British Diplomacy in Bulgaria During the Cold War

The article surveys the British diplomatic goals, activities and efforts in Bulgaria during the Cold war. It argues that the British embassy in Sofia seemed to focus not only on the country itself but to be more or less an instrument to a large degree in light of the British interests in the Balkan region and a wider geopolitical field (USSR, East Europe, Turkey). British diplomats always acted in the context of the prevailing Bulgarian proximity of Germany and Russia, and constant fear of Turkey. The mission was mainly interested in the Russian sphere of influence in Bulgaria, Muslim minority issues and regional developments on the Balkans

L2 Learners’ Proficiency Development through Noticing Feedback

This experimental study investigated the relationship between noticing of corrective feedback and L2 development considering the learners’ perspective on error correction. Specifically, it aimed to uncover the noticeability and effectiveness of recasts, prompts, a combination of the two, to determine a relationship between noticing of CF and learning of the past tense. The participants were four groups of college ESL learners (n = 40). Each group was assigned to a treatment condition, but the researcher taught the control group. CF was provided to learners in response to their mistakes in forming the past tense. While noticing of CF was assessed through immediate recall and questionnaire responses, learning outcomes were measured through picture description administered via pre-test, post-test, and delayed post-test design. Learner beliefs about CF were probed by means of a 40-item questionnaire. The results indicated that the noticeability of CF is dependent on the grammatical target it addresses and that the feedback techniques that push learners to self-correct alone or in combination with target exemplars are more effective in. In relation to the learning outcomes, the overall past tense accuracy increased more than that for questions, but there were no significant differences between the groups. Finally, in relation to the beliefs about CF, the participants’ responses centered on the importance of oral CF, recasts as CF technique, prompts as CF technique, and affective consequences of CF, two of which mediated the noticeability of the supplied CF, but none impacted the learning outcomes

Ethnic Conflict between the Muslims and Christians in Nigeria: The Dilemma of Decision-Making of the Political Elites

This paper examines how ethnic conflict occurred as a result of actions or decisions made by either local  government, state or federal government in Nigeria. Ethnic conflict can be triggered due to various factors, such geographical proximity, group identity, deliberate manipulation of negative perceptions by political leaders, competition of resources, weakness of political institution transitions to democracy, and etc. However, the main focus of this paper is the implementation of Shari’a law in the Northern Nigeria and how the decisions and the implementations have led to blood-shed conflicts in the country. In general, a number of blood-shed events that occurred in Nigeria are also due to the process of decision-making by the political elites that could not fulfil the requirements of the respective ethnic groups. The implications had been overwhelmingly devastating in the country. Uncountable lives were lost via mayhem and blood-shed wars. Homes, shops and properties were destroyed. The economic implications of ethnic conflict have resulted in unequal distribution of resources among individual, groups and regions within the country. The growing economic disparities may increase the fear of those ethnic groups that are disadvantaged; this has warranted that the ignorant masses are often being remote and mobilized by the political class to engage in religious crisis in order to achieve their selfish political interests. In the same vein, similar ethnic based political movements have arisen in Nigeria. Therefore, decision-making is one source that could lead to ethnic conflict in a multi-cultural and ethnic country like Nigeria. Decision-making approach was used to examine the scene of conflict by focusing only on the religious conflict between Muslims and Christians in the country

A Comparative Study of Post-Marriage Nationality of Women in Legal Systems of Different Countries

In the nineteenth century a school known as “The Unity System of Couples Nationality” stated the idea that women should acquire the nationality of their husbands after marriage. In other words, the nationality of men should be imposed on women. However, in the 20th century, a movement known as feminism emerged which led to the formation of a school named “System of Nationality Independence”. This school advocated the separation of marriage and nationality and believed that women’s nationality should not change following marriage. The aforementioned legal schools have had different manifestations in the positive laws of different countries and sometimes it is hard to classify them into a single legal school. The legal systems of countries can be classified into two groups: legal systems advocating the imposition of husbands’ nationality on wives; legal systems opposing the imposition of husbands’ nationality on wives

The Avatars of Culture in Website Localization

The aim of the present paper is to investigate the most important cultural aspects involved in website localization by drawing on the data obtained from a number of Iranian website localizers. A questionnaire was given to 18 participants with varied degrees of expertise and experience who worked on website localization projects in either of English ↔ Persian, Arabic ↔ Persian, and French ↔ Persian directions for at least 3 years. The participants of the study were asked to rate as many factors as they perceived crucial in determining the cultural content of websites. Variables as diverse as ideology, pictures, symbols, colors, branding, navigation, and the written content were investigated. The questionnaire measured the importance of cultural variables and the items were evaluated on a scale of 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree). A final item asked why the localizers found any of the cultural variables difficult to localize. The results of the study show that ideology, pictures, and symbols were considered to be the most important variables in website localization, while localization of branding was the trickiest. This study emphasizes the unique cultural nature of website localization based on the analysis of the examples provided by the participants