culture

Some engravings are meant to be adored and some possibly abhorred. Teacher cognition, as a meant-to-be-praised engraving, is defined by Borg (2003, p. 81) as “the unobservable cognitive dimension of teaching what teachers know, believe, and think.” This concept in teaching has recently gained momentum meaning that teachers learn so much about their teaching through the vast experience they have gathered as learners (Nespor, 1987). A teacher’s idea about teaching and the methodologies employed is largely shaped by his/her cognition about the whole story of teaching. In this study, through a structured questionnaire, some open-ended questions, and a thorough interview, the researchers tried to delve into some deep-rooted beliefs and teaching conceptions of six EFL teachers, which had led them to decide on delicate issues in the classroom. This was done with the intention to unravel the mysteries in their practice and to see if there was a way out. A few not-so-much-spotted problems are traced and a general panorama of what is going on in classes based on teachers’ cognition are depicted. Some implications and areas of research on teacher cognition are introduced at the end.

This study aimed at providing learners with an opportunity not only to bring together their core and disciplinary knowledge to acquire major skills of learning English as a foreign language (EFL), and the intellectual challenge of these issues at the interface of media, language and religion, but also help the materials generators to produce suitable types of content to be delivered through the medium of mobile technology. Therefore, it sought to examine the new way of teaching EFL in the form of correspondence with respect to Iranian learners' native culture and language. For the purposes of this study, English was the target language for 680 Iranian students with pre-intermediate level of language proficiency whose native languages were Persian, Arabic, Georgian, and Turkish. This study took as its point of departure the existence of important differences between the two learning materials (off the shelf vs. Islamic culture) types; thus, applying the Qur'ānic criteria of intelligence, knowledge and virtue parallel with the digital representation of common textbook materials, materials delivery was adapted to the cellphone screen to be accessed by learners' in 18 virtual sessions. Learners took part in two summative and 18 formative components included in the assessment design of this study. Also, they all answered a questionnaire which yielded information concerning their attitude towards the target language, and learning through the wireless technology. Learners' short texting correspondence as well as their performance in battery and their answers to items of questionnaires formed the reference for analyzing the results. The gains from English Islamic materials were outweighed by the effects of obtaining materials which involved more categorized cases.

We deal with a wide range of colors in our daily life. They are such ubiquitous phenomena that is hard and next to impossible to imagine even a single entity (be it an object, place, living creature, etc) devoid of them. They are like death and tax which nobody can dispense with. This omnipresence of colors around us has also made its way through abstract and less tangible entities via the interaction between culture and cognition. In an attempt to shed further light on the way that color meanings could be extended in different languages and cultures, the present study sought to investigate the semantic extension of Persian and English color terms based on cultural data. The findings revealed the existence of both language-idiosyncratic and general tendencies for both Persian and English languages with respect to semantic extension of color terms. It was also shown that Persian and English speakers mostly use the same mechanisms of metonymy, metaphor and sense of opposite relation based on cultural data and their experience of the physical world to develop more and more color meanings. Furthermore, the study suggested that the direction and development of the semantic domain of a color term mainly depends on its already developed semantic properties and is not accidental. Two other accidental points were also found in the study. First, the borrowing, acceptance and the usage of a color expression from another language might depend on the already developed semantic properties of the related color term in the recipient language. Second, it is possible to predict the direction and development of the new connotations and meanings of a color term in a specific language.

Language and culture are now deemed to be co-constitutive; hence English language teaching (ELT) textbooks should incorporate cultural aspects and promote intercultural competence. However, careful decisions should be made as regards to the cultural content of materials and the ways in which culture is represented. This study was an attempt to deconstruct the patterns of cultural representation and intercultural interactions in Interchange textbooks, an ELT textbook series taught to English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in Iran. Using content analysis of texts and images and with the focus on nationality, gender and race, it examined how different cultures were reflected in Interchange 1, Interchange 2, Interchange 3, and whether cultural bias or inequality was present. The quantitative and qualitative data analysis revealed that the white male group was dominant in all three textbooks. And, to use Kachru’s (1985) terms, inner, outer and expanding circle nationalities were represented in the textbooks, with the expanding circle constituting the major nationality, but American culture of inner circle was predominant. Additionally, the interactions were mainly limited to superficial aspects of the target culture although these textbooks sought to show various intercultural interactions. Dominance of male and white characters and the US culture indicated inequality in race and gender, and the superficial treatment of culture in the textbooks. Less attention to the hybrid culture and deeper level of intercultural aspects, i.e. critical reflections, in the textbooks suggests that the materials be supplemented by EFL teachers’ constructive discussion of the cultures that interact.

This research intends to explore the efficacious English teachers’ goals and strategies to effectively manage their own as well as their students’ emotions. The data of the study included interviews with 22 English teachers and 92 diary journals kept by 12 teachers who were among the top 20% of ELTEI (ELT teacher efficacy instrument) scorers and identified as efficacious English teachers. The results indicated that teachers’ goals for regulating their positive emotions included maintaining authority in relation to students, presenting unbiased teacher character, and enhancing teaching effectiveness. For regulating negative emotions, the goals included maintaining the teacher and students’ mental health, promoting teacher-student relationships, and reinforcing the image of teachers as moral guides. Teachers also used a variety of antecedent-focused and response-focused strategies hierarchically for effective emotion management including situation selection, situation modification, attention deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation. The findings were discussed with reference to the role of culture in emotion regulation and effectiveness of different sub-strategies. The results may promise some implications for teacher education programs and teacher educators about the inclusion of professional development opportunities for EFL teachers in terms of effective emotion management

An understanding of language as ‘open, dynamic, constantly evolving and personal encompasses the rich complexities of communication (Shohamy, 2007, p.5). Knowing about the important role of culture as well as psychological aspects of language can give us a broader view of languageteaching and learning. In order to obtain a better understanding of different aspects of language teaching, the present study aims to investigate the possible relationship between Iranian EFL teachers’home-culture attachment and its underlying components, with their emotional intelligence. To this aim two questionnaires namely: Home culture Attachment/dependency and Bar-On EI test were distributed among 80 EFL teachers, both men and women who taught at different levels in state schools in Birjand, Kermanshah and Zabol. Data were analyzed using Pearson’s correlation coefficient and multiple regressions. Finally results of the study revealed no significant relationship between Iranian EFL teachers’ home culture attachment and its underlying components, with their emotional intelligence. The most important result of this study is bringing about awareness for EFL teachers, EFL syllabus designers, teacher educators and policy makers about the important factors in cultural attachment or detachment of Iranian EFL teachers that consequently affects their teaching and transfer of cultural values into their students.

The relationship between language and culture has become a rich source of inquiry in the context of English language teaching. Learning materials can depict cultural content in different cultural senses, namely aesthetic, sociological, semantic, and pragmatic. The present study aimed to investigate the way cultural aspects are represented in the reading and dialog sections of global ( American English File) and localized ( The ILI English Series) ELT textbooks which are widely used in Iran. The framework adopted to analyze the cultural contents of the materials was Adaskou, Britten, and Fahsi (1990) to explore how culture in aesthetic and sociological senses is realized in the series. The findings demonstrated that more emphasis was put on the sociological sense and that this aspect of the culture dominated the aesthetic sense in the cultural contents of the two series. The cultural and culture-free contents represented in the two global and localized series were found to be entirely different in frequency and sense realization. Most of the contents in the localized series were culture-free, while the culture-free contents in the global series were reasonably less than the sociological and aesthetic senses. Additionally, the findings revealed that compared with the worldwide series, the localized textbook was less representative of cultural features in sociological and aesthetic senses. The results imply that ELT materials should be inclusive enough regarding the sociological and aesthetic senses of culture to help learners get engaged in the development of their cultural understanding.

This paper examines intergenerational transmission associated with population dynamics from sociological approach. The discussion is based on the analysis of observations in a country that has experienced substantial changes in family formation resulting in one of the world's most spectacular falls in women's birth rate ever experienced in human history: Iran. Facing fundamental historical experiences and substantial socio-cultural changes over the past decades, the context of this study acts as a unique ‘social laboratory’ to survey the intergenerational comparisons. The results of this analysis show substantial intergenerational transmission, which provide new evidence to support Sauvey's (1978) and Weeks's (1994) socio-demographic investigations in some other developing countries

The scopes of this research were to analyze the semiotic and cultural aspects of 30 English and Persian advertising slogans of various brands and also to reveal the functions of advertising elements used in the advertising teasers. The slogans were sampled for the analysis on the random basis from the internet sources. The writer used descriptive qualitative method to describe and analyze the semiotic elements; objects; verbal and nonverbal dimensions of advertisements. The semiotic model used in this analysis was Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic framework. The researcher identified the frequency of cultural and advertising elements used in the advertising slogans in order to illustrate the techniques used by the companies. The findings of the present research indicated that among the advertising elements, shots, color, and music were used more in the 15 English advertising teasers, but in 15 Persian advertising teasers, shots and color were used more than the other advertising elements. In addition, the functions of semiotic and cultural elements in advertising are as follows: they convey the messages more vividly and comprehensively, facilitate the communication between the advertisers and audiences, indicate the truths and facts in a different way, evoke the awareness and conscience of people in order to help others, convey a piece of information about the advertisement, make reference to a concrete or imaginary reality associated with the values of the advertised product or service, and build a bridge for social groups and various communities.

This study considers the enhancement of socio-cultural competence of EFL students by means of extra-curricular activities. In this study, both control and experimental groups included 80 language learners (each group 40). The control group was given the questionnaires, pre- and post-tests along with the experimental group. Then, extracurricular activities were given to the experimental group which itself was divided into four mini groups. 10 participants were asked to prepare a self-video clip each week (4 clips as whole). Another group of 10 testees were asked to use social networks such as Facebook, What’s app, Telegram and the likes chatting with native speakers at least two hours a day involving themselves in English practice after taking pre-test and they were also given the subsequent post-test after a month. The third mini group, including 10 participants, had to write a letter each week to a native speaker e-pal (4 letters as whole). Finally, the fourth mini group including 10 participants participating at least once a week in ACD (American Corner Dushanbe) sessions which are related to social cultural events such as festivals, charity activities, etc. After that, research questionnaires were distributed among samples using SPSS software for data analysis. The author come to the conclusion that culture-related extra-curricular activities result in the enhancement of the level of language proficiency as well as contribute a lot to bringing up citizens, intellectually, culturally and multi-culturally developed professionals with deep awareness of intercultural values.

This study aimed, firstly, to investigate the underlying components of Iranian cultural identity and, secondly, to confirm the aforementioned components via Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis. In order to achieve these goals, the researchers reviewed the extensive local and international literature on language, culture and identity. Based on the literature and consultations with a group of 30 university undergraduate and post graduate learners English language learners and a cadre of four university professors in the field of sociology, an Iranian EFL Language Learners’ Cultural Identity Model with six components (Nationality, Religion, Arts, Persian Language and Literature, Media, and Globalization) was hypothesized. In order to test and validate the model, a questionnaire was developed. To probe the reliability of the questionnaire, Cronbach’s Alpha was used. The reliability of all the items in the questionnaire was 0.78. To estimate the construct validity of the model, Exploratory Factor Analysis using PCA was performed, which indicated five components (Religion, Arts, Persian Language and Literature, Media, and Globalization) underlying Iranian Cultural Identity. Then, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis through AMOS 22 was performed to test the model and the interaction among the components. The SEM results confirmed the existence of five factors. Finally, statistical results are discussed and implications are provided.

This paper seeks to probe cultural agendas pertaining to the images of celebrities in the widely-used English language textbooks. In fact, while visual analysis has solidified its position in ELT (e.g. Hurst, 2014; Mitsikopoulou, 2015; Romney, 2012; Taylor-Mendes, 2009) and caused the pendulum to swing away from the grammatical or textual content to the visual presentation (Giaschi, 2000), research into celebrities as the cultural representatives has been a barely touched issue. To address this gap, the researchers, drawing on Kachru’s (1985) orthodox model of the usage of English across the globe, examined the images of celebrities in four widely-used English language textbook series. In so doing, the terms depiction and mention (Toprak & Aksoyalp, 2014) were taken as a yardstick to pinpoint the type of intersection between the text and the image. Further, the images were thematically explored, which notably indicated the images relating to the field of media were the far most common theme in the English language textbooks. Lastly, it was revealed that whereas the images of the inner-circle outnumbered all, the images of the expanding circle surprisingly outnumbered those of the outer circle, an outcome which could point to linguistic schizophrenia (Kachru, 1992) as the main reason.

Since 1950s, Iran and Saudi Arabia have considered each other as a rival and competition between two countries includes a wide range of issues. This field of competition along with a number of material and spiritual factors has caused conflicts in the relations of Tehran-Riyadh. Owing to this fact, a series of perceptions have occupied their minds which can be called a discourse. The discourse consisted of a set of factors such as religion, ethnicity and the nature of the political system. This research seeks to study the role and position of culture in advent of conflicts in Iran and Saudi Arabia’s relations. The methodology of the article is based on data analysis and content analysis. The results of the research indicate that the dualization of Arab/Ajam, Shiite-Sunni antagonism, and the conservative/ revolutionary approaches are the cultural foundations of conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia. These findings show that an increase in cultural interactions, especially through non-governmental organizations and informal channels can reform perceptions and decrease tensions. Iran and Saudi Arabia can improve relations through emphasis on common grounds e.g. common beliefs, common interests in confrontation terrorism and stability in region.

Though personality factors and language learning strategies have been extensively examined over the last three decades, we have witnessed a dearth of studies zooming in on these issues from a cultural perspective within the Iranian context. Additionally, few studies have investigated whether personality factors can predict the choice of language learning strategies in an Iranian EFL context. In response to these shortcomings, a group of Iranian EFL learners were administered Big Five Factors Inventory (Goldberg 1993), Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (Oxford 1990) and Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (Mokhtari & Reichard 2002). It was found that the Iranian EFL learners could highly or moderately used the language learning strategies. It was also found that personality factors could predict the use of some language learning strategies in the cultural context of Iran. It was concluded that cultural norms could modulate some aspects of personality and language learning strategies and consequently some aspects of personality could predict the choice of particular language learning strategies. An awareness of learners’ personality factors and the way they shape the language learning strategies can contribute to successful language learning and optimally help teachers devise appropriate teaching techniques.

An underlying theoretical point of this paper has been that if fundamental commitments and the questions of cultural identity that they bring with them (What is an X?) are understood in terms of functional analyses of the kind I have tried to give in the case of Islamic identity today, then there is scope to see these commitments as susceptible to various criticisms in the particular context of a conflict in which they might figure.  All this seems to me to offer far more scope and interest to moral philosophy than Williams allows it, even after granting to Williams the validity of the central role he gives to the idea of fundamental commitment and the validity of his critique of traditional moral philosophy. <br />  The paper has studied the question "What is a Muslim?" in the dialectic of a conflict arising out of a concern for Islamic Reform.  The conflict is one that arises because of moderate Muslims' fundamental commitment to a doctrine which contains features that are often effectively invoked by the absolutists whom moderate Muslims fundamentally oppose.  If a full analysis of the commitment reveals its defensive function which have disabled Muslims from a creative and powerful opposition to the absolutists, and if, moreover, this function of the commitment is diagnosed as itself based on a deep but common philosophical fallacy, it should be possible then for moderate Muslims to think there way out of this conflict and to transform the nature of their commitment to Islam, so that it is not disabling in that way. <br />The question of identity, "What is a Muslim?", then, will get very different answers before and after this dialectic about reform has played itself out.   The dialectic, thus, preserves the negotiability of the concept of identity and the methodological points I began with, at the same time as it situates and explains the urgency and fascination that such questions hold for us.

The recent creation of the Human Rights Council at the United Nations constituted another opportunity for the United States to take positive leadership towards a greater level of human rights implementation.  This opportunity for significant and timely paradigm shift has passed with too little fanfare.  The US refusal to run for election to the HRC, while not a crippling blow, does deprive it of the influence of the most powerful nation in the world.  The US’ ability and willingness to evade scrutiny of its human rights record is an important symbolic setback for human rights progress.  This most recent disappointing performance leaves a leadership vacuum which other less powerful nation-states are unlikely to fill.  <br />Are nation-states willing to or capable of generating a shift towards more complete fulfillment of global human rights?  If not, what other actors might take a “prime mover” role?   <br />Market forces are hugely important and dynamic actors, both globally and locally.  Businesses considered as a whole are immensely powerful in the lives of ordinary people and in global scope and influence.  However they don’t consistently act for the benefit of human rights at a global level because of their great heterogeneity, their motives, and their origins.  Economic institutions that interact directly with global markets are primarily concerned with nation-states development and trade policies.  These bodies pressure some nation-states to improve their human rights records.  However, the current major bodies depend on nation-states to enforce their rulings or provide their funding.  Furthermore their influence is reduced vis-à-vis more powerful nation-states, and their direct interaction with local communities is limited.  The help and participation of the international business community is vital, but cannot be relied upon as the catalyst for a paradigm shift in human rights implementation. <br />Religious institutions are uniquely situated to influence human rights implementation because of the function they perform – describing right and wrong conduct, the way things are and the way they should be.  The sheer numbers of people in the major world religions gives them potential to influence global human rights.  Religions engage in intensely localized action which is crucial for tangible human rights work.  They also possess a guiding structure which is necessary to achieve more equitable distribution of rights for all.  People are capable of influencing their surroundings, and religious belief structures can help to synchronize their efforts for change in a positive way.  <br />It is therefore necessary to describe and analyze how effective religious institutions might be in achieving increased human rights implementation.  Significant hurdles include at least current and past violent conflicts between people of different faiths, clashing belief structures, intolerance and extremism within religious groups, and the problem of influencing a diverse group of believers to perform any distinct action as a whole.  Unfortunately, religions have historically generated a great deal of human suffering, as well as advances in human rights.  <br />One way for religious institutions to influence a shift to greater human rights implementation is in acting as an organized moral restraint for governments.  This paper will attempt to identify areas in which the major religions have commonalities which are promising for joint human rights actions.  Additionally, it will include a focus on methods which religious groups have used to influence their governments for the purpose of bringing about positive change.

Culture is an inseparable part of a language. In other words, mastering a language and being able to communicate through it inevitably entails integrating with the culture of the speakers of that language which is the reflection of people's identity. The aim of the present study was designing a model of Iranian cultural identity. Initially, to select a homogeneous sample of learners at the advanced level, 300 language learners at the advanced level took TOEFL and 180 learners were chosen as the participants of the study. The cultural identity model was designed by the use of interviews and literature review to come up with main components of cultural identity. Afterwards, participants were interviewed about their identity and four components comprising Iranian cultural identity were identified. The results of the factors analysis showed that raw data converged to a pattern with four components which fit the hypothesized model of cultural identity. Then, the cultural identity questionnaire was given to participants. The results of statistical analyses indicated that there was a significant negative relationship between cultural identity and language achievement of the participants.