Many studies in language learning have indicated that listening comprehension plays an important role in the learning process. In spite of its importance, listening has been ignored in second language learning, research, and teaching. The purpose of the present article is to define the terms listening and listening comprehension, review the components of listening, explain teachers’ role in listening comprehension, and present the general principles of listening comprehension. The literature review demonstrated that learners’ listening comprehension skill can be improved by teachers’ assistance and the use of appropriate learning materials and activities.
Strategic management contexts usually define a couple of activities, including preparing a mission statement, which is one of the essential parts in developing the strategic plan of an organization. Numerous researches in the strategic management literature have expressed the attributes of an effectively written mission statement for a firm in general. Although the corporate mission statement and its components vary from industry to industry, none of the researchers have specifically studied the components of a corporate mission statement in the petroleum industry. In this study, the general components of the corporate mission statement were extracted and listed based on the strategic management literature review. Then, the most important components of the corporate mission statement specific to the petroleum industry were selected using the industry experts’ opinions. The grey systems theory was utilized to aggregate the expert judgments that are qualitative in nature. Fourteen components for the petroleum industry corporate mission statement were selected as the research results. Whether developing a new business or reformulating direction for an ongoing company in the petroleum industry, these specific components should be included in the content of the corporate mission statement.
The certain components of rhythmic and musical features in poetry are on the focus of this study. Nizami Ganjavi (died 608 AH/1387AD) is the author of the melodic romantic and lyrical poems in Khosrow and Shirin poem collection in Persian Literature. To create this distinctive and prominent work, he masterfully and carefully used all the elements and techniques of poetical music. Many of the poems in this collection owe their unique harmony and attraction to this quality. In the present study, an inductive approach is adopted to analyze each of the musical components of poetry and the related components including the side music (including rhyme, refrain, and repetition), exterior music (metrics and prosody), spiritual music (the taxis and contradiction literary devices), and interior music (alliteration and repetition of consonants and vowels) to study the quality of these components in Khosrow and Shirin poem collection. For each component in the poetical music category, the related definitions and descriptions are presented based on the ancient and classical books of traditional rhetoric in Persian literature and the general knowledge of phonology. In this research, I have transcribed the verses in using the international phonetic alphabet to make it easier for foreigners to read the verses for obtaining the specific findings of this study.
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has recently been the focus of numerous studies in language education since it aims to overcome the pitfalls of form-focused and meaning-focused instruction by systematically integrating content and language. This meta-analysis aims to synthesize the findings of 22 primary studies that tested the effect of CLIL on language skills and components. Guiding the analysis are three questions: What is the overall combined effect of CLIL on language skills and components? How do moderators condition the effect of CLIL? To what extent the overall combined effect is conditioned by publication bias? The overall effect size was found to be g=0.81, which represents a medium effect size with respect to Plonsky and Oswald’s (2014) scale. The results of moderator analysis show that CLIL has the highest effect on students’ grammar and listening proficiency and in lower levels of education, especially in elementary schools. It also has the highest effect when combined with hotel management as the subject matter. Fail-safe N test of publication bias shows that the significant positive outcome of CLIL cannot be accounted for by publication bias. The findings have clear implications for practitioners, researchers and curriculum developers.
Purpose: The purpose of the present study was Presentation of Competency Model Needed by Elementary Education Graduates of Farhangian University based on the theory Deliberative Inquiry. The method of qualitative research, type of phenomenology and content analysis, was a statistical society of faculty members in the field of curriculum and all scientific sources and documents. Method: The semi-structured interview data collection method and the use of checklist and encoding were used. Also, for interpreting the data, an interpretative analysis method was used. Findings: The results of the research show that the experts of the curriculum have considered contemplative, developing thinking, arts and aesthetics, perception, problem solving, decision making, skill orientation, and professional development. Conclusion: Accordingly, four main curriculum elements Flexibly, including educational goals, educational content, teaching methods and evaluation, were analyzed and the optimal model of elementary curriculum for teacher students of Farhangian University was designed in 3 main areas of knowledge, attitude and ability (skill), and was evaluated and validated The validation results show that the proposed pattern is relatively favorable.
The main purpose of this research is to explore various countries experiences about developing blended learning system in distance education universities. Blended learning, as a third wave in developing learning environment, has become commonplace after the resident and e-learning environments in universities. The goal of this movement is improving learning qualities, extending the boundaries of education and decreasing educational costs. In this study, a qualitative approach and a comparative method were used. The qualitative method was used to understand the social contexts of distance education universities and comparative approach was applied to compare universities in terms of observable categories. Among 17 distance mega universities in the world, four universities, including Indirah Gandhi National Open University in India, Anadulu Open University in Turkey, Open University of China ( OUC) , and Alberta Open University in Canada were selected using purposeful sampling. The data collecting tool consisted of a checklist that was prepared with emphasis on 10 categories of social and cultural features of the countries including general situation of public and higher education, distance education, policies related to blended learning, learning management system, content development and presenting method, learning activities and resources, support system, interaction systems, teaching and assessment method, and evaluation system of learning quality. The required data were also collected through note taking procedure from sites of universities and related articles and books. For data collection and analysis, George Brody's four-step method ( Description, Interpretation, Proximity, and Comparison) was used . At first, required data was gathered from articles, university web sites, and interaction with informed people through note taking. Next, data were interpreted after continuous review with regard to university social and cultural contexts. In the third stage, data was organized and categorized based on similarity and differences and then were compared. Results showed that each four universities uses British open university framework in organizational structure. Each university included blending learning in their system based on their polices. Along with self-learning textual content, the universities started providing electronic content and designing learning activates with using ICT possibilities, while the Athabasca University emphasizes on individual and group learning activities. In each four universities, using educational TV as a learning aid is common place. Support services system in each university is Commensurate with social and cultural conditions. Online synchronous and asynchronous teaching is part of teaching activities in each university, but its quality is different. Learning assessment in different in four universities, but formative and summative evaluations are emphasized in all universities. Quality assurance system in Athabasca and OUC is based on PLAR, in Anadolu University based on the Bologna scheme, and in Indirah Gandhi, based on Council of Higher Education. In this research, for developing blended learning in Payame Noor University, a framework is provided at the end.