Teach how to Listen: The Effect of Listening Strategy Instruction on Documentary Video Comprehension

Developments in broadcast and multimedia technology have generated a readily available and vast supply of videos for use in second and foreign language learning contexts. However, without pedagogical direction learners are unlikely to be able to deal with the complexities of this authentic listening resource, and strategy instruction may be one route to augmenting comprehension (Cross, J, 2009). The essence of this experimental study was to investigate the impact of teaching listening strategy on comprehension of documentary videos. For the purpose of this study, 54 advanced EFL students, 27 in experimental group and 27 in control group, participated in this study procedure. In 10-week-period, the experimental group went through a well-scheduled instruction in listening strategy. On the other hand, the control group wasn’t received any instruction in listening strategy. The finding of this study has revealed that teaching listening comprehension strategies has significant influence on comprehension of authentic documentary video

Humanitarian and Social Attitudes in Hatam Taei’s Poems

A well-known Arab man, Hatam Taei was one of the most generous men of that time and the reputation of his bounty and benevolence is still widespread in all corners of the world. Not only known for generosity among Arab people, but also in other nations’ literatures, his name has been welcomed by poets and used with the hospitality and magnanimity attributes, thus embellishing their works. He was from a clan named Tey, one of the famous clans of the Arabian Peninsula. Also, he was one of the astute poets of the age of pre-Islam paganism. His cognomen was “Aba-sofyaneh” or “Aba-edi” and he has an exquisite poem collection titled “Poetry of Hatam Taei”.  His poems are full of descriptions for generosity and benevolence and humanitarian characteristics as well as high moral and religious teachings. In the present paper, it was attempted to investigate humanitarian and social characteristics in Hatam Taei’s poems including chastity, hospitality, good fame, tolerance and patience, forgiveness, and lack of interest in worldly commodities

The Effects of Script on Reading Development of Farsi and Arabic Bilinguals

Knowledge of orthographic depth, the degree of letter-sound consistency, is one of the important skills that must be acquired by beginning readers. Vowelized Arabic and Farsi scripts are consistent in terms of grapheme-phoneme mappings and beginning readers should find it easier to read regular and consistent words. However, vowels are removed from Farsi and Arabic texts read by more experienced learners, which make these script forms more challenging for readers. Sixty students who were learning to read Farsi or Arabic (age range of 7-14 years) were tested for reading ability as well as cognitive and phonological processing in two languages: Farsi or Arabic as the first language (L1) and English as the second language (L2). Since there has been no previous study on the effects of including or excluding vowels in Farsi orthography, the first aim was to investigate the performance of Farsi readers in vowelized and unvowelized tasks. It was found that Farsi-English bilinguals performed better on vowelized tasks in comparison to unvowelized tasks. This indicates that including vowels facilitates reading skills of these students. Unexpectedly, vowelization made no differences in reading skills of Arabic-English bilinguals in this study. It was also found that phonological awareness in the L1 was related to phonological awareness in the L2. Finally, phonological and morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge were strong predictors of word reading in L1 and L2. One practical implication of the present study would be to avoid the elimination of vowels from text for Farsi-English bilinguals

Studying the relationship between human resource practice with organizational citizenship behavior by emphasizing the role of organizational commitment in Agricultural Banks of Golestan Province

The main goal of this research is studying the relationship between human resource practices with organizational citizenship behaviors by emphasizing the role of organizational commitment in Agricultural banks of Golestan province. The design of research is a definition of a sort of measurement and statistical population of 360 clerks of Agricultural Banks of Golestan province. The number of sample, according to the Krejcie and Morgan table is 186 people and for sampling the Stratified random sampling was used. Measurement tools containing three surveys which were used for measurement of human resource actions, Laawer survey (1986) and organizational commitment by measuring Meyer and Allen (1990) and consequently, for weighing the organizational citizenship of standard Podsakoff et al (1990). The findings showed that there is no meaningful relationship between the actions of human resources and organizational behaviors by pointing the role of organizational commitment in Agricultural Banks of Golestan province

Modulation of neurotrophic signaling pathways by polyphenols

Polyphenols are an important class of phytochemicals, and several lines of evidence have demonstrated their beneficial effects in the context of a number of pathologies including neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. In this report, we review the studies on the effects of polyphenols on neuronal survival, growth, proliferation and differentiation, and the signaling pathways involved in these neurotrophic actions. Several polyphenols including flavonoids such as baicalein, daidzein, luteolin, and nobiletin as well as nonflavonoid polyphenols such as auraptene, carnosic acid, curcuminoids, and hydroxycinnamic acid derivatives including caffeic acid phentyl ester enhance neuronal survival and promote neurite outgrowth in vitro, a hallmark of neuronal differentiation. Assessment of underlying mechanisms, especially in PC12 neuronal-like cells, reveals that direct agonistic effect on tropomyosin receptor kinase (Trk) receptors, the main receptors of neurotrophic factors including nerve growth factor (NGF) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) explains the action of few polyphenols such as 7,8-dihydroxyflavone. However, several other polyphenolic compounds activate extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) and phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt pathways. Increased expression of neurotrophic factors in vitro and in vivo is the mechanism of neurotrophic action of flavonoids such as scutellarin, daidzein, genistein, and fisetin, while compounds like apigenin and ferulic acid increase cyclic adenosine monophosphate response element-binding protein (CREB) phosphorylation. Finally, the antioxidant activity of polyphenols reflected in the activation of Nrf2 pathway and the consequent upregulation of detoxification enzymes such as heme oxygenase-1 as well as the contribution of these effects to the neurotrophic activity have also been discussed. In conclusion, a better understanding of the neurotrophic effects of polyphenols and the concomitant modulations of signaling pathways is useful for designing more effective agents for management of neurodegenerative diseases

Studying the relationship between human resource practice with organizational citizenship behavior by emphasizing the role of organizational commitment in Agricultural Banks of Golestan Province

The main goal of this research is studying the relationship between human resource practices with organizational citizenship behaviors by emphasizing the role of organizational commitment in Agricultural banks of Golestan province. The design of research is a definition of a sort of measurement and statistical population of 360 clerks of Agricultural Banks of Golestan province. The number of sample, according to the Krejcie and Morgan table is 186 people and for sampling the Stratified random sampling was used. Measurement tools containing three surveys which were used for measurement of human resource actions, Laawer survey (1986) and organizational commitment by measuring Meyer and Allen (1990) and consequently, for weighing the organizational citizenship of standard Podsakoff et al (1990). The findings showed that there is no meaningful relationship between the actions of human resources and organizational behaviors by pointing the role of organizational commitment in Agricultural Banks of Golestan province

Studying the relationship between human resource practice with organizational citizenship behavior by emphasizing the role of organizational commitment in Agricultural Banks of Golestan Province

The main goal of this research is studying the relationship between human resource practices with organizational citizenship behaviors by emphasizing the role of organizational commitment in Agricultural banks of Golestan province. The design of research is a definition of a sort of measurement and statistical population of 360 clerks of Agricultural Banks of Golestan province. The number of sample, according to the Krejcie and Morgan table is 186 people and for sampling the Stratified random sampling was used. Measurement tools containing three surveys which were used for measurement of human resource actions, Laawer survey (1986) and organizational commitment by measuring Meyer and Allen (1990) and consequently, for weighing the organizational citizenship of standard Podsakoff et al (1990). The findings showed that there is no meaningful relationship between the actions of human resources and organizational behaviors by pointing the role of organizational commitment in Agricultural Banks of Golestan province