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Showing 11 results for Estaji


Volume 0, Issue 0 (Articles accepted at the time of publication 2024)
Abstract

 
The present study aimed to investigate the elementary and advanced teachers’ formative assessment literacy of speaking skill in Teaching Persian to Non-Persian Speakers context. To this end, 26 teachers of teaching Persian to non-Persian speakers, mostly female, took part in this study. To collect data about their speaking assessment practices, they were primarily involved in a semi-structured interview related to the components of aims, contents, and methods of their speaking assessment. Afterward, they answered five scenarios. The interviews were based on Xu and Brown’s (2016) framework, and the scenarios were based on Chappius and Stiggins’ (2009) assessment quality and standards. In this phase, in addition to aims, content, and methods, and two additional components of giving feedback and students’ participation in assessing the speaking skill were examined. The interview results in relation to  the aims for the instructors of elementary and advanced levels shed light on six criteria including comprehension, learning and progress, teaching method and curriculum efficacy, weak and strong points, communicative and practical competence, self-confidence and feedback; in relation to content, grammatical accuracy, pronunciation, fluency, interaction and communication, pragmatics, content, turn taking and participation, and spoken and written differences were recognized; and in relation to  methods, class conversation, audio and video files, modeling and memorizing, game and competition, summary telling, question and response, playing roles, giving speech, problem solving and authentic activities were identified. Quantitative analysis of the interviews and scenarios indicated statistical differences among the two groups of elementary and advanced teachers.


Volume 1, Issue 1 (4-2013)
Abstract

Comparative mythology partly is a one of the modern courses, which have been used broadly from the second mid-nineteenth century. On the one hand, the relation of this approach has become firm in the comparative literature, and fixed in the mythical critic, on the other. Though at first, the necessity recognition of world's nations myths was introduced widely and comparatively by the European’s and broad researches were done by them, especially in the field of European nations (Rome and Greek's) myths, but the extent of this approach in the Islamic nation's myths did not progress, except of some small and separated surveys on myth motives. In 2000 AD, Hossein Mojib Al-Mesri, by understanding this poverty research, in “Comparative research in Arab, Iran and Turk's myths”, took the first step in comparison of Iranian, Arabic and Turkish's myths. It is wonderful that, even after a decade, researches did not refer to this. Mojib Al-Mesri, in this comparative research, has studied every Iranian, Arabic and Turkish's myths in three separate parts. However, this book does not operate according to the twentieth century mythical critic approach, but in Iran's myths study, it exhibits modern conclusions and achievements in comparative mythology and in this way, compares unfamiliar Arabic and Turkish's myths with similar Iranian samples that have not been studied in any research so far. This paper has tried firstly to clarify the myth relation and functioning of mythology in comparative literature and  then  introduce  Hossein Mojib Al-Mesri's achievements. Then in a more limited scope, it reviews his theories that he received from Iran's myths. In the end, it shows the existing common points between Persian myths with Arabic and Turkish samples in two sections of religious and historical myths. The purpose of this essay is revealing the potential capabilities of Islamic nations' myths. It also recommend the necessary changes, which must occur in one-sided and unilateral views of Iranian or Non Iranian mythologists.

Volume 4, Issue 4 (No.4 (Tome 16), (Articles in Persian) 2013)
Abstract

Forensic phonetics is a subfield of forensic linguistics in which acoustic information and phonetic features of phones are investigated for completing the forensic cases where one of the existing evidences is related to the guilty. One of the most important tasks of a forensic phonetician is forensic speaker recognition. For doing this, the phonetician is asked to estimate the degree of similarity between the given records of the guilty’s and the suspect’s speech, and determine whether these two sound evidences match to each other or not. The objective of this study, which was conducted on the sound data from 10 Persian native speakers of both sexes, was to investigate the possibility of using Logarithmic spectrographs of vowels as a key for forensic speaker recognition tasks. The results showed that using these logarithmic spectrographs may be a useful means with perfect reliability in the tasks related to forensic speaker recognition.  

Volume 5, Issue 17 (10-2017)
Abstract

Among the works that we know as folk literature, proverbs are one of the best areas of research on the ideas of native speakers of a language. In fact, these works are parts of the literature of every country that people consider them as the best way to express their common ideas and use them as the expressive language of their psychological states. Thus, contrastive analysis of English and Persian proverbs, focusing on the subject of women, and based on Proverbs and Mottos (Amsalo Hekam) and Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, would represent the mindset of English and Persian native speakers, especially where the thoughts of Alfred Adler and Eric Berne are the basis. Contamination in the psychology of Berne and Fundamental Error in the psychology of Adler would prepare a background for the present study. Detailed statistical examination of the proverbs based on the mentioned thoughts, would pave the way for finding the status of woman in the proverbs of two languages. Contrastive analysis of the mentioned sources shows that the percentage of Contamination and Fundamental Error is high among the proverbs which were related to women in both languages. But, the frequency of normal proverbs in Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, is 14.035% more than Proverbs and Mottos (Amsalo Hekam).

Volume 9, Issue 3 (Vol.9, No.3 (Tome 45), July, August & September 2018, (Articles in Persian) 2018)
Abstract

Granted that senses and emotions are key components in facilitating the process of language learning and teaching, it is essential for different models of instruction to take language learners’ emotions into account. It is in fact believed that emotions could be generated from the involvement of senses. A pertinent concept which juxtaposes senses and their resultant emotions is emotioncy. The concept of emotioncy (emotion+), pioneered by Pishghadam, Tabatabaeyan, and Navari (2013), is based on the psychological findings of the Developmental Individual-Differences Relationship-based (DIR) model, suggesting that sensory emotions are the cornerstones of evolution and learning. Following the assumptions of this model, when a language learner has never heard of a concept/item, s/he has no emotions for it (Null emotioncy). When s/he hears about the concept/item, the degree of emotioncy for that word increases to the auditory level, and if s/he sees or touches that item, the emotioncy may surpasses the auditory level to the Visual and Kinesthetic levels, respectively. Direct involvement with the concept/item engenders Inner emotioncy which can be maximized by doing research (Arch emotioncy).  At this stage, an accurate understanding of the subject will be formed which may lead to profound learning. Drawing upon the emotioncy model, in this study, the researchers made an attempt to teach a number of Persian language issues and, thereafter investigate the effect of this model on the emotions of the Persian language learners and their learning outcomes. To do so, 60 non-Iranian female students with the same Persian level (7th grade) from 16 different countries (including India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Turkey, Egypt, Madagascar, Burundi, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Libya, Tajikistan, Lebanon, Iraq, Guinea-Bissau, Syria, and Indonesia) who were studying at Al-Mostafa International University were categorized into 4 groups of 15 and participated in classes for a period of 6 weeks. Different concepts were taught during each session according to each level of emotioncy. At the end of each session, the learners’ emotions were evaluated via the academic emotions questionnaire Pekrun, 2002) and emotioncy scale (Pishghadam, 2015). The results related to the auditory session revealed that the learners did not show very positive emotions for the relevant subject. Yet, their emotions improved in the Visual session. The change in the emotions of the learners from negative to positive was also evident in the kinesthetic session. At this stage, learners were more actively involved with the subject and gave convincing reasons for their emotional experiences. In the fifth session (Inner), having brought the necessary and relevant instruments to the class, the instructor asked the learners to simulate the instructed subject. In the final session (Arch), the learners were asked to explore the resources available (cyberspace, library, etc.) about the topics taught during the fifth session. Overall, the results indicated significant differences in the emotions of non-Iranian female students, concluding that by involving senses in the process of teaching, the learners’ emotioncy level increases and positive emotions are thus produced. As a result, there was a positive correlation between emotioncy-based instruction and the amount of positive emotions on the part of non-Iranian Persian language learners. Taken together, the emotioncy model seems to help enhance the positive emotions of Persian language learners, providing a more successful learning environment for them.
 

Volume 12, Issue 3 (August & September 2021 (Articles in English & French) 2021)
Abstract

In any education context, teachers are mainly responsible for enacting the core values of classroom justice and equality. To address this notion, this qualitative study went through the exploration of the perceptions that Iranian EFL teachers had of classroom justice and its main dimensions. To this end, 31 EFL teachers, chosen through purposive sampling, filled out an open-ended questionnaire, and a sub-group of them participated in a semi-structured interview. The major findings, resulting from the content and thematic analyses of the data done both manually and through the MAXQDA software (Version 2020), revealed that first, all the participants, except one, regarded classroom justice as a crucial element of their instructional practice; second, interactional, procedural, and distributive dimensions of justice were reflected in the definitions that the teachers provided for classroom justice; and third, in line with the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of the study, the teachers conceptualized the classroom justice dimensions through their unique principles in relation to the various domains of classroom learning, teaching, assessment, and interactions. A pedagogical implication based on the findings is that by becoming aware of how they perceive justice in their instructional practice, teachers may take the initial strides toward enhancing their just treatment of students, and consequently, increase their professional effectiveness.

Volume 13, Issue 4 (September & October 2022)
Abstract

Formative assessment has an important role in controlling the quality of teachers’ methodology in multicultural classes. Although many research studies have been conducted in the domain of formative assessment and the strategies used by English teachers, there is a dearth of research on teachers involved in Persian language instruction to non-Persian speakers. The present study aimed to recognize the most fruitful and invaluable formative assessment strategies used in the multicultural context of teaching Persian language classes and examine the relationship between the value and uses of formative assessment strategies and the teaching level of Persian language teachers. To this end, three Persian language teachers of the basic, intermediate, and advanced levels in the Persian language teaching center of Allameh Tabataba’i University were asked to answer the formative assessment strategies questionnaire (Jett, 2009). To gain more reliable results, other data collection methods based on class observation checklist (Jett, 2009; Stevens, 2012) and semi-structured interviews were used. To analyze the quantitative data, Pearson correlation (using SPSS version 25) was run. Descriptive statitics and content analysis were also applied for analyzing the interview data. Based on the results, self and peer assessment were found the mostly used strategy. The most invaluable strategy was also reported to be both self and peer assessment and involving language learners in their own learning. Although according to course observations the teachers’ practices were variant, there was a significant correlation between the teaching level and degree of use and value of formative assessment strategies. The findings of this study have implications for Persian language teachers and teacher educators in that they can raise their knowledge and awareness of classroom-based assessment through the use of effective formative assessment strategies in multicultural classes.
 
1. Introduction
One of the essential features of any educational system is assessment to investigate needs, determine goals and strategies and measure performances (Sadler, 1998). Usually, teachers use two kinds of assessment to measure class activities for learning: Formative assessment and summative assessment. Summative assessment, which lays a seal of approval on learning and usually takes place at the end of an educational program, compares the amount of knowledge or skills of students with specific standards and criteria (States et al., 2018). Formative assessment, however, has attracted attention of many educational researchers over recent years. Black and Wiliam (1998) provides a clear-cut definition on formative assessment as “all those activities undertaken by teachers-and by their students in assessing themselves- that provide information to be used as feedback, to modify teaching and learning activities. Such assessment becomes formative assessment when the evidence is actually used to adapt the teaching to meet student needs” (p. 140).
     William and Thompson (2008) offered a conceptual framework based on the definition, provided by Black and Williams (1998, p. 8), which presented five fundamental strategies for formative assessment. The framework introduces an instructor to have the role of designing and establishing an effective environment for learning and the language learners in such environment are responsible for their and their peers’ learning. Nowadays, due to extensive physical and virtual exchanges and internationalization of education, especially in the field of language teaching, classrooms are held in multicultural contexts, deserving special strategies for formative assessment. Regarding expansion of Persian language teaching and growth in number of those learning Persian language all over the world, teachers in the centers to teach Persian language to speakers of other languages, experience multicultural contexts thanks to presence of language learners, who represent different nationalities and cultures in a single classroom. Therefore, regarding importance of using formative assessment strategies in the classes for teaching Persian language to speakers of other languages, that are multi-cultural in nature, and also regarding considerable gap in the literature, the writers of this research, relying on the conceptual framework William and Thompson (2008) regarding formative assessment strategies, tried to address three questions as follows:
     1. Which formative assessment strategy is the most usable in the multicultural classrooms from the viewpoint of the teachers of Persian language in three elementary, intermediate and advanced levels?
2. Which formative assessment strategy is the most valuable in the multicultural classes from the viewpoint of the teachers of Persian language in three elementary, intermediate and advanced levels?
 3. To what extent is there any relationship between the use and value of the formative assessment strategies and the educational level of the teachers?  

2. Literature Review
There has been many research on the use and value of the formative assessment strategies, applied by teachers of English language and of schools and other educational centers; however, there has been handful of such research on teachers of Persian language to speakers of other languages, who are present in class and represent different cultures. Yadegarzadeh (2005) in a study focused on the extent of teachers’ awareness of the strategies of formative assessment and the degree of their application in classroom. Estaji and Fasihi (2016) in research investigated the relationship between the use of formative assessment strategies and self-efficacy of the male and female teachers in the English language teaching centers in Tehran and also the effect of their gender and experience. Jett’s (2009) two-phase research concerned the perception of the elementary school teachers in a region in Louisville (in the state of Kentucky) on the most valuable and usable strategies of formative assessment. Setevens’ (2012) research aimed to investigate perception of teachers on cultural responsiveness, formative assessment and the inquiry-based teaching of math and science for American native students in a school in Montana state. To study the perceptions of teachers on formative assessment, Hue and Kennedy (2015) dealt with the perception and view of the native teachers of Hong Kong on formative assessment. In a study, conducted in the Philippines recently, Cagasan et al. (2020) tried to offer a framework to investigate the pattern of teachers’ formative assessment function in class, using the class observation instrument.

3. Methodology
To conduct this research, three teachers of the Centre for Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages of Allameh Tabataba’i University, participated in this study teaching in three elementary, intermediate and advanced levels. Two of the teachers were female and one male, who were introduced by the Education Department Director, with respect to their educational level and the multi-cultural context of the classroom. The two elementary and intermediate teachers were female, while the advanced level teacher was male. All the three teachers were young (aged 26 on average) and were novice regarding their background of teaching Persian to speakers of other languages. However, all the three teachers enjoyed enough knowledge and skill to teach in the specified levels. Three sources were used to collect data for this study: The Questionnaire of Use and Value of Formative Assessment Strategies of Jett (2009) (for the quantitative part); interview with instructors (for the qualitative part) and class observations by using the checklist of Stevens (2012) and checklist of Jett (2009) (for the qualitative part). The SPSS software version 25 was used for analysis of the quantitative data and for Pearson correlation test, while descriptive indexes and content analysis were used for investigation of the interview data.


4. Results
This research was conducted to investigate the use and value of the formative assessment strategies, that are applied by teachers of the Persian language to speakers of other languages in three elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels in the multi-cultural contexts. Three sources were used to collect data for this study: Questionnaire, interview, and class observations. Research findings showed that the three instructors of the elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels believed that the self/peer assessment strategy was the most prevalent and the most valuable strategy, that is used for formative assessment in multicultural contexts. Analysis of the data also confirmed the correlation between the use and value of the strategy of setting work of language learners as a model (for other peers), offering feedback, and the self/peer assessment. Furthermore, the results of this study showed a significant correlation between the educational levels of the instructors and the use and value of the formative assessment strategies, and the use and value of the formative assessment strategies grow alongside promotion in the educational level. Content analysis of the interview data showed that in the instructors’ point of view, the self/peer assessment, contribution of the language learners into their own learning, and presentation of feedback were hierarchically the most effective class strategies. Based on the class observation checklist data (1), the highest degree of support was provided to the elementary level and the least one to the advanced level. In terms of enforcement of the formative assessment strategies in the multi-cultural classes and with respect to the checklist, feedback reserved the highest number of frequencies, while the specification of the learning goals gained the least frequency in the list. Results of this research also showed that the instructors were aware of the use and value of the formative assessment strategies, but they were not fully in agreement on operationalizing the strategy. However, their ability to create and establish a supportive and fair environment, which is requisite for such assessments, should not be underestimated.

Volume 13, Issue 5 (November & December 2022 (Articles in English & French) 2022)
Abstract

The self-monitoring technique, using the learners’ annotations and teacher’s response as its base, proved to be one of the beneficial alternatives for the traditional teacher feedback. Although some studies have been done on the effects of self-monitoring technique, more studies are still required to place this tactic at the forefront of educational practices. This study examined Iranian EFL learners’ annotations in terms of their form and content. To this end, after homogenizing the participants, 30 university students were selected and received essay writing instruction employing the self-monitoring technique for eight sessions. The learners’ annotations were gathered and classified in terms of their content and form based on the frameworks established by Sarabia, Nicolás, and Larioss (2012) and Storch and Tapper (1996) respectively. The research results, as for the content of the annotations, evinced that the largest number of annotations fell into the categories of lexis and syntax, and to a lesser extent the discourse organization. Regarding the form of the annotations, most of the learners’ annotations fell into the category of “a demand for the correction of an L2 form”. The results of the chi-square test also showed that the difference in the content and use of language forms of annotations used by students was significant. Hence, the use of self-monitoring technique in writing courses brings a wealth of information regarding the writing content and problematic areas for both the teacher and learners as they can have discussions over the written text, making the process of writing more interactive.

Volume 15, Issue 5 (November & December (Articles in English & French) 2024)
Abstract

Since teachers’ perceptions of work engagement can strongly shape their engagement level, it is imperative to explore how teachers perceive this construct and its associated dimensions. With this in mind, some researchers have evaluated teachers’ beliefs and attitudes towards this notion.  Notwithstanding this, to the authors’ knowledge, no study has examined language teachers’ viewpoints on this variable and its significance in online EFL classes. To bridge these gaps, this phenomenological study explored Iranian EFL teachers’ perceptions and experiences of work engagement and its value in online English courses. To this aim, using the purposive sampling strategy, a total of 21 EFL teachers were chosen from different state, private, and non-profit universities in Iran. To obtain the required data, all participants were invited to complete an open-ended questionnaire. To reach more comprehensive data, from among the 21 participants, nine willingly took part in a 20-minute interview session. Results obtained from content analysis revealed that Iranian EFL teachers considered work engagement as a complex variable with four related dimensions of emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and social engagement. The results also indicated that Iranian teachers perceived work engagement as an important professional behavior that results in increased academic achievements, professional advancement, improved teaching quality, and strong teacher-student rapport. Hence, education leaders and teacher educators should support Iranian EFL teachers in enhancing work engagement dimensions to improve professional growth and teaching quality. 

Volume 17, Issue 3 (5-2017)
Abstract

To investigate the effects of drugs on viruses, interactions between proteins and inserting desirable genetic changes on DNA, precise study of biological cells is a necessary demand for nowadays. In this way, exploring mechanical properties of these particles and their mechanical behavior in different situations is needed; manipulation of bioparticles in nano scale is an important process for investigating nanoparticles behavior; because the amount of exerted force, deformation and investigating the damage possibility can provide useful information. In this paper, a molecular dynamics modeling of bioparticles nanomanipulation based on AFM has been done. Bioparticles include virus, protein and ssDNA. The main goal of this study is investigating the substrate effect on exerted force on the bioparticles and exploring damage possibility. Three types of substrates have been used, including silicon, graphene sheet and golden substrate. Widespread usage and low level interactions with other materials are the reasons of choosing these substrates. Results show that on gold substrate, the maximum manipulation force occurs and damage possibility is high. Also on graphene substrate manipulation force and deformation of particle are more than the silicon substrate.
Iran Sepideh Abdolkarimi, Iran Mina Estaji,
Volume 28, Issue 3 (7-2021)
Abstract

This study, is a semantic attempt to find out if there is a significant difference in the linguistic representation of Iranian and British war literature in the Iran-Iraq war (known as The Imposed War (of Iraq against Iran)) and World War II. Authors chose these two wars for two reasons: 1. In both cases, the war was defensive for both countries, and 2. both wars lasted for almost the same period: The Imposed War lasted for 8 years, and World War II lasted for 6 years. Given the aforementioned similarities, we seek to compare the linguistic representation of ideologies that had governed in Iranian and English societies (i.e. Islamic ideology vs. liberal democracy and the monarchy). In this study, we ask if there is a significant difference in the linguistic representation of these two wars. We seek to 1. Describe the linguistic iconization of war based on the source domains of metaphors, and 2. Describe the ideological similarities and differences of war using linguistic representations. The views of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Carl Gustav Jung have been used in the psychoanalytic analysis of these novels.

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