Some Insights into Iran’s English Curriculum Based on Iran’s Major Policies

The study aimed to investigate Iran national curriculum, foreign language part. The curriculum analyzed according to major documents of Iran; 20-year Iran’s vision plan and Comprehensive map of science. Moreover, it was analyzed based on current issues in language teaching. The qualitative study reached at some setback in curriculum. Curriculum centered on language teaching without appropriate culture, while aim of major documents was non-stop communication with world. As a result, there were some weak points toward national curriculum

Recasts in Language Classroom Discourse: A Comparison between Two Iranian EFL Classrooms

Recasts as a type of implicit feedback have been under the focus of extensive investigation in the field of SLA for many years. Thus far, a large number of studies scrutinized ineffectiveness or benefits of recasts but few of them have attempted to investigate this issue through making a comparison between two language classrooms which differ with respect to the cognitive maturity of learners. Accordingly, this study aims at exploring the distribution and frequency of recasts and their relationship with other Corrective Feedback (CF) techniques as well as students’ uptake and repair in adult and adolescent contexts. Twenty male/female adults and eighteen adolescents at the same level of English language proficiency from two classrooms in a private language institute in Yazd, Iran participated in the research. To collect accurate data, audio-recording was used by the teacher who taught both of English classes. Then, all the recorded data were transcribed and coded for each classroom. The data analysis showed that recasts in comparison to other types of CF were the most frequent technique used by the teacher in both classrooms mostly leading to topic continuation. In adolescent classroom, students’ repair in response to recasts included self-repair and repetition which resembled the patterns found in adult context. However, acknowledgment was regarded as the most favorite technique used by the adolescent learner. Another finding was the teacher’s use of recasts in combination with other CF techniques in both classrooms but the use of the combined forms in adolescent discourse was higher than that of adult classroom

Moving in a Gyre: A Discourse Analysis of President Rouhani’s De Facto Inaugural Speech

The purpose of this study is to critically analyze the discourse of the de facto inaugural speech presented by president Rouhani while receiving his presidential percept from the leader, to seek the ideology beyond his speech and to detect the point that to which of discourses, reformists’ or principalists’, Rouhani’s discourse belong to. Based on Dijk’s socio-cognitive model of critical discourse analysis the selected corpus’ ideological and persuasive components are assessed. To this end and based on the model, the historical, political or social background of the election is discussed firstly. Then, the political groups and parties, specifically reformists and principalists, their ideologies and power relations are elaborated. Finally, based on the examination of all formal structure, lexical choice and syntactic structure, the presupposed and the implied notions are made explicit, to determine the ideology beyond the formal text. Comparing the extracted notions from the speech with the polarized viewpoints of two political parties, it was concluded that Rouhani tried to keep the golden middle path while presenting his ideas, trying to introduce himself a moderate person and base all his plans on moderation. His speech revealed the strategies to move in a gyre of ideas trying to avoid condemning any party or person of eminence in line to keep all parties in one line to make his move

The practicality of critical pedagogy from Iranian EFL instructors' viewpoints: a cross sectional study

This study was an endeavor to investigate Iranian EFL teachers’ awareness of critical pedagogy and its principles. It also intended to look for their viewpoints about the practicality of implementing critical pedagogy in our classrooms. In addition, the study made attempts to seek the barriers that hinder the application of critical pedagogy in Iranian teaching contexts. In order to achieve the goals of this study, 20 Iranian EFL instructors teaching at university, high schools, and language institutes were interviewed. Since the study employs a mixed-method design, the researcher benefited from both a critical pedagogy questionnaire, developed by Maki (2011), and in-depth interviews. Approaches based on grounded theory were utilized in order to analyze the qualitative data; in addition, statistical procedures such as descriptive statistics and factor analysis were used to analyze the quantitative data. The results indicated that the majority of Iranian EFL instructors are aware of the principles of critical pedagogy and support the helpfulness of such pedagogy and its premises. The study revealed that in spite of language teachers’ awareness of critical pedagogy and their agreement with the positively effective CP principles, they rarely apply this methodology in their teaching. Further investigations revealed that the top-down educational system, class size, issues related to teachers’ burn-out, limited class time and teachers’ insufficient information about the learners’ background and learning styles are the main barriers which prevent Iranian language teachers from applying the principles of critical pedagogy in their teaching.  Keywords: critical pedagogy (CP), Iranian language teachers, EFL contex

English Speech Act Realization of “Refusals” among Iranian EFL Learners

Speech act of refusal has been one of the important topics in the discourse pragmatic research over the past few decades. In fact, pragmatics plays a very important role in the process of communication and the action of refusal is performed in our daily lives and in a variety of situations. Therefore, in the present study, the researcher has tried to investigate how Iranian EFL learners followed different pragmatic patterns to produce the speech act of refusal and what strategies they used in different situations and under various conditions. And also to examine if their use of the strategies were dependent on gender and finally to see if there was any difference in the type of strategies used by students at different levels of education at the university. So, forty eight students, both males and females were randomly selected to be representative of the accessible population from the students studying at different levels of education at the university; that is, twenty MA students majoring in TEFL and twenty eight BA students majoring in English Literature at Shiraz University. Thus, the students were given a questionnaire on discourse completion test (DCT). In the present study, the researcher benefited from a qualitative mode of inquiry for the analysis of discourse pragmatics; that is, the obtained data from the questionnaires were first codified and then each refusal was classified, analyzed and interpreted based on a modified version of Beebe et al.’s (1990) taxonomy of refusal strategies. The results indicated that Iranian EFL learners usually followed implicit or indirect strategies to talk to their interlocutors or hearers and express their intended meaning in a way that they would not cause any offence or threaten their listener’s face. Moreover, indirect speech act usually denoted politeness in the Iranian context as well. In other words, the mostly common strategies used by Iranian learners were excuses, explanations, or reasons following or preceding a sense of regret. Regarding gender differences, due to the limited number of the participants who were mostly females, the researcher in this study could not draw any definite conclusions. Finally, no difference was found between the participants in both levels of education in using the aforementioned strategies. Key words: Discourse Pragmatic; Pragmatics; Refusal Speech Act; Refusal Strategies; Iranian Context Resumé: L'acte de discours de refus a été l'un des thèmes importants dans la recherche sur le discours pragmatique des dernières décennies. En fait, la pragmatique joue un rôle très important dans le processus de communication et l'action de refus est réalisée dans notre vie quotidienne et dans une variété de situations. Par conséquent, dans la présente étude, le chercheur a tenté de déterminer comment les apprenants ALE iraniens ont suivi de différents schémas pragmatiques pour former l'acte de discours de refus et quelles stratégies ils ont utilisées dans de différentes situations et de diverses conditions. Il esssaie aussi d'examiner si leur utilisation des stratégies étaient dépendante du sexe et enfin de voir s'il y avait une différence dans le type de stratégies utilisées par les étudiants à des niveaux de l'éducation différents à l'université. Ainsi, 48 élèves, des garçons et des filles ont été sélectionnés au hasard pour représenter la population accessible des étudiants à des niveaux de l'éducation différents à l'université; soit vingt étudiants MA avec la spécialisation en EALE et vingt-huit étudiants BA avec la spécialisation en littérature anglaise à l'université de Shiraz. Ainsi, les élèves ont reçu un questionnaire sur le test de complétion de discours (TCD). Dans la présente étude, le chercheur a bénéficié d'un mode qualitatif de l'enquête pour l'analyse de la pragmatique de discours, c'est-à-dire, les données obtenues à partir des questionnaires ont d'abord été codifiées et ensuite chaque refus est classé, analysé et interprété en fonction d'une version modifiée de la la taxonomie des stratégies de refus de Beebe et al. (1990). Les résultats indiquent que les apprenants ALE iraniens ont généralement utilisé des stratégies implicites ou indirectes à parler à leurs interlocuteurs ou auditeurs et ils expriment leur sens voulu d'une manière qui ne causerait pas de tort ou de menacent face à leurs auditeurs. Par ailleurs, l'acte de discours indirect signifie habituellement la politesse dans le contexte iranien. En d'autres termes, la plupart des stratégies communes utilisées par les apprenants iraniens ont été des excuses, des explications ou des motifs qui suivent ou précèdent un sentiment de regret. En ce qui concerne les différences des sexes, comme les participants étaient principalement des femmes, le chercheur de cette étude ne pouvait pas tirer de conclusions définitives. Enfin, aucune différence n'a été observée entre les participants à ces deux niveaux de l'éducation en utilisant les stratégies ci-dessus. Mots-clés: Discours Pragmatique; Pragmatique; Acte de Discours de Refus; Stratégies de Refus; Contexte Iranie

An Investigation into the Educational Philosophy and Spirituality of Iranian EFL Teachers

Although philosophy and spirituality are related to various branches of disciplines, they have not been subject to focused attention in foreign language teaching. In this paper, schools of educational philosophy, and spirituality in education were connected together to present the stance, viewpoint, and practice of these two constructs in English as foreign language (EFL) Iranian educators. Results indicated that the dominant philosophy of education of Iranian EFL teachers was progressive education. Furthermore, combination of progressive and humanistic philosophies and humanistic philosophy were to some extent established a balance with progressivism. None of the participants practice spirituality in classrooms. By illuminating the spiritual language of humanistic and progressive philosophies, we may conclude that the nature and spiritual discourse of each philosophy as well as their practical implications should be articulated in teacher education programs to fulfill the everlasting growth of an individual as an utmost purpose of education

Principles of Turn Taking in Psychotherapy Conversations of Patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder with Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Approach

Therapeutic discourse is a special type of organizational discourse which is used by psychotherapists when treating their patients. The present study uses the conversation analysis approach to find the principles of turn taking in the therapeutic situation. This study specifically examines the therapeutic discourse of treatment sessions for patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) based on the Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) approach. The method used in this research is qualitative. The corpus used in this study included 2520 minutes of conversation in psychotherapy sessions. The participants in this study were 16 people of both sexes. ATLAS ti. computer software has been used to construct and present the verbal pattern. The results of this study show that most of turn taking were related to female clients and psychotherapists. This result is related to the relationship between clients and psychotherapists, women's verbal habits, excessive curiosity, and their challenging personality. The presence of overlap in the speech of female psychotherapists and clients and pause in other conversations have been the most widely used signs of turn taking in this type of conversation. The present study has faced some limitations. One of the most important limitations of this research was the prevalence of Covid 19 virus. Also, obtaining the consent of some psychologists and clients to record their videos and voices in psychotherapy sessions has been another limitation of this research. Given the importance of communication and linguistic studies in psychotherapy, it is suggested that future research be conducted on the following topics: “Comparison of GAD Patients’ Speech Pattern with Speech Pattern of Other Anxiety Disorders” and “The effect of direct and indirect expression on anxiety in patients with anxiety disorders”

Iranian EFL Teachers’ Views on Action Research and Its Ap-plication in Their Classrooms: A Case Study

Action research is an efficient way to help teachers overcome their problems and enhance the teaching and learning practices. As teachers' beliefs play an important role in determining their teaching practices, their beliefs about action research can influence their use of classroom research. A group of 89 English teachers participated in this study to answer the items of a questionnaire which explored their beliefs about action research. In-depth interviews were also conducted with three participants to complement data. The results showed that this group of teachers regarded action research as one of the research types which is the duty of professional researchers not teachers. From among reasons mentioned for not conducting action research in their classrooms, some guidelines are provided at the end

The Ideology of Iranian National Television in News Presentation: A Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective

Media in general and news in particular constitute indispensable parts of modern life. TV news which contains visual elements in addition to the verbal aspects was used as the corpus of this study. In fact, this research culled out the ideologies of Iranian national television in presenting different issues. To be more precise, three internationally-significant pieces of news reports were chosen: one positive to “Us”, one hostile to “Others”, and one neutral. Then, these news reports were analyzed in detail and their lexical items, grammatical structures, and rhetorical figures were compared to find out about the differences. The results of the study showed that these three reports were presented to the audience via totally different strategies and ideologically-laden words were used to convey positive and negative meanings. In addition, the visual elements (angles, gaze, and distance) corroborated the findings of the verbal sections. The findings of this study show that lexical and grammatical choices are made purposefully in the media. So, it can be said that the results of this research contribute to the fields of linguistics, semiotics, and media

Iranian Adult Speakers' Perceptions toward Linguistic Taboos and Euphemisms in Iranian Society: A Sociolinguistic View

In recent years, the line of research on the socio-pragmatic aspects of language and language use has been increasing very rigorously. In this regard, taboos as well as euphemisms, due to their significant role in impacting on the interactions among interlocutors, have been the subject of research in various societies and cultures from a vast variety of aspects. That being so, the present study was an attempt to explore the perceptions of Iranian adult speakers of linguistic taboos and euphemisms in Iranian society. To achieve this aim, a convenient sample of 48 Iranian adult speakers, 24 males and 24 females, from Shiraz, Iran was recruited to participate in the study. The researcher interviewed them one by one and audio recorded their answers for further analysis and to determine their perceptions of linguistic taboos and euphemisms in Iranian society. The findings indicated that: a. Most of the participants believed that sex is the most offensive topic in Iranian society; b. All of the participants believed that people should use euphemisms in their speech and should take after of their speech especially in formal situations; c. Most of the Iranian adult speakers believed that the most important factor which leads to the use of taboo words is anger; and d. Most of the participants, both male and female, said they do not discuss taboo topics in mixed-sex groups