Authenticity

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the authenticity of IELTS academic tests. Bachman and Palmer (1996, p. 23) define authenticity as “the degree of correspondence of the characteristics of a given language test task to the features of a target language task”. Authenticity is then an important aspect of testing since it describes the relationship between the test and the real world. The participants of this study included 80 Iranian IELTS test takers who took IELTS academic test in 2014 and 2015, and 100 lecturers of university and IELTS teachers. Twenty IELTS test takers also were interviewed to collect the required qualitative part of data. The data were gathered through a semi-structured interview and authenticity checklist. Descriptive statistics used to analyze the collected data. The findings of the study showed that IELTS academic tests are not authentic in terms of tone, format, channel, form and scope of interaction. Moreover, mostly the interviewees stated that answering the items in IELTS academic test requires specific techniques and test takers can not succeed without mastering these techniques.   

Hundreds of stray coins are being donated every year to different Iranian museums but it is difficult to establish their authenticities due to lack of knowledge about places of their findings. Part of these stray metallic pieces is related to Parthians. Due to their lengthy rule, of about five centuries, Parthian coins form important part of numismatic collection at the museums. Authors have taken Reza Abbasi Museum at Tehran as case study to review the authenticity of those coins. A comparison between statistical data and available historical records give a vivid idea about the genuineness and forgery of these metallic pieces. As such, this article attempts to show the genuineness of some of the coins by taking into account statistical data from early Parthian kings and their comparison with the available historical documents.

The present study seeks to argue the ethical values of the narrative strategies in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, a post-postmodern novel by the Indian author Arundhati Roy. To carry out the research, the prominent features of James Phelan’s rhetorical theory of narrative and Charles Taylor’s ethical philosophy are examined. By applying such interdisciplinary approaches, the researchers investigate the characters' ethical positions in their quest for "authenticity" and "recognition" by focusing on the novel’s "ethics of the told" and "ethics of the telling." The study indicates the characters' attempt to reach full awareness of their in-depth inclinations and their quest to achieve an authentic self. Living in India's multicultural context, though suffering from non-/mis-recognition by others, Roy’s major characters can become authentic, free, and fulfilled through seeing the world and its people out of pure love for collective goodness. Eventually, highlighting the aesthetic strategies and authorial creativity provides a horizon to comprehend the different outlooks towards the ethical values and commitments that circulate freely within the novel's narrative world.

Although today it is common to categorize spiritual tourism separately as a type of tourism, spirituality can be found at the heart of any travel. What might be taken as granted is that the tourist is going to add something to his/her self and, in this respect, some degree of spirituality can be sought in every type of tourism. Therefore, through entrepreneurship and innovation it would be possible to focus on the development of businesses which are able to offer some degree of spirituality to tourists according to their needs. This paper seeks to provide a deeper view of the relationship between authentic experiences and spiritual tourism and the role of entrepreneurship in utilizing this relationship in order to enrich tourists’ experiences. In other words, the spiritual dimension of every type of tourism is discussed and the necessity of its reinforcement through entrepreneurship in tourism and a systematic approach towards the issue is considered.

Nowadays, the generated and shared content on tourist perceptions in social media is considered a fresh and far-reaching way to introduce the concept of the destination image. Destination decision-makers attempt to use this content to provide a deep understanding of tourism supply and demand. Marketers have to be particular about it when defining a proper destination image. In this regard, many researchers have emphasized the importance of using social media to tap into tourists’ perceptions of destination because it not only helps to deepen the administrators’ understanding of the demands of this type of tourism and to propose new approaches to determine the customers’ preferences in destination marketing but also directs new products and services to satisfy the tourists to a greater extent. Depending on the type of tourism, the contexts and criteria for this kind of virtual investigation are different. For example, in cultural destinations, tourists’ perceptions of tangible and intangible cultural heritage and services and products offered in virtual contexts are regarded as a tool to assess the tourists’ perceptions of that destination. The present study assumes that a holistic approach toward the analysis of tourist perception in the virtual sphere could be a well-qualified alternative to determine tourists’ wants in cultural destinations. Content analysis, which is a practical method in analyzing visual and textual data and  therefore is quite pertinent to the analysis of tourist perceptions, was adopted as the data analysis instrument in this study. To collect the data, two frequently-visited and widely-used websites with easy access to tourists’ comments, namely TripAdvisor and Flickr , were selected so that tourists’ experiences and perceptions could be gathered more authentically and conveniently. The findings demonstrated that the analysis of perceived authenticity of cultural destinations in Iran could provide the content required to create a destination image for purposeful marketing in Iran. Perceived Authenticity was categorized into three main themes: emotional, sensational, and rational.

This study explored possible reasons why IELTS candidates usually score low in writing by investigating the effects of two different test designs and scoring criteria on Iranian IELTS candidates’ obtained grades in IELTS and World Englishes (WEs) essay writing tests. To this end, first, a WEs essay writing test was preliminarily designed. Then, 17 Iranian IELTS candidates wrote two essays on the same topic, one under the IELTS test condition and one under the WEs test condition. Each of the 34 obtained essays was scored six times, three times based on IELTS scoring criteria, each time by a different rater, and then, three times based on WEs scoring criteria. The results of repeated-measures ANOVA showed that test design and scoring criteria had significant effects on essay grades. The study concludes that some of the reasons why IELTS candidates usually score low in writing may be rooted in the test design and scoring criteria of the IELTS essay writing test, not necessarily in IELTS candidates’ weaknesses in writing. The implications of the study focus on the importance and relevance of the results to IELTS candidates, international students, and the future of assessing writing in World Englishes contexts.

The Heideggerian theme of authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) proves crucial to the task of fundamental ontology that Heidegger pursues in Being and Time. Unfortunately, clear and textually based commentary on this notion of authenticity has been sparse. Many prominent readings of authenticity fail to stay true to its purpose in Being and Time, opting instead to render a stronger existentialist reading than is warranted. While such readings of authenticity are truly fascinating as independent conceptions worthy of philosophical attention, they cannot be properly ascribed to Heidegger or the project of Being and Time. The present essay serves as an attempt to correct this course in the scholarship, offering a textually supported account of authenticity that recognizes its role as that which makes manifest the transparency that everyday Dasein lacks—a transparency that can do away with self-concealments and assist Heidegger in his pursuit of an answer to the question of Being qua Being.

This study represents the inaugural attempt at assessing the authenticity of the tasks encompassed in the IELTS Speaking Module. The evaluation is conducted from the vantage points of applied linguistics and general education, and serves to enhance comprehension of authenticity and authentic assessment. In order to achieve this objective, an analysis was conducted on the Speaking Module tasks using Bachman and Palmer's (1996; 2010) model of test usefulness from the discipline of applied linguistics, as well as Herrington and Herrington's (1998; 2006) inventory of the fundamental attributes of genuine assessment from the realm of general education. The results of both task analyses revealed low indices of authenticity of the tasks. The high degree of the convergence of the results from the analyses could open new horizons to experts in applied linguistics to exchange ideas about authentic language assessment with those in general education. Furthermore, such characteristics as problem-solving skills, higher-order thinking skills, integrated assessment, and multiple indicators of learning, are not included in Bachman and Palmer’s framework.