THE IMPLEMENTATION OF TEACHING GENRE IN L2 LISTENING CLASSROOM: IRANIAN PRE-INTERMEDIATE EFL LEARNERS IN FOCUS

This study tries to implement genre-based instruction in Iranian pre-intermediate EFL learners’ L2 listening skill. Moreover, it aims to investigate if genre-based instruction impacts the listening skills of EFL learners at different skill levels equally. To achieve this goal, 60 EFL learners have been selected. These were split into groups A and B. Groups A and B, respectively, consisted of 30 and 30 members. Group A was split into experimental and control groups and administered the pre and posttest of listening skills. Findings from one-way ANCOVA showed that because of using genre-based instruction, the experimental group outperformed the control group. Group B was also classified into proficient and less-proficient classes as demonstrated by the proficiency test; each administered two pre-and posttest of listening. Nonetheless, the findings of one-way ANCOVA revealed that both classes were improved from pretest to posttest; the professional group performed remarkably better than the less skilled group. Generally speaking, the results of this study showed that GBT is a key and crucial factor in developing listening comprehension

Quality evaluation and stability index determination of Qom rural drinking water resources

Background and Aims: Corrosion and scaling are among the problems that despite science advancement, water facilities are still faced it. Corrosion lead to financial and health losses on water supply system and consumer, scaling also causes clogging and head loss in water supply network. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine the corrosion and scaling potential of Qom villages water supply sources.Materials and Methods: In cross-sectional study 100 samples in 12 months from 2011 to 2012 were collected to verify the water quality according to 1053 standard of Institute of Standards and Industrial Research of Iran (ISIRI). Then water corrosion and scaling were studied using Langelier, Ryznar, Aggressive and Puckorius indexes.Results: The results showed that the Langelier index, Reynar index, aggressive or corrosion index and index Puckorius were -1.62 (±0.11), 10.5 (±0.17), 12.03 (±0.14) and 9.92 (±0.13) respectively. Physical and chemical parameters of the water showed that the mean pH, TDS, total hardness, turbidity, calcium, magnesium, fluoride, sodium, ammonia, phosphate, and chloride were 7.27, 1205.29 mg/L, 435.661 mg/L CaCO3, 0.747 NTU, 132.29 mg/L, 25.58 mg/L, 0.68 mg/L, 245.50 mg/L, 0.015 mg/L, 0.17 mg/L and 231.22 mg/L respectively.Conclusion: The amounts of color, TDS, turbidity, pH, calcium, magnesium, fluoride and ammonia in the study areas are in satisfactory and acceptable status compared to the internal standard but the amount of phosphate, hardness and chloride in this area were exceeded from permissible limit. Comparison of four stability index also showed that water conditions in all parts of this study are located in corrosive range.Key words: Drinking water, Villages of Qom province, Stability inde

Helminth parasites fauna of the green toad, Bufo variabilis, Laurenti, 1768 (Anura: Bufonidae) from the Fars Province, Iran

The green toad, Bufo variabilis has been a common species of toads in Iran with a wide distribution in most provinces. The main goal of this study was to determine the helminth parasite fauna of B. variabilis in southwest of Iran. Among 30 toads inspected for helminth infection from different sites, 100% harbored one or more parasite species. Some toads were afflicted by intestinal obstruction, due to the infection with a large number of cestodes. Twenty-eight cases (93%) had mixed infection with cestodes (in intestine) and nematodes (in lung). Also, a toad was infected with a single monogenean parasite in its urinary bladder. The identified helminth parasites were monogenean, Polystoma viridis; cestode, Nematotaenia dispar and a species of nematode, Rhabdias ranae. This study reports for the first time the presence of nematode species R. ranae in B. variabilis in Iran

The Comparative Effect of Content-based Language Teaching and Task-based Language Teaching on Iranian Pre-intermediate EFL Learners’ Reading Skill

This study aimed to explore the effectiveness of TBLT and CBLT on Iranian Pre-intermediate EFL learners’ reading skill. Forty pre-intermediate EFL learners were pretested and then homogenized and then divided to 2 classes, namely TBLT group and CBLT group. The CBLT group received reading instruction based on CBLT, while the RBLT group received reading instruction based on TBLT. After the treatment, both groups received a posttest. After analyzing the data through using paired and independent samples t-tests, it was shown that both groups (i.e., TBLT & CBLT) progressed considerably with regard to their reading skill from the pretest to the posttest, with the task-based language teaching group outperformed the content-based language teaching group in the posttest. It can be deduced that both task-based language teaching and content-based language teaching methods are effectual in reading comprehension instruction to Iranian Pre-intermediate EFL learners, with TBLT method being more effective

The Role of Explicit Interactive Metadiscourse Markers’ Instruction in Iranian EAP Learners’ Reading Comprehension

This research was conducted to investigate the role that explicit instruction of interactive metadiscourse markers plays in Iranian EAP learners’ reading comprehension performance. To this end, 36 students of business management in intermediate level of English language proficiency, both male and female, were asked to participate in this study. They, subsequently, were divided into two groups of equal size, that is, control and experimental. Prior to presenting the treatment to the experimental group, all the participants were given a reading comprehension test. Then, the learners in the experimental group were explicitly taught interactive metadiscourse markers in 10 allocated sessions. Meanwhile, students in the control group of the study were taught through the typical method of the university. Afterward, the students of both groups were given the previously used reading comprehension test again. Statistical analyses of the t-test revealed that those in the experimental group outperformed significantly in the post-test phase of the study (p<0.01). Therefore, it can be inferred that explicit instruction of interactive metadiscourse markers has the outstanding beneficial role in EAP learners’ reading comprehension

Giant megacolon caused by anterior displacement of the anus in a 71-year-old woman

The patient was a 71-year-old woman who was referred to the general surgery clinic due to a severe colonic dilatation and a fecal mass that was found in her abdominopelvic CT scan, which was ordered by a nephrologist for approaching her right flank pain. The patient had experienced bloating and progressive abdominal distension in the year prior to the current visit. The last defecation had occurred approximately 20 days prior to the visit, and the last gas passage had occurred the day before the visit.&nbsp

THE EFFECTS OF ATTENTIONAL FOCUS ON THE PERFORMANCE OF VOLLEYBALL JUMP SERVE IN ELITE PLAYERS

Evidence of the last few years demonstrated that the far external focus of attention would lead to better motor performance (e.g., Mc Nevin., et al, 2003; MacKay and Wulf, 2012). According to the Frequency of Movement Adjustment analysis evidence of “Constrained Action Hypothesis”, the aim of this study was to examine the effects of different attentional focuses on the performance of a manipulative-complex motor skill in highly skillful athletes. 12 professional volleyball players completed a 4 blocks of 8 trail (4 trail for accuracy, 4 trail for effectiveness) of jump serve in four experimental conditions (Non-Instruction, Internal focuses on hand movement, Near external focuses on ball, and Far external focuses on target zone or player). The data of accuracy, effectiveness, and self-perception of the performance was acquired by pointed target areas, analyzing volleyball serve effectiveness method, and self-rated manipulative check, respectively. Results of ANOVA with repeated measures showed that accuracy scores, effectiveness, and self-perceived performance of volleyball jump serve in far external condition was better than near external and internal conditions. In addition, the significant differences between non-instructional and far external conditions were observed only in self-perceived performance. In general, these results confirmed recent findings regarding the detrimental effects of internal focus of attention and the facilitative effects of external focus of attention, especially far external on skilled performance.   Article visualizations

Vertical ground reaction forces on rigid and vibrating surfaces for vibration serviceability assessment of structures

Lightweight structures are sensitive to dynamic force generated by human walking and consequently can exhibit excessive vibration responses. The imparted forces, known as ground reaction forces (GRFs), are a key input in the vibration serviceability assessment of footbridges. Most GRF measurements have been conducted on rigid surfaces such as instrumented treadmills and force plates mounted on strong floors. However, it is thought that the vibrating surface of a footbridge might affect the imparted human force. This paper introduces a unique laboratory experimental setup to investigate vertical GRFs on both rigid surface (strong floor) and a higher-frequency flexible surface (footbridge). 810 walking trials were performed by 18 test subjects walking at different pacing frequencies. For each trial, test subjects travelled a circuit of a vibrating footbridge surface followed by a rigid surface. A novel data collection setup was adopted to record the vertical component of GRFs, and the footbridge vibration response during each trial. Frequency-domain analysis of both single-step and continuous GRFs was then performed. The results show that the footbridge vibration affects GRFs, and changes GRF magnitudes for harmonics in resonance with the footbridge vibration (up to around 30% reduction in the dynamic load factor of the third harmonic). This finding, and the measured GRFs, can be used for more accurate vibration serviceability assessments of existing and new footbridges

Automatic summarisation of Instagram social network posts Combining semantic and statistical approaches

The proliferation of data and text documents such as articles, web pages, books, social network posts, etc. on the Internet has created a fundamental challenge in various fields of text processing under the title of "automatic text summarisation". Manual processing and summarisation of large volumes of textual data is a very difficult, expensive, time-consuming and impossible process for human users. Text summarisation systems are divided into extractive and abstract categories. In the extractive summarisation method, the final summary of a text document is extracted from the important sentences of the same document without any modification. In this method, it is possible to repeat a series of sentences and to interfere with pronouns. However, in the abstract summarisation method, the final summary of a textual document is extracted from the meaning and significance of the sentences and words of the same document or other documents. Many of the works carried out have used extraction methods or abstracts to summarise the collection of web documents, each of which has advantages and disadvantages in the results obtained in terms of similarity or size. In this work, a crawler has been developed to extract popular text posts from the Instagram social network with appropriate preprocessing, and a set of extraction and abstraction algorithms have been combined to show how each of the abstraction algorithms can be used. Observations made on 820 popular text posts on the social network Instagram show the accuracy (80%) of the proposed system