مطالب

Due to the importance of accurate tourism demand estimation, the evaluation of estimating approaches is still ongoing. To address this challenge, the current study aimed to present a novel estimation statistical approach for modifying ARIMA to compare with two most prominent soft computing approaches, ANN and SVM. ARIMAadj is the modified ARIMA seasonal adjustment that declares a potential replacement to conventional ARIMA. Current study investigated the accuracy of seasonal adjustment on conventional ARIMA and compared its accuracy with ANN and SVM in estimating tourist demand of Asian countries to South Korea. The results show that the modified ARIMA outperform the soft computing approaches for tourism demand estimation accuracy of five out of six source Asian countries. Therefore, it could be concluded although there is no optimal approach to estimate tourist arrivals with certainty, the findings of this study show that the seasonal adjustment in ARIMA would be a worthwhile model to estimate tourism demand of Asian countries.

Mosques represent Islamic art and identity and have displayed themselves in each geographical region in a way compatible with the culture and identity of that society. The significance of this research lies in its meticulous examination of early mosques within two dis tinct cultural and societal contexts, Iran and China. By inves tigating these mosques' architectural, cultural, and spatial attributes, this s tudy sheds light on the divergent approaches of two communities facing the same religious, social, environmental, and cultural challenges during a comparable his torical period. Despite sharing the same religious foundation and featuring similar spatial arrangements within the mosques, the contras ting cultural affinities reveal the crucial need to comprehend and appreciate the dis tinctive qualities inherent to early mosques in these two dis tinct cultural spheres. This research endeavor is a pioneering exploration toward unraveling the complexities surrounding early mosques, thereby deepening our unders tanding of their his torical and cultural significance in disparate cultural contexts. The research methodology involves a comprehensive review of library sources, articles, and software analysis using Depthmap X. As a result, and mosques have been compared based on the four main dimensions of architecture: spatial, conceptual, and philosophical s tructural features. Iranian mosques demons trate a fusion of Saudi Arabian Islamic architecture and Iranian design, emphasizing entrance connectivity. Chinese mosques, on the other hand, blend Islamic elements with ancient Chinese architectural art, prioritizing courtyard connectivity and integrating environmental elements, resulting in a dis tinctly Asian flavor.

This study examines the effect of the 4/3/2 technique on Iranian EFL learners' speaking fluency while also investigating the moderating role of working memory (WM). The study involved sixty EFL learners attending a language institute in Shiraz. The participants, aged 14 to 18, all shared Persian as their first language and had pre-intermediate proficiency in English. A pretest-posttest control group design was employed, with participants randomized into experimental and control groups. The 4/3/2 technique was implemented in the experimental group (EG), where learners performed a monologue task thrice, each under increasing time constraints. The control group (CG) received teacher-fronted sessions. Pre- and post-test measures of L2 oral fluency were collected using syllables per minute, with WM span assessed using a reading-span test. The results demonstrated a significant improvement in oral fluency in the EG compared to the CG. Furthermore, learners with higher WM demonstrated greater gains in fluency following the intervention. The findings suggest that the 4/3/2 technique holds promise for enhancing speaking fluency in EFL learners, with individual differences in WM span influencing the effectiveness of the intervention. These findings have implications for language teaching pedagogy and underscore the importance of considering cognitive factors in language learning interventions. The implications of this study extend to various stakeholders in language education, including language teachers, learners, materials developers, syllabus designers, policymakers, and teacher educators. By integrating these insights into language instruction and teacher training programs, educators and policymakers can work towards fostering more effective and engaging language learning experiences for learners

Teacher identity has been studied from several perspectives. However, the present study makes an attempt to investigate the process of identity formation through narrative telling from the framework of complexity theory. In a case study design semi-structured interview data and teacher-produced diaries of a novice Iranian English teacher were analyzed in order to identify attractors of identity formation. As a result, four major attractors that had the strongest effect on the process of identity formation were detected. Then the mechanisms through which these attractors exerted influence on identity formation are discussed. Finally, it has been argued that narrative construction of identity requires the individual to stress different aspects of their identity at different times; and that the phase shifts that occurred when the identity system moved in the direction of another attractor were triggered by the moment-to-moment requirements of narrative formation. The findings are followed by a discussion of pedogogical and theoretical implications.

This study aimed to investigate the impact of self-regulation training and instruction on EFL learners’ short-term andlong-term retention of English vocabulary in online classes. The design of the present study was a quasi-experimental pre-test post-test control group design. The participants of this study included 60 Iranian maleintermediate EFL learners chosen from among 68 learners studying English at a private language institute inKerman, Iran based on their PET scores. The original sample was selected through convenience sampling. Theparticipants’ ages ranged from 17 to 30. The following instruments were used in this study: a Preliminary EnglishTest (PET) and two researcher-made vocabulary tests. To analyze the data, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test,Descriptive statistics and Repeated Measures ANOVA were used and according to the results of data analysis, self-regulation training and instruction had a significant effect on EFL learners’ short-term and long-term retention ofEnglish vocabularies in online classes. The findings have some implications for EFL teachers, EFL learners, andcurriculum planners.