نشریه پژوهش و نگارش کتب دانشگاهی
سال بیست و چهارم شماره 1 (پیاپی 46، بهار و تابستان 1399)

Official Translation, that is also called Legal Translation, or Translation of Correspondence and Documents is an extremely important enterprise that has a lot of potential for creating many jobs in labor market, but received little attention in terms of academic research. Official translation requires advanced knowledge of general language (both source language and target language), familiarity with legal knowledge of both source and target ‎countries, and familiarity with translatable documents. Translators should learn these skills through lots of practice; therefore, a 4-unit course of “translation of correspondence and related documents” is not enough for mastering these skills. This paper critically studies the method of translation teaching, reviews the existing official translation textbooks that are published under the title of “translation of correspondence and documents”, assesses market needs, and presents alternatives for a more systematic method of textbook writing – all within the framework of theories such as Scopus in translation studies, and also within the diverse modern educational-assessment frameworks, including task-based technology-aided teaching. However, the other dimensions of these textbooks will not be addressed here since they are beyond the scope of this research. The findings of this research may throw some light on how the gap between teaching and evaluation on the one hand, and the gap between knowledge and skills on the other hand can be bridged, and show how translators can meet the real-life and legitimate expectations in the official translation labor market. Applying the guidelines suggested in this article may help establish a more reliable link between university and official translation labor market, and also financial and time costs in both sectors.

This research aimed to identify different dimensions of the potentials of the arts of local communities, in particular, toy dolls, and ritual and theatrical puppets to plan and run Community-Oriented Art Teaching programs. This is a qualitative, exploratory, and phenomenological research. The research community included educators, artists, and researchers who are active in the field of indigenous arts, especially puppets, and are teaching in local communities. Sampling was carried out through purposive homogeneity method which reached data saturation level with 9 persons. Data collection tool was semi-structured interview. Data validity was confirmed by the evaluation criteria of Lincoln and Guba (1985) and the methods of Denzin (1978) and Patton (1999). The seven-step method of Colaizzi (1978) was used for data analysis. The findings showed that the potentials of puppets are classified into: 2 main levels (internal-structure and external-structure); 4 intermediate levels: “formal”, “substantial”, “pragmatic” and “functional”; and 13 micro-themes: “spatiality”, “temporality”, “representativeness”, “multidimensional aesthetics”, “ritualism”, “identity recognition”, “narrativeness/narration”, “spatial appropriateness”, “general social good”, “participatory aspect”, “interpretative”, “identity recognition” and “interrelationships between learning and society”.

Most scholars, teachers and students of philosophy believe that the university educational program in the field of Islamic philosophy is dysfunctional so that its repulsion is greater than its fascination. This situation is due to several causes and among them, textbook is one of the most important causes. ‎The purpose of this article is to pathologically review the book Bidayat al-Hikmah, written by Allameh Mohammad Hossein Tabatabai (1970) as the most popular textbook in the undergraduate course of Islamic philosophy. This book is a common and main source for 24 units in the field of Islamic philosophy. Although professors of philosophy mostly acknowledge the positive features of this work, they believe that it is not an appropriate textbook. Seemingly the academic status of its writer – as well as the absence of a proper alternative source ‎–‎ were factors that have caused it receive no independent and detailed review so far. In fact, although the book Badayat al-Hikma has educational strengths, its weaknesses are so important that it can be said with certainty that it lacks the necessary features as a source for teaching Islamic philosophy; and its negative effects on teaching philosophy outweigh its benefits. This article, while briefly introducing the book and presenting its strengths, examines in detail its shortcomings and weaknesses.

Problem:

 Smart education has been discussed in Iran and the world in recent years, and continuous Arabic conversation training has been one of the main concerns of experts and specialists in this language, because on the one hand, there is diversity in different dialects and on the other hand, lack of language learners. Language is challenging in this area, and advances in the global communications and information technology community have provided a good platform for teaching Arabic dialects.

In this research, the argumentative method has been used; First, the conceptual design of the research is proposed based on the theoretical framework, and then the hypothesis is based on it. Hypothesis: "Designing a smart textbook based on a mobile application is an up-to-date method for teaching Arabic conversation in different dialects."

The results of this article show that smart education should be defined and presented in the context of the new lifestyle of learners and people of society, and therefore the smart education plan of Arabic dialects in the context of elements and factors such as: 1- Designing and producing attractive content. Multimedia 2- Instructor as Coordinator and Guide 3- Focus on Creativity and Critical Thinking 4- Using Triple Intelligence; Moral, spiritual, and practical. 5. The use of cultural and up-to-date elements and requirements of accents. 6. The design and updating of a professional application is realized, which is discussed in this article.

Acceptance of learning via social networks depends to a great extent on the personal attitudes of the learners; therefore the present study concentrated on those personal backgrounds that are influential on the learners’ preparation for using social networks to learn language skills. The sample of the study included 64 Arabic language students studying at Shiraz University. Since they were few in number, there was no need to do sampling and the information was gathered through consensus. The tool applied in the study consisted of the questionnaire devised by the researcher in accordance with the electronic preparation principles and rules to practice electronic learning. The questionnaire was revised by several professors of Arabic language and educational science majors and then its validity was confirmed by them. To assess the reliability, the questionnaire was pretested to 15 students and Cronbach’s alpha of 0.90 was achieved. The results revealed that the students do not possess necessary skills and attitudes to use virtual networks for learning lingual skills. The students also believed that the organizational culture of the university is not supportive and encouraging to perform such programs

This study aimed to systematically study and present‎ an ultracombination of the works of local and international researchers on the desirable characteristics of university textbooks. The method used in this study was qualitative research synthesis. The research community included 60 relevant researches that have been carried out during the last 20 years. The obtained results are in the form of semantic units and coding of competencies. In the first stage, 150 codes were created and organized by analyzing the qualitative content in 25 categories in order to achieve the two objectives of the research. The first objective was to identify the most important components of composing and developing textbook as well as identifying the four themes: 1) Scientific Accuracy; 2) Educational Nature; 3) Audience-Oriented Approach; 4) Writing Accuracy. For the second objective, a model was designed based on which the component of transparency of expression was the common component of the three themes: Educational Nature, Scientific Accuracy, and Writing Accuracy. Components of holism and coherent scientific structure are the common factors of Scientific Accuracy and Educational Nature themes, and the concept of transferring values is the common factor of ‎ Educational Nature and Audience-Oriented Approach.

A textbook has a set of characteristics that show its educational structure. Structurally, each lesson of a textbook should at least include goals, a pre-organizer, a text, a summary, a practice and resources for further study. A book that does not meet these standards desperately lowers the quality of education. Therefore, one of the main ways to evaluate the quality of textbooks is to review them critically in terms of structural indicators. Since Islamic Ethics is a general course for all the students of academic disciplines, we decided to critically review Islamic Ethic: Principles and Concepts that is one of the textbooks in this field. ‎This book was written by Dr. Mehdi Alizadeh and his colleagues in 2011. Among different methods of textbook critical review, the method of quantitative content analysis has been used in this paper. This kind of analysis includes seven models in both descriptive and relational domains that just five models among them were applicable in this study. The results show that this book, despite its relative superiority to other relevant books, has serious drawbacks in terms of structure. This book lacks important sections such as pre-organizer, summary, and resources for further reading. According to the descriptive content analysis, 89% of the goals and 36% of the exercises are nonstandard. According to relational content analysis, 92% of the goals are related to the content, but 35% of the goals are not related to the exercises.

One of the most important issues that must be considered regarding textbook development is the critical evaluation of their materials. Therefore, this study aimed at evaluating a textbook entitled English for the Students of Science (Biology & Geology) written by Mahmoud-Reza Attai, Omid-Reza Rajabi, Mavaddat Saeidi, Malihe-Sadat Mousavi, and Mohsen Nili Ahmadabadi, and published by SAMT in 2016. In order to achieve this goal, the model  developed by Mahmoodi and Ahmadisafa (2015)‎ for critical evaluation of English for Specific Purposes books was used. Based on the analysis of the book, the textbook’s weak points included insufficient application of relevant tables and figures, and the lack of features that activate and reinforce students’ critical thinking, such as graphic features, appropriate activities for each lesson, appropriate content, coherence, and attention to language skills. Since developing critical thinking is considered as one of the most important and vital skills for students today, it is of utmost importance that authors of the book consider this aspect of learning in their future works.

The study of the inadequacies and shortcomings of the Persian grammar books is the first and most important step towards a deep understanding of the structural characteristics of Persian language and writing a comprehensive and efficient grammar book. In Persian grammar books, some grammatical topics such as “conditional sentences”, neither have received adequate attention nor any regular model was developed to describe them. Accordingly, the present study tried to review the discussions of ‎“conditional sentence”‎ in the most important Persian grammar books and analyze their strengths and weaknesses in this regard. This helps grammarians pay attention to the latent dimensions of the structural patterns of the Persian language. Therefore, 10 major Persian grammar books that are often referred to by scholars and grammarians were selected and the topic of “conditional sentences” of each of them was studied based on descriptive-analytical method. The most important results of this research indicated that in the section of the “conditional sentences” of the most Persian grammar books that are based on traditional or linguistic approaches, there are common features such as incomprehensiveness, inconsistent terminology, logical inconsistency in the classification of grammatical categories, imitation of foreign grammars, absence of criticizing and analyzing previous theories and ideas, as well as mixing different varieties of language. This highlights the importance of a careful and meticulous study of each of the issues of Persian grammar.

Colin Hay in his book entitled Political analysis: A critical introduction studied different analytical perspectives in political science and International relations along with cohesion and non-cohesion in the analysis of political transformations and the status of discourse and subjectivity issues in political analysis. In addition to the issue of political analysis and providing a critical ‎introduction on the above-mentioned points, he tried to lay an emphasis on the ongoing ‎effort to influence the evolving process in political science and international ‎relations‎. This article examines a critical view on the patterns and criteria presented for political analysis so that the reader could come up with a more realistic and authentic set of criteria for political critics and analytical studies at the end. Additionally, some subject matters that signify the writer’s ignorance to conceptualization phase especially in ontological elucidations have been emphasized systematically. Moreover, this study tried to pinpoint the problems and issues regarding discourse analysis and subjectivity in the contemporary trend of political analysis so that the reader won’t be perplexed reading the text and could avoid mere hermeneutics.

Socio-cultural reading that is one of the most important approaches to cultural history is highlighted in the book An introduction to the cultural history of the body in Iran. In this article, a review of the methodology and content of the text begins with this question: What effect can the use of discourse approach in the cultural history of the body have on the view of the authors of the book and their reading of the sources and events of Iranian history, and what are the strengths and weaknesses of this approach? Using a critical approach and historical analysis, the achievement of the discussion can be described as follows: Introducing a new formulation for Iranian history, presenting a different interpretation of understanding history, highlighting the sociological approach and cultural studies of the body, interpreting clothing as a cultural-political-religious matter, and using literary and illustrated sources with the aim of strengthening the socio-cultural history approach. However, the dominance of the generalized and theory-based view has caused the various historical evidences that contradict the authors’ claims, and several historical facts can be presented that challenge the authors’ inference. On the other hand, the division of the historical periods of Iran into four eras (the era of empire, the era of constitutionalism, the era of modernity, and the era of religion) in different chapters of the book caused serious problems and cannot be consistent with the issue of periodization in the cultural history of the body. Also, the content of the last three chapters has been analyzed based on a similar structure, and reference to first-hand sources has received less attention.

The research was carried out with the aim of studying the principles and criteria for writing content of the syllabus at the general level of women’s seminaries. The methodology of this research is qualitative content analysis, using the theme-oriented method ‎(thematic method)‎ through inductive analysis. Sampling method or the method for selection of analysis unit in this study was theoretical sampling. Regarding the data obtained, the contents of the relevant documents were analyzed in addition to the analysis of the interviews‎, so that by coding the main categories after data saturation, 5 main categories and 39 sub-categories were extracted from the qualitative data, and the internal validity was calculated. Due to the fact that the findings are based on the ideas of prominent experts in ‎seminaries and are ‎consistent with religious teachings, their application is not ‎limited to the higher education system of the ‎seminaries and can be used in various ‎contexts, especially the context of university textbook publication.‎