active role in understanding their own potential in improving pronunciation through several methods. However, such methods are likely to be restricted to only passive learning methods, such as repetition, reading and lectures. In this study, 118 Japanese students of Spanish were tested in their articulation ability of the Spanish liquid [r] segment; the students were divided into two groups: the control group (GA), composed by 59 students, which did not undergo any special PA training, and the PA trained group (GB), composed as well by 59 students, which underwent only one PA intervention. The articulatory accuracy rate of GA for such segment after their first year of language acquisition was 27.16, while for GB it was 72.54 after the PA intervention. The improvement of GB after the PA intervention was highly significant in regard to the learners’ phonological accuracy (p < 0.001)

This paper reports on how top EFL students foster oral communication strategies (OCSs) throughout their 4-year English program at the university level. It is a cross-sectional study of 40 EFL learners enrolled in the Department of English, Faculty of Education, Taiz University, Yemen. Data were collected through a questionnaire based on Oxford’s Strategy inventory for language learning (SILL). The findings revealed that the respondents not only used listening and speaking strategies in Oxford’s inventory but also invented some other strategies to cope with their learning environment. It was also found that the more they advance in the EFL program, the more their strategic competence improves. The results confirm previous studies that high-achieving learners employ several OCSs which facilitate their success. These strategies are put forward to low-achieving learners so as to elevate their English learning.

Researchers and scholars have been attracted by the idea of using integrated writing task along with independent writing task to best assess the EFL learners’ writing competence. This study was conducted to compare the writing performance of EFL students in integrated and independent writing tasks. It also aimed to find out if writing performance varies with task types. A number of thirty Iranian EFL students participated in this study, and each student wrote on two writing tasks of IELTS Academic module. The written essays were rated by three experienced raters using IELTS rubrics. Paired sample t-tests revealed that test takers performances did not differ significantly across these two tasks. Besides, two one-way ANOVAs indicated the difference between the raters in rating integrated writing task while they were not performed differently in rating independent task. The results are followed by a number of suggestions with the aim of improving the EFL students’ performance in writing skill.

The present study is aimed at investigating the relationship among Iranian EFL teachers’ reflective teaching, reflective thinking and classroom management ability. To this purpose, 102 male and female EFL teachers, aged between 25 and 40, with different academic background who were teaching at different levels, were chosen to fill in three questionnaires on reflective thinking, reflective teaching and classroom management. In this connection, the Spearman Rank-Order correlation was used as the analytical method to analyze the data and to come to the conclusion. The obtained result showed that there was a positive correlation between teachers’ reflective teaching and class management. A strong relationship was observed between reflective thinking and class management and there was also a positive correlation between teachers’ reflective thinking and reflective teaching.

In translation, choosing appropriate equivalent is essential to convey the right message from source-text to target-text, and one of the issues that may have a determinative role in appropriate equivalent choice is the semantic prosody (SP) behavior of words and the relation existing between the SP of a word and semantic senses (i.e. negativity, positivity or neutrality) of its collocations in the context. This research explored the impact of Iranian translator trainees' semantic prosody knowledge on the appropriate selection of equivalents in translation. The probable influence of proficiency level or fields of study on the appropriate selection of equivalents with respect to SP was concentrated as well. To fulfill the aims of the study, a translation test including a number of near-synonym pairs with different SPs was administered among participants with different fields of study as well as different proficiency levels. Findings were analyzed based on Sinclair's (1996) hypothesis of SP as well as Stubbs' (1995) model of SP classification. The study showed where there is more than one equivalent of a word in another language, having the knowledge and being aware of the conditions of semantic prosody is necessary to select the appropriate, accurate equivalents and thus to convey the exact message from a source text to the target one. The results also revealed that proficiency level and field of study among language learners can have an influence on choosing appropriate equivalents with respect to SP. The findings of the present study can be beneficial for the instructors and learners in both fields of translation and Teaching English as a Foreign Language to improve equivalent choice appropriateness. Also, this study by highlighting the essential role of semantic prosody in selecting appropriate equivalents can be beneficial to dictionary compilers to include semantic prosody behaviors in the definition and information of words.

This experimental study considered the effects of learning style variations on EFL learners’ performance in different question types of the reading skill and their strategies to get higher scores. To achieve such goals, ninety learners with different academic backgrounds from IELTS classes of Shukuh English Language Institute in Tehran, participated in this study. The researcher first utilized two questionnaires with regard to learning styles and strategy uses. According to the Kolb’s questionnaire it is believed that learners have Activist, Theorist, Pragmatist and Reflector learning styles. A majority of candidates were recognized as Reflector but activist candidates had a better performance in IELTS and also for strategy use. In considering learning style variation according to the results of the one-way analysis of variance, we were on the safe side to say that variation due to belonging to different style groups causes variation of performance for Yes, No, not given questions in reading skill. The most favorable learning strategy of the activist learners, who were the most successful students according to their band scores, was making summaries which had not only the highest frequency, but also the highest weighted sum.

Two parallel but contradictory trends have come to characterize the early decades of the twenty-first century.  On the one hand, the traditional principles of international law highlighted in the UN Charter, such as the principles of state sovereignty, non-intervention, and the state officials’ immunity, have become considerably weaker norms.  The dimension of moral sovereignty of governments, by contrast, has gained much traction, as more and more states tend to prioritize the protection of internal jurisdiction over the promotion of human rights. However, at the same time, the notion of the responsibility to protect (R2P) and transitional justice in practice have cast their specter over countries’ internal developments, misconduct, and human rights violations, holding them accountable  to domestic and international laws. These conflicting trajectories have come to a head during and in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab uprisings.  Charged with human rights violations, the ruling elites of Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt faced trials—both locally and internationally by the International Criminal Court. The UN Security Council authorized applying R2P to protect Libyan people and International Criminal Court issued the arrest warrants against Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, and Abdullah Gaddafi. In Tunisia, an absentee trial for the deposed President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was held.  In Egypt, however, the trial of Hosni Mubarak and those associated with his regime bypassed the so-called transitional justice model, while following the all too familiar pathway to promoting stability under the guise of national reconciliation. This paper’s central thrust is that political interests of the new rulers of Egypt, most notably the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), the Muslim Brotherhood, and the military-backed interim government have turned the accepted and modern notion of transitional justice process on its head, while pursuing instead an authoritarian and managed judicial process in the name of state sovereignty and national stability.  

Nowadays the idea of celebrating colonial fairs, where native peoples of the overseas territories  could perform their ethnic habits in front on an European audience (who besides had payed for it), could seems nasty to us, disgusting or even more a crimen of slavery, but along side the 20s and the 30s of the last century, organised colonial fairs were at its hight to show to metropolitan populations and other Western country audiences, which were the benefits furnised  to the natives by the Metropolitan country, and at the same time, how lucky those  backward  native peoples were, who thanks  to their  white masters, could be taken out from the darkness of the ignorance. This colonial effort, was sometimes carried out in good faith, but others it was no any other  thing but looting, and greediness, a demonstration of racial imperialism and self-sufficiency, whose  actors were (from the top to the bottom) governments officials, white settlers (mainly farmers), religious communities and a wide panoplia of bizarre people, such as  traders, smugglers,  Indiana Jones´ adventures and prodigal  sons. All of them represented a vivid  fresco of Western racial superiority over the colonized local people. In this paper we are going to examinate which was: 1st). the reaction of the  International Community (if any) by the time those  fairs were hold, and which  international institutions ( remarkably the League of the  Nations and the International Labour Organization) could have faced such degrading  spectacle, and hence its legal tools to put an end to it, 2nd.) in a sort of contrafactual exercise, which one could  be the enforceable law today, applicable by the international  bodies, entitled to prosecute such crimes,and which  crimes could  be fitted (or penal types) into such behaviours.

The 2015 nuclear deal, known as The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed by the Islamic Republic of Iran and the P5 +1 world powers changed the dynamics of geopolitics in the Middle East. Access to the global market and a relief from sanctions enabled Iran to tap into its vast economic potential and attract foreign investment. Since the election of President Trump, the US has tried to minimize Iran’s economic benefits from the nuclear deal. Iran’s presence as a leader in the region is increasingly being felt with its growing involvement in surrounding conflicts. In Iran, President Hassan Rouhani’s election promises for social reform and constructive dialogue with the world are being fulfilled albeit slowly. Now, President Trump has decided to kill the deal. In our research, we review the effects of the JCPOA on domestic politics in Iran and regional politics in the Middle East as we examine the potential consequences of President Trump and the United States abandoning the nuclear deal.  

Tous les efforts internationaux dans les domaines économiques visent à augmenter les différents niveaux de bien-être public à l’échelle mondiale. Aujourd’hui, les réunions formelles et informelles des organisations nationales et internationales présentent la question du développement, notamment économique, comme le problème mondial principal. De cette façon, ils entendent éradiquer la pauvreté et éliminer les inégalités. Dans une telle perspective, nous présenterons premièrement diverses interprétations sur l’interaction entre l’économie et les droits fondamentaux. Nous avons étudié Gabriel Tarde et Frédéric Lebaron. Tarde comparait les relations socio-économiques aux relations entre la mère et son enfant : il nomme cela l’harmonie sociale. Lebaron ajoute qu’elle est renforcée pendant le XIXe siècle dans les ordres symboliques marchands. Enfin, en définissant des indices des trois générations des droits de l’Homme, nous avons comparé les indicateurs économiques dans les trois pays étudiés pour atteindre un modèle de comparaison économique. A cet égard, nous les avons défini sur la base des rapports de la Banque Mondiale (BM) et de l’Organisation Mondiale du Commerce (OMC). Les données statistiques ont été analysées par l’application de SPSS. Les résultats nous montrent le niveau de relation existant entre l’économie sociale et diverses facettes des droits de l’homme dans l’ordre des trois générations des droits de l’homme.

As the title of the article suggests, “The Burqa Ban”: Legal Precursors for Denmark, American Experiences and Experiments, and Philosophical and Critical Examinations, the authors embark on a factually investigative as well as a reflective response. More precisely, they use The 2018 Danish “Burqa Ban”: Joining a European Trend and Sending a National Message (published as a concurrent but separate article in this issue of <span>International Studies Journal</span>) as a platform for further analysis and discussion of different perspectives. These include case-law at the international level while focusing attention on recent rulings and judicial reasoning by the ECtHR and the ECJ; critical thought-experiments in religion, morality, human rights, and the democratic public space; a contextualized account of burqa-wearing interventions by federal and state governments and, moreover, various courts in the United States; and philosophical commentary and, in some instances, criticism of the Danish and/or European (French, etc.) approach. The different contributions have different aims. The section on case-law at the international level reports on those central judgments that, in effect, helped to pave the path for the Kingdom of Denmark’s burqa ban. Concerning the concurring judges at the ECtHR, the opinions served to uphold a preexisting ban and to grant a <span>wide margin of appreciation to the national authorities, thereby limiting the Court’s own review. </span> <span>As regards</span><span>to the ECJ, the legality of company rules that contain a policy of neutrality for the workplace was examined, with a similar outcome. The authors who discuss </span>religion, morality, human rights and the democratic public space are endeavoring to, respectively, appeal to ethics as a testing stone for law and to both challenge and address several forms of “expressivist worry” in connection with face veils. In doing so, the authors ask a number of thought-provoking questions that hopefully will inspire public policymakers to careful analysis. While the section that is devoted to American perspectives highlights a comprehensive survey of political and legal responses to, in particular, full-face veils like the burqa</em>, the relevant author also incorporates public perceptions and, in the course of examining these, draws a parallel to “the fate” of the hoodie. The constitutionality of burqa</em>-wearing in America, so it also appears, is partially an open question, but differentiating between religious, political, or personal reasons is a de jure</em> premise. Given that the Danish legislators who drafted law L 219 to ban burqa</em>-wearing in public places rely on a reference to political Islam, they relegate religious and personal reasons to the private domain, thereby also adopting secularism as a premise. This is explored in the last author response of the article, more precisely, in an account of the underlying materialism that, in turn, is applied to Muslim women. If policymakers and legislators engaged in Thinking Things Through exercises, they could, as a minimum, avoid law-making strategies that are not in the spirit of the theory they themselves invoke, albeit tacitly. While the aim of, as it were, arresting culturally self-contradicting legislators is unique for the section in question, all the authors who contribute to the joint research project have one end-goal in common, namely to inform about important perspectives while at the same time</em> opening up for parameters for (more) fruitful, constructive and (if need be) critical debate in the future. With this in mind, four recommendations are presented by the research director for the project. Legally, politically, socially and culturally, conflict-resolution should not translate the relationship between rulers and the ruled into a separation ideology, an instance of controllers versus</em> the controlled. All things being equal, that is the objective limit for a democratic society.