علی درخشان

Because of its fundamental role in improving learners’ communicative competence, willingness to communicate (WTC) has been the focus of attention in the field of second language acquisition (SLA). A bulk of research has investigated the antecedents of WTC in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) setting. However, this construct has not received much attention for the learners of other foreign languages. As an attempt to shed more light on this domain of research, this research sought to investigate the effects of grit and ideal L2 self as predictors of L2 WTC among learners of Persian as a foreign language. For this purpose, a number of 153 Persian learners among the international students of University of Kurdistan were selected as the participants. The data were collected by distributing the instruments measuring the three target constructs (i.e., WTC, grit, and ideal L2 self). A structural equation modeling (SEM) approach was utilized to test the hypothesized structural models for the relations between these variables. The SEM results indicated that although both variables significantly affected WTC, the unique effect of ideal L2 self was greater than grit for learners of Persian as a foreign language. The implications of these findings are discussed at the end.

Speaking and writing skills, as the components of communicative competence, are the core of learning the language for specific purposes. The intimate connection of students' acceptable academic and professional performance with their productive skills highlights new methods of teaching and learning. To investigate the potential of virtual reality in learning English for Medical Purposes productive skills, this interventional study with control and experimental groups was conducted using a mixed design with a sequential explanatory approach in 16 sessions in flipped classrooms. During the study, in addition to soliciting the participants' attitudes, their progress and performance were assessed. In addition, the participants' perceptions were identified by conducting semi-structured interviews. Quantitative data analysis was performed in a descriptive and inferential manner using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and analysis of variance with repeated measures. Qualitative data analysis was done in a theme-oriented manner. The results showed that the participants considered the concerted practice as an effective way of learning English for Medical Purposes productive skills. Although virtual reality enhanced English for Medical purposes productive skills learning and communicative competence, the multiplayer framework of these games for concerted practice of skills significantly facilitated learning speaking and writing. The participants' favorable attitude towards practicing English for medical purposes through cooperative multiplayer virtual reality can be an example of the successful application of socio-cultural theory in university language learning.

New applied games and social robots in today's language education have resulted in robot-games (Robo-Games)-aided language learning. To be precise, social robot's augmented reality combines the real world with technology to add a layer of digital over the physical, allowing students to visualize the materials in the scenes of real world. One of the major perks of Social Robot augmented reality-aided learning modules is being able to practice materials in an environment like the real-world setting through the medium of simulation. Social Robot augmented reality affords students the opportunity to practice reading comprehension in a supportive context, where the quality of collaborative practice has been indicated to be beneficial. This may make more sense to expose students early to reading materials regarding their future life. According to the socio-cultural theory of cognitive development, Community of Practice is now the place where students with the high and low level of foreign language proficiency, in tandem with students from different nations come to apply the cued scenes of the augmented reality and learn by teaching social robots. This way, the focus of the study was to do educational didactics in the Community of Practices of Middle Eastern Youths for doing foreign using social robot's augmented realities in the Community of Practices.

Using a parallel design, this interventional study explored the effectiveness of robot-enhanced LMOOCs in learning Persian for nursing purposes skills education among 229 non-Iranian students at the Medical University of Isfahan. After conducting a Persian proficiency test, the participants were randomly divided into three groups, namely, CLMOOC, XLMOOC and blended LMOOC to interact with telepresence robots; this way, the arrangement was made for conducting 16 sessions for practicing Persian for nursing purposes through the robot-enhanced LMOOCs. In parallel, the participants’ receptive and productive skills were assessed in the healthcare field. The study was completed through a focus-group interview. While the quantitative data were analyzed through the Repeated Measures ANOVA procedure, the qualitative data were analyzed through thematic analysis. The findings revealed the functionality of the robot-enhanced LMOOCs in Persian for nursing purposes skills education. The CLMOOC appeared as a highly efficient course for boosting the functionality of the robot-enhanced LMOOCs in Persian for nursing purposes skills education. The participants believed that playing an active role in developing the scenes of LMOOCs can help boost the functionality of LMOOCs in Persian for nursing purposes skills education. The findings could be useful for the medical college authorities who are interested in using new LMOOCs in higher education.

Considering one of the earliest calls for applying pragmatics in second language, Kasper and Rose’s (2002) study “Is Pragmatic Teachable?”, pragmatic features have been analyzed during the last 20 years in EFL/ESL contexts. The amalgamation of studies has been conducted on many speech acts around the world within the last two decades, among which request, apology, and refusal are considered as the most-appreciated speech acts in Iran. The purpose of the present paper is to unravel the overall effectiveness of the intervention on the speech acts of request, apology, and refusal in an Iranian EFL context. To this aim, out of a total number of 80 studies, 57 papers were chosen based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, which were coded for the analysis. The results of the study revealed that the instruction of request, apology, and refusal is effective and generated a mean of (g = 1.43) which is significant, reflecting a quite large gain of instruction. The paper concludes with pedagogical implications and suggestions for future studies.

Ali Derakhshan is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at the English Language and Literature Department, Golestan University, Gorgan, Iran. He gained his MA in TEFL from University of Tehran and his PhD in Applied Linguistics from Allameh Tabataba’i University, Iran. Dr. Derakhshan has been a member of the Iranian Elites Foundation since 2015. He has also been selected as a distinguished researcher by the Teaching English Language and Literature Society of Iran in 2021. His name appears in Stanford University’s list of world’s top 2% most influential scientists in 2021. He is the editor of Language Related Research, Associate editor of Frontiers in Psychology and Porta Linguarum and editorial member of System, Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, and Porta Linguarum. He has published in accredited international journals, including Computers and Education, Language Teaching Research, System, Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, ELT Journal, Current Psychology, Asia Pacific Education Researcher, Educational Studies, Porta Linguarum, Frontiers in Psychology, etc. His monograph The “5Cs” positive teacher interpersonal behaviors: Implications for learner empowerment and learning in an L2 context has appeared in 2022. His research interests are positive psychology, teacher education, learner individual differences, cross-cultural interpersonal factors in educational psychology, interlanguage pragmatics, and intercultural communication. He has joined an offline interview with Dr. Davoud Amini.

Exploring the role of teacher academic optimism and self-efficacy seems pivotal in teacher education. Therefore, this study was set to explore the relationship between teacher self-efficacy and teacher academic optimism among a sample of Iranian EFL teachers. More specifically, the predictive influence of EFL teachers’ academic optimism components consisting of academic emphasis, teacher trust, and teacher efficacy on the perceptions of their self-efficacy constituting student engagement, instructional practices, and classroom management was examined. In so doing, a total of 335 Iranian EFL teachers were recruited to fill out the measures of teacher self-efficacy and teacher academic optimism. Structural equation modeling was conducted to establish the hypothesized relationships. The results of confirmatory factor analysis on the dataset confirmed the fitness of all the employed measures and the structural model. In addition, inter-variable exploratory correlations were identified using the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, and path analysis was used to examine the predictive powers of academic optimism factors on teacher self-efficacy. The research findings revealed positive and significant relationships among teacher self-efficacy and teacher academic optimism components. It was also found that academic emphasis, teacher trust, and teacher efficacy could positively predict teacher self-efficacy. These findings have significant implications for practicing EFL teachers, teacher educators, and researchers.

Simulation in the new generations of games has paved the way for employing flipped classes. Given the significance of learning English for Specific Purposes (ESP), this complementarity study with a full-factorial design using Augmented Reality- (AR)-mediated English for Nursing Purposes (ENP) classrooms was administered in the fall semester of the academic years 2019-2020. This way, 240 (from among 249) male (n=89) and female (n=151) students from Medical University of Isfahan were selected and randomly divided into Commercially-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) sets with interdisciplinary and disciplinary circles to learn ENP listening and reading comprehension in homogeneous and heterogeneous make-up. The data were collected through a questionnaire, continuous assessment, journaling, real-world assessment, and an interview. The gathered data were analyzed descriptively and inferentially through repeated measures ANOVA, which, in turn revealed that AR-mediated ENP Learning (AAEL) led into students' comprehension and outperformance in both instructional-learning and professional contexts. Along these lines, practicing ENP reading and listening via self-made AR-assisted activities in interdisciplinary circles with heterogeneous make-up facilitated students’ progress and performance. Accordingly, it can be argued that educational stakeholders have been inspired by and shaped the EdTech-assisted scenarios. The findings can be tapped into for developing new language curricula in higher education.

Studies have shown that educational technology can promote college language learning and performance and provide higher education stakeholders with more efficient means for dealing with academic and professional needs. Today, higher education programs can only be successful with the use of new educational technology tools in the teaching and learning process, especially when there are special education requisites. In tandem, there is a dire need to review educational technology tools that have been applied to college language learning and teaching continuously and renovate former, current, and future activities. Social robots with human-like features have paved the way for students to interact with the actual academic and professional contexts, which is thought to be important for Language for Specific and Academic skills education and the use of content materials and skills in real-life arenas. Social robots continue to be present in language education by the new face of social telepresence robots. This way, social robots are readily combined with mobile devices (e.g., cellphones, tablets). Substantial research has focused on integrating students' academic and professional into the social telepresence robot-aided college language skills teaching and learning. Lingual and non-lingual features of social robots offer a wide array of possibilities for college language skills education in relation to real-world needs. Fanfiction in the robot-assisted language learning modules provides the possibility to practice and share the true-to-life experience. Meanwhile, the argument that social robots may improve the learning of Language for Specific and Academic Purposes has been corroborated by the annotated features of the new generation of games (e.g., augmented reality games). The new generation of games in college language education can represent the overlap among academic and healthcare field contexts. In this fashion, the use of educational and pedagogical games has fortified the college language teaching and learning process. The game has also spawned new forms of robot-aided language learning; thus, true instantiation of real-world phenomenon can be enhanced by the verbal (written and oral) clouds of the augmented reality games on the moulage body of social robots. While may not be fully realized today, the integration of artificial beings into human life and society can evoke great images of variegated constituents of the actual-world scenes. By the use of the annotated moulage body of social robots and fan fiction, under the Covid-19 pandemic, the study investigated how students view the use of the social robots and its putative impacts on learning Language for Medical Purposes productive (writing) and receptive (reading) skills education. In effect, in examining the impact of social robot augmented reality games on college language learning the aim was to if engaging in real-life-like world scenes and scenarios with fellow students, providing richer emergent language practice and learning. This complementarity study was conducted through parallel and self-explanatory sequential designs in the academic years 2020-2021 at Isfahan University of Medical Sciences through the national learning management system of NAVID and an embedded free software web conferencing system of BigBlueButton. NAVID was selected for the participants to interact and proceed with the social telepresence robots, providing a milieu for ubiquitous online discussion and teacher tutoring. This way, using the convenience sampling method and the design of experiments, 389 students of midwifery, nursing, operating room, radiology, and health information technology, who took the obligatory two-credit lesson of language for medical Purposes, were selected. Then, the participants took part in the general language proficiency tests (Persian Language Proficiency test = AMFA and Ministry of Health Language Exam = MHLE) and they were divided into the foursomes of teacher- and student-written groups. This 16-week study was started with soliciting the participants' attitude regarding college language skills learning through robots relying on their experience. In each instructional classroom, initially, the participants practiced writing and reading skills through reading the content materials (in Persian or English) and integrating them into the annotated clouds on the social telepresence robots' bodies. It is of note that the social telepresence robot augmented reality games and fanfictions were two types, namely teacher-written and student-written fanfictions to be uploaded as the written clouds of the activities. While, in the teacher-written fanfictions, the language and content teachers collaborated to write fan fiction, in the student-written fanfictions, students wrote the content of fictional writings with reliance on their academic and professional experiences. Then, they were taught and assessed individually by the collaboration of language and content teachers (co-teaching or adjunct teaching). In the middle of the course (the eighth session), once again, the participants' attitudes were solicited. The quantitative phase of the study was closed by assessing the participants' reading and writing skills in the healthcare fields through a mini-Clinical Evaluation Exercise (mini-CEX) in the process of addressing the standard patients' needs. Finally, the study was closed by conducting an online focus-group interview. While the gathered data in the quantitative phase was analyzed through the repeated measures ANOVA, the participants’ responses to the interview prompts were content analyzed through MAXQDA 2020. Overall, this study revealed that although there are currently few reported occurrences of receptive and productive activities integrating students' experiences and thoughts into social robot-aided modules, fan fiction is a new channel for introducing the students' experiences into the process of practicing medical college reading and writing through social telepresence robots. Reading the self-written (vs. teacher-written) fanfictions to be glossed into the clouds of the social telepresence robots increased students' participation and performance. The analysis of qualitative data indicated that the participants applied different strategies during the study. Most frequently cited were cognitive and support strategies with addressing the (academic and professional) need (e.g., adopting a proactive role, vicarious learning). Like so, the social telepresence robot augmented reality games, were real-life-like college language activities, allow for cooperative interaction in the context of college skills language teaching and learning, where entities can be boosted with each other. The participants also held favorable perceptions about sharing their experience through reading and writing fanfiction for practicing Language for Medical Purposes skills through the medium of telepresence robots. Based on the findings, academic and professional implications are provided.

This corpus-based study using sequential explanatory design in two quantitative and qualitative phases endeavored to explore the applicability of co-verbal gestures in teaching and learning Persian for Medical Purposes (PMP). After conducting a pilot study, a corpus of co-verbal gestures was reached. Nineteen frequent gestures of place that conceptualize the adverbs of time and order were extracted manually from the corpus to be employed in the collective practice with (human or robot) partners. In so doing, in three sequential semesters of the academic years 2020-2021, 240 undergraduate non-Iranian students of medical sciences were selected through the design of experiments and were randomly divided into three groups to practice PMP reading materials in dyads. After conducting a survey before and during the study, the participants were taught and assessed formatively in 18 sessions of the flipped classrooms. Assessing the participants' performance in the fields and carrying out a focus-group interview set the scenes for a complementarity study. The descriptive and inferential analyses of the collected data highlighted the applicability of social robots in enhancing the participants' PMP reading comprehension. The participants' active engagement in dyads confirmed the applicability of social robots in teaching and learning PMP reading comprehension skills.

Pragmatic Listening Comprehension (PLC), as a complex process, is influenced by various cognitive, psychological, contextual, social, cultural, and linguistic factors. To make a stride toward understanding the role of such factors in PLC, the present study sought not only to scrutinize to what extent PLC was associated with language proficiency, Self-Regulated Learning in Listening (SRLL), and Willingness to Communicate (WTC) but also to examine an empirical path analysis model to predict PLC through language proficiency, SRLL, and WTC. To this aim, a group of 269 upper-intermediate and advanced level Iranian EFL learners, whose ages ranged from 19 to 34, participated in the study by answering the 40-item pragmatic multiple-choice discourse completion test (MDCT),  as well as the valid and reliable questionnaires of SRLL and WTC. The results of correlational analyses revealed that PLC was significantly and positively associated with language proficiency, SRLL, and WTC. These findings were further approved in the path analysis model; language proficiency, SRLL, and WTC were significant positive predictors of PLC. The path model disclosed the significant prediction of PLC in terms of the three independent variables of the study. Based on these results, relevant pedagogical implications were proposed with the aim of enhancing the pedagogical knowledge and practice of key educational stakeholders.

To expand the line of research investigating individual teacher-related variables, the present research sought to test a structural model of teacher reflection, self-efficacy, burnout, and emotion regulation among Iranian EFL instructors. Moreover, a mediation model was examined, hypothesizing that emotion regulation would mediate the influences of teacher reflection and teacher self-efficacy on teacher burnout. Collecting data from a sample of 238 Iranian EFL teachers, a structural equation modeling (SEM) was embarked on to test the hypothesized relationships. The data of the study were gathered through the participants’ responses to the four questionnaires related to the four variables under investigation (i.e., teacher self-efficacy, reflection, burnout, and emotion regulation variables). The outcomes of a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) verified the fitness of the used questionnaires and the structural model. Considering the centrality of teachers’ affective status in how they deal with reform initiatives, it is hoped that our results can contribute to the understanding of how teachers can take practical measures to monitor their emotional states in EFL education in Iran and in the broader international context.  Additionally, EFL teacher preparation programs should consider more practical strategies to enhance efficacy beliefs, emotion regulation, and reflection for pre-service teachers.

Among daily speech acts, compliments and their responses are of high frequency and carry a special cultural-sociological load. As such, the present study aimed at investigating compliment responses (CRs) employed by Iranian EFL learners on Instagram. In doing so, 360 CRs were collected from 60 Iranian male and female EFL students. Using Maíz-Arévalo’s (2013) framework, students’ compliment responses were analyzed. The findings indicated that the most frequently used response strategy in Instagram was acceptance, and was different from face-to-face CR. In addition, the study showed gender differences in the manifestation of CR. Females responded to compliments longer than their male counterparts did and they showed more emotions in responding to compliments. From a sociolinguistic vantage point, the results of examining such social relationships in online context enable EFL teachers to develop new patterns of social and cultural communication for their students and make them socially and culturally aware to avoid using inappropriate norms, impolite behaviors, and misunderstanding.

Despite the significant role of emotions in any aspect of language learning, including its pragmatic aspect, there have been few research studies on this topic. As a stride toward narrowing this research niche, the objectives of this research were threefold. Firstly, it aimed to examine the two face-threatening speech acts of request and apology as indicators of learners’‎ interlanguage pragmatic competence (ILP) and its relationships with learners’ Emotional Quotient (EQ). Secondly, it sought to investigate ‎whether gender as an intervening variable would have any significant relationship with ILP and EQ, and thirdly whether EQ could predict ILP ‎development. To this end, 72 (50 females and 22 males) Iranian lower-intermediate level learners ranging ‎in age from 17 to 25 from two universities took part in this research. A multiple-choice discourse completion test ‎‎(MDCT) (Liu, 2004) and Bar-Onʼs ‎(1997) EQ scale were used and correlation analysis was done to search for any linkage between ILP and EQ. The Pearson product-moment correlation outcomes ‎revealed no significant relationship between EQ and ILP. However, a significant relation was found between Independence as a component of EQ and ‎EFL learners’ ILP competence. The independent samples t-test outcomes indicated ‎that female participants had a higher level of (ILP) competence than male participants; however, male and female participants did not differ significantly regarding their EQ level. The findings indicate that ‎EQ, in general, is not influential in EFL learners’ ILP competence. The paper concludes by providing pedagogical implications for EFL learners and instructors.

Learning outcomes will highly increase if barriers are identified and removed appropriately. Since demotivating factors can affect the learning process negatively, regaining the lost interest of learners leads to higher levels of academic achievement. Demotivation has been referred to as low motivation instead of being an independent concept on its own on the one hand, and the demotivating factors related to PhD exam candidates have not been taken into consideration so far on the other hand. As a result, this research attempted to examine both the demotivating and remotivating factors in the Iranian milieu, for which 100 MA and 78 PhD exam candidates from various universities took part in our study. The participants filled out a validated demotivating questionnaire for data collection, and 15 MA and 20 PhD participants participated in a semi-structured interview, encompassing five open-ended questions. The multivariate analysis of ANOVA depicted a significant difference between the most demotivating factor (economic problems) and the least demotivating one (curriculum decisions). Moreover, the data provided by the participants were analyzed to reduce the effect of these factors. Identifying the demotivating factors and trying to neutralize their negative effects by considering the remotivating options enables the policymakers to help the students move towards academic satisfaction which in the long run leads to their psychological well-being.

Due to the crucial role of student academic engagement in learning a second language, teacher interpersonal variables which affect second language learners’ engagement have gained momentum. To keep up with this line of inquiry, this study attempted to probe the role of Persian language teachers’ nonverbal immediacy and credibility in their Turkman students’ academic engagement. To do this, 503 Turkman students with different educational grades (i.e., 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12) voluntarily took part in this study from different regions of Golestan province. The sample included 282 females and 221 males ranging in age from 12 to 18. To obtain the data, Nonverbal Immediacy Scale (NIS), Source Credibility Scale (SCS), and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale for Students (UWES-S) were distributed among participants. Pearson correlation coefficient tests were run to analyze the gathered data. The results exhibited that there were significant positive correlations among Persian language teachers’ nonverbal immediacy, credibility, and Turkman students’ academic engagement. The findings were also approved by structural equation modeling (SEM) results:Turkman students’ academic engagement was predicted significantly and positively by their Persian language teachers’ nonverbal immediacy and credibility. The outcomes of the present study posit that Turkman students’ academic engagement can be remarkably enhanced by their Persian language teachers’ credibility and nonverbal immediacy. Finally, the pedagogical implications for teaching Persian to speakers of other languages are also discussed.

This study endeavored to evaluate the local English textbook named “Prospect 2” taught in junior high schools in Iran based on a group of Iranian EFL teachers and teacher educators’ perspectives. For this purpose, 10 (6 males and 4 females) teacher educators and 117 (54 males and 63 females) junior high school EFL teachers from Golestan Province, Iran took part in this study. To gather the required data, the modified version of Mukundan’s (2011) questionnaire was utilized as a textbook evaluation checklist to investigate the participants’ perspectives toward suitability, strengths, and shortcomings of the book. The outcomes of this research revealed that the participants of the two groups mainly had positive attitudes toward the book. Further findings of this research did not present any significant difference between teachers and teacher educators’ views toward the book. Finally, some concluding remarks regarding the overall findings of the study were presented. Main implications of the study were that teachers should attempt to incorporate suitable and practical methods for the instruction and promotion of the communicative language teaching approach in the class as an approach on which the book is based and try to cater for the shortcomings of the book through providing supplementary materials and alternative activities for the students.

Identity processing styles are those psychological, sociocultural, and socio-cognitive mechanisms that shape, reshape, and establish different individuals’ identities both in their mother tongues and in the second or foreign language they are striving to acquire. The relationship between these identity processing styles and L2 learners’ pragmatic competence is a crucial issue that has not been explored thus far in an EFL context. Therefore, the present study sought to investigate the relationship between the information-oriented, diffuse-avoidant, and normative identity processing styles as measured by Berzonsky’s (2011) Identity Processing Style Inventory (ISI-4) and L2 speech-act knowledge and production among 122 (82 F and 40 M) Iranian upper-intermediate to advanced proficiency level learners. A validated 35-item multiple-choice discourse completion test (MDCT) including five frequent English speech acts (requests, apologies, refusals, complaints, and compliments/compliment responses) and a related role-play interactive test were then employed. The application of multiple regression revealed that diffuse-avoidant and normative identity processing styles were significant but moderate contributors to both pragmatic knowledge and production; however, information-oriented identity processing style was a weak significant predictor. These findings imply that teachers can manage and tailor the instructional pragmatic practices in accordance with the learners’ identity processing styles.

Given the importance of cultural issues in different societies, scholars have introduced the ethnography of communication to examine the differences in light of language and context. Related to this theory is Hymes’ SPEAKING model (1967), in which setting and scene, participants, ends, acts sequence, key, instrumentalities, norms, and genre are taken into account to analyze speech events. Since the words and expressions we use in everyday speech have emotional loads, adding an emotional aspect to this model (E-SPEAKING) seems to provide a more comprehensive picture regarding cultural and linguistic interpretations. The present study; therefore, first, introduces the concept of emoling by analyzing [Naaz Kardan]-related vocabularies, and then, by considering closing and opening discourse, tries to relate the concepts of ethnography of communication and emotional ethnography. Such cultural emolings can reduce the existing gap between social and psychological studies and lead to a more holistic view on language and culture, which consequently prevent separating emotions from cultures.

Dams are one of the most important fundamental structures all around the world. Given the high volume of water in the dams, they are susceptible to damage and destruction, leading to large financial losses and fatality. Therefore, by installation of instrumentation data in the dam’s body and execution of terrestrial surveying network, stability and safety of dams can be monitored. However, occasionally abnormal processes take place in the dam’s body and foundation that do not match with the instrumentation data’s outcomes. In the recent years, with the evolution and progress of radar imaging techniques and the image processing approaches, large deformations in the dams’ and bridges’ body can be monitored precisely. In the current study, the abnormal deformation and displacement taken place within the time period of Sentinel-1A 2014-2018 on the downstream part of Taleqan dam’s body were evaluated 4 mm/y and were compared with instrumentation data. The results imply that the occurred displacement is related to the external and protective layer of the dam’s body (Riprap) and has no correlation with the dam’s body behaviour.

Reducing water resources and increasing demand for safe drinking water requires attention to water resources that can be returned to nature or can be used in industry or agriculture. In this regard, the use of optimal and effective methods for wastewater treatment and development is very important. In order to increase the efficiency of the wastewater treatment system and in order to reduce the pollution load of the effluent, it is very important to predict the quality of the treated effluent. In this research work, using genetic algorithm and neural network method, the effluent treatment system of Azerbaijan Pegah factory has been modeled in order to optimize the results using genetic algorithm and neural network method. The effluent treatment process should be carried out in order to anticipate the removal and disinfection of the remaining carbon materials and microbial contaminants according to the BOD5 and COD data that determine the quality of the effluent. The results show that the combination of the above two algorithms has been successful in predicting the output data compared to the actual data and there is an 87% matching of the data.

The interconnectedness of language and culture has attracted the attention of scholars in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, and applied linguistics. In this regard, inspired by the ideas of Halliday (1975, 1994), Vygotsky (1978, 1986), and Sapir and Whorf (1956), which imply the relationship among culture, thought, and language, Pishghadam (2013) introduced the concept of “Cultuling”. He postulated that investigating and identifying the cultulings of each society not only can pave the way for the faster detection of right and wrong cultural behaviors but also can facilitate the cultural reforms which lead to linguistic excellence and “Euculturing”. Due to the prime importance of identifying and investigating cultulings, several studies have analyzed them; nonetheless, no systematic research has been conducted to synthesize the cultuling studies. Therefore, in the present study, the theoretical frameworks, the corpora, and the findings of all cultuling studies were scrutinized. The results suggest that the majority of cultuling studies have embarked on the data by reviewing the linguistic structures and expressions that occur in natural situations and have used the Hymes’s (1967) SPEAKING model to analyze these expressions. The findings also indicate that few studies have analyzed textual cultulings. Moreover, no empirical study has been conducted to evaluate textbooks based on cultulings. Finally, based on the results and findings of this review, some avenues for future studies are provided.

Compliments (Cs) and compliment responses have been a prevailing topic of study in pragmatics due to their pivotal role in effective intercultural and transcultural interactions. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of research on compliments in the Persian language conducted over almost about the past four decades. It summarizes key findings of compliments in the Persian language used by Iranian speakers of Persian, discusses the significance of these findings, and speculates the future directions of research on complimenting studies on Persian language. An extensive bibliographical search on studies on this particular area yielded a database of nine studies on Persian Cs for this systematic review. After a brief exploration of the background of compliment studies done by prominent scholars in other languages, we provide a working definition of compliments. We then examine studies to date of complimenting behavior in Persian, highlighting similarities and differences, and any emerging trends. We provide a synthesis of the research conducted in this area, the theoretical frameworks, and the methodologies used in different studies, including data collection and data analysis. Based on the review of previous studies, we speculate on some possible directions for future research in this area.

Many books have been written to illustrate the position of the new technologies in teaching and learning a foreign or second language (L2); nonetheless, most of these books have not been successful. The Handbook of Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning edited by Caral A. Chapell and Shanon Sauro and published by Wiley Blackwell in 2017, provides a comprehensive overview of the various facets of the use of technology in teaching and learning an L2. This book has not been translated into Persian and no critical review has been published for it; accordingly, this study sought to both introduce and critically review this book. The current critical review revealed some advantages including comprehensiveness of the whole book, the expertise of the writers, up-to-dateness, content and format integrity, and the use of valid sources. The main criticisms are the exclusion of some of the very recent technologies, perhaps due to the ever-changing and exponentially volatile nature of the technological improvements and expansions, the introduction of too many technologies at the theoretical level without providing information about their practical use. Generally, the book is an invaluable and academically written source for L2 practitioners, postgraduate students, and researchers.