پژوهش نامه ی آموزش زبان فارسی به غیر فارسی زبانان
پیاپی 21 (بهار و تابستان 1400)

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.

Modernization of a society depends on the greater demands for accountability which caused a movement based on the idea that schools should not merely impart information and ask for data memorization. In fact, education should equip the students with critical thinking. This qualitative study investigates practices of critical literacy in a Persian writing curriculum promoting development of literacy and voice and raising critical consciousness and social agency of the participants, by making use of a theoretical framework of critical pedagogy. The present study employs a critical narrative research method. By making use of a semi-structured narrative interview, it explores the experiences and insights of four former students of color from a women’s Persian writing curriculum and its impact on their literacy, voice, and confidence development. Participants were women of color who used to study in high-density schools of low-income neighborhoods in the US before their emigration. The writing curriculum is for foreign women who learned Persian in Bent Al-Hoda School located in Qom, Iran. The curriculum’s critical literacy elements include reading relevant passages, studying from critical point of view, preparing their own narratives, and reading them for live listeners. A thematic analysis is used to find the repetitive patterns of their perceptions and experiences with the curriculum and whether the critical literacy empowered them. The findings from the curriculum and the perceptions of the participants indicate that critical literacy is an effective approach to literacy instruction as well as voice and agency development. Extended Abstract Modernization of a society depends on the greater demands for accountability which caused a movement based on the idea that schools should not merely impart information and ask for data memorization. Education should equip the students with critical thinking which places marginalized voices in the center. It has addressed the underrepresentation and silence of people of color in curricular inequalities. Critical literacy serves disenfranchised students in their academic and everyday lives to confront capitalism which has benefitted from the majority of the population remaining silent and not fully literate. Thus, to make room for voice expression and self-perception empowerment for women of color who live or used to live in such a system, it is important to carry out further educational research on the ways in which women of color from working-class communities have received literacy education. Hence, an innovative instructional approach such as critical literacy requires serious consideration and further investigation. The current study is designed to provide valuable information for literacy teachers to employ as they design curriculum, and select and prioritize instructional materials and practices in the classroom. More specifically, this information is designed to inform educators on the differences between using critical approaches to mentoring student writers and readers and initiating them into the writing process, and simply instructing in the traditional or instrumental ways that often have been used in large public schools. Furthermore, this study intends to fill a gap in the current educational research on literacy instruction in curriculums of Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages (TPSOL), particularly for working-class women of color immigrated to Iran. That is, this qualitative study investigates practices of critical literacy in a Persian writing curriculum promoting development of literacy and voice and raising critical consciousness and social agency of the participants, by making use of a theoretical framework of critical pedagogy which was developed out of Freire’s (1972) work and used to apply critical theory to the classroom. This critical education theory is associated with democratic principles and social action, and serves the empowerment of socially and economically oppressed populations. For emancipatory purposes, teachers and students have been co-investigators in dialogues working mutually; that is why dialogue has played a pivotal role in critical pedagogy. Critical pedagogy seeks to provide all students with counter-hegemonic environments – “intellectual and social spaces where power relationships are reconstructed to make central the voices and experiences of those who have historically existed at the margins of public institutions” (Darder et al., 2009, p. 12). Critical pedagogy leads students and teachers to question traditional passages and internalized beliefs, and to take social action against social injustices. Therefore, critical educators come up with a humanizing education starting with the experiences and personal lives of students, which helps students and teachers to further develop a voice affirming their cultural, class, racial, and gender identities. The present study employs a critical narrative research method. By making use of a semi-structured narrative interview, it explores the experiences and insights of four former students of color from a women’s Persian writing curriculum and its impact on their literacy, voice, and confidence development. Participants involved foreign Persian-learners who were all native-like speakers of English emigrated from the US to Iran. Under purposive sampling four participants were selected; they were women of color from the working-class who finished both their Persian learning classes and Persian creative writing curriculum at Bent Al-Hoda School in Qom, and used to study in the US public schools. At the time of this study they were from 18 to 20 years old. Former students were selected intentionally instead of the current members of the curriculum. In fact, former students have completed their experiences with the curriculum and have had some time to reflect on those experiences. The setting of the study was a private language center in which women’s Persian writing curriculum of 24 sessions were held in six months. The women voluntarily attended weekly literacy sessions of getting to know writing genres, of reading texts from marginalized perspectives written in or translated into Persian, and discussing the texts and writings. In addition   n, 6 monthly public reading sessions were held to which the students could take their parents and friends. The curriculum was for foreign women living in Qom who learned Persian in Bent Al-Hoda School. After the narrative sessions, data were transcribed and stored on a secure computer. The transcripts from the narrative sessions were analyzed by looking for repetitive themes and patterns from the participants’ responses on their perceptions and experiences with the curriculum and the critical literacy approach. Also, themes and patterns were found regarding how the participants believed the curriculum and the critical literacy elements were helpful in changing them. Themes were recognized in their responses and the method of coding was employed. Since raw field notes were “the undigested complexity of reality” (Patton, 2002, p. 463), patterns and identified themes expressed by participants in their narratives were established. Next, specific responses under those themes were coded, particularly as they related to issues connected directly to the experience of critical literacy and its impact as empowering and changing. The findings from the curriculum and the perceptions of the participants indicate that critical literacy is an effective approach to literacy instruction as well as voice and agency development.

Given the significance of teaching Persian to speakers of other languages as a sub-discipline of applied linguistics and scant studies looking into its intended curriculum, the present paper sought to evaluate the educational objectives represented in the policy documents of the curriculums at the two levels of M.A. and Ph.D. guided by Bloom’s revised taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). It further examined the vertical statistical alignment between the sets of educational objectives drawing on Porters et al.’s alignment analysis (2007). In doing so, the latest curriculum standards or policy documents published by the Iranian Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology were obtained. The knowledge types and cognitive levels tapped by the standards were identified, codified, and descriptively analyzed using the checklist developed by Rezvani and Zamani (2012). Porter et al.'s (2007) statistical alignment formula was also used to assess the vertical alignment between the educational objectives of the two levels. The results of the study revealed that educational objectives at both levels represented mainly lower-order cognitive processes and knowledge types at the expense of overlooking the higher-order ones. It was also found that M.A. and Ph.D. educational objectives were statistically and vertically aligned with one another suggesting the adequate harmony of them as two sequential programs. The paper finally discusses the implications of the findings for policy-makers and educators in the Iranian higher education context. Extended Abstract: In general, any educational system consists of three essential components of intended, implemented, and attained curriculums, and for any multi-componential system to yield the intended outcomes, there ought to be harmony among the components. Among these three components, intended curriculums or policy documents play a pivotal role in any educational system, as they set the aims of the programs and lead the way; therefore, it is essential that their efficacy be evaluated systematically. Although intended curriculums are of paramount importance in Iran’s centralized higher educational context, few studies have evaluated higher education curriculum standards. The present study aimed at evaluating the official curriculum standards of Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages (TPSOL) in Iranian higher education. Using Bloom’s revised taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) as the theoretical framework of the study, it first examined the educational objectives represented in the policy documents of the courses at the two levels of M.A. and Ph.D., followed by examining the vertical statistical alignment between the educational objectives targeted in these two sets of course standards. To do so, the latest policy documents of M.A. and Ph.D. curriculums published and mandated by Iran’ Ministry of Science Research and Technology in 2015 were sought. The documents generally present the courses to be offered in the programs, highlight the most important objectives and discussion topics of each course, clarify the skills and abilities that students may attain after passing each course, recommend some most classical readings and resources for each course, and suggest assessment methods and criteria. The checklist developed by Rezvani and Zamani (2012) was employed to identify and tally the knowledge types and cognitive levels tapped by the curriculum standards of TPSOL at Master’s and Ph.D. levels. The documents’ contents were thoroughly content-analyzed and the general perspectives, objectives, plans, and skills to be acquired were regarded as units of analysis. All action verbs and nouns were identified, interpreted, and codified following the definitions provided by the categories and subcategories in the checklist. The action verbs addressing each of the cognitive categories were annotated in the appropriate rows of the checklist, and the nouns which represented the intended knowledge types were categorized and located in relevant columns. The frequencies, percentages, and proportion of the distribution of the cognitive levels and knowledge types identified in the documents were calculated through Microsoft Excel (2016). Likewise, the totals for categories in each dimension were calculated, which helped the researchers to assess and, accordingly, explore any notable patterns in the distribution of the cognitive levels and knowledge types in the analyzed documents. By dividing the frequency of each cell to the total number of activities, the basic data were then converted to cell-by-cell proportions. In order to detect the degree of vertical alignment between the educational objectives addressed by the curriculum standards of TPSOL in master’s and Ph.D. levels, Porter et al.’s (2007) alignment index (AI) was used. The results of the study indicated that educational objectives of lower-order cognitive processes (i.e., “remember”, “understand”, and “apply”) were targeted more than those of the higher-order processes (“analyze”, “evaluate”, and “create”) at both educational levels. Among the lower-order skills at the M.A. level, as the results suggested, “remember” was excessively emphasized at the cost of neglecting other skills, with the exception of “analyze”.  However, although the lowest-order cognitive process (i.e., remember) was paid too much attention at the Ph.D. level, this was not at the expense of total neglect of higher-order skills, especially “analyze” and “create”. Yet, such an inclination towards “remember” is not very promising in a Ph.D. program. Compared to the educational objectives at the M.A. level, higher-order cognitive skills were, as expected, integrated more at the Ph.D. level, though they both attended to the lowest-order skill more noticeably. As regards the knowledge types, one can see that lower-order knowledge types were dominant at both levels, suggesting that such a tendency is common in TPSOL at the postgraduate level. Unlike the M.A. program, however, “metacognitive knowledge” was paid little attention at the Ph.D. level. Finally, with respect to the vertical alignment between the two consecutive curriculums, the PAI of 0.69 indicated that they were significantly aligned with each other in terms of educational objectives. The descriptive patterns observed made the PAI come as no surprise, as both programs paid similar attention to lower-order cognitive skills and knowledge types, and largely ignored the higher ones. Although this study seems to be the first evaluative inquiry to assess these two intended postgraduate curriculums in Iran, its findings are in keeping with those of other studies evaluating textbooks (e.g., Rezvani & Haghshenas, 2015; Riazi & Mosalanejad, 2010) and high-stakes tests (Zamani & Rezvani, 2014), indicating the heavy reliance of Iran’s education system on lower-order cognitive skills and knowledge types. The results of the study may have significant implications for those involved in higher education. Policy-makers might benefit from the results in developing new higher education curriculums and revising the current programs to redirect the attention to higher-order knowledge types and thinking skills particularly in postgraduate curriculums. Educators at the forefront of the higher education are recommended to introduce variety into course syllabuses in concert with but demanding more higher-order knowledge types and cognitive skills. This will, in turn, pay off for the current postgraduate students and prospective instructors and educators.

Recent studies have suggested that the relationship between positive and negative emotions in foreign language classrooms depends on a set of learner-internal and learner-external factors. The present study adopted a Dynamic Systems Theory perspective in investigating the relationship between Persian as Foreign Language (PFL) learners’ Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety (FLCA), Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE), and goal Orientation along with mastery/performance and approach/avoidance dichotomies. Participants were 72 Turkish students of medical sciences in Iran who took PFL classes for four months. Foreign language classroom Anxiety Scale (Horwitz, et al., 1986), Foreign Language Enjoyment Scale (Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014), and Revised Achievement Goal Questionnaire (Elliot & Murayama, 2008) were used to collect data. Correlation and regression analyses were conducted to account for the dynamic relationship between the variables. Statistical analyses revealed a negative correlation between anxiety and enjoyment. Learners with performance-avoidance goals felt a high level of anxiety while performance-approach goals were negatively correlated with anxiety. Also, learners with mastery-avoidance goals experienced high level of enjoyment. Performance goal orientations predicted a total of 57 % of the variance in FLCA. Performance-avoidance goal had the strongest unique contribution to FLCA. The strongest unique predictor of FLE was the mastery-avoidance goal. The results generally confirm that mastery goals promote Persian learners’ emotional well-being while the role played by performance goals depends on the approach/avoidance dimension. It is suggested that the inconsistent findings regarding the relationships between emotional and motivational elements be accounted for by considering dynamicity between them. Extended Abstract Introduction A prominent course of research on SLA emotions involves the investigation into how positive and negative emotions co-inhabit in L2 classes and the way they interact with other variables in the SLA situation in affecting L2 acquisition. The dynamic properties of classroom emotions render them in an appropriate position to fit well into a dynamic systems perspective (Boudreau et al., 2018). Classroom emotions such as Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety (FLCA) and Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE) are affected by both learner-related and situational variables. A promising course of research regarding emotional engagement in SL classroom emotions concerns the relevance of learner-internal and learner-external factors to FLE and FLCA. One of these learner-internal variables having received less attention is learners’ motivational orientation in terms of achievement goals. L2 learners’ type of achievement goal (Elliot & McGregor, 2001) can interact with their emotions in affecting learning achievement. The present study has two strains of research novelty. First, it studies the relationship between FLCA and FLE of Persian as a Foreign Language (PFL) learners for the first time. Furthermore, it examines the relationship between FLE and FLCA in reference to Persian learners’ type of achievement goal. Literature Review Anxiety and enjoyment have been regarded as the prototypical negative and positive emotions in foreign language situations. The relationship between these two emotions and their interactions with other variables in the foreign language classroom has recently been viewed as dynamic phenomena in SLA. The findings from empirical research have testified to the detrimental effect of the negative emotion and the enhancing impact of positive emotions on SL achievements (Horwitz, 2010). The majority of studies have reported a significant moderate negative correlation between FLCA and FLCE (Dewaele, et al., 2017; Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014; Dewale & MacIntyre, 2019; Dewaele, Magdalena & Saito, 2019; Jiang & Dewaele, 2019; Li, 2018). However, recent research indicates that the SL learners’ anxiety and enjoyment do not vary independently from other variables in the SLA situation. Rather, the variation is determined by a set of learner-internal and learner-external factors that interact with foreign language emotions (Dewaele, et al., 2019). One of these variables is L2 learners’ Goal Orientation (Elliot & McGregor, 2001). The general implications of achievement goal theory have assumed that learners with performance goals experience higher levels of negative emotions while their mastery-goal counterparts experience more positive emotions in the process of learning (Huang, 2011; Linnenbrink-Garcia & Barger, 2014). As long as approach/avoidance dimensions of achievement goal are concerned, performance-approach goals are not associated with positive emotions whereas performance-avoidance goals are deemed to be negatively correlated with them, both of them showing a positive correlation with negative emotions (Linnenbrink & Pintrinch, 2002). There is sufficient evidence to support the positive effect of mastery goals on enjoyment and detrimental effect of performance goals on anxiety (Baudoin & Galand, 2020). Method Participants were 72 Turkish students of medical sciences in Iran who took PFL classes for four months. Foreign language classroom Anxiety Scale (Horwitz, et al., 1986), Foreign Language Enjoyment Scale (Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014), and Revised Achievement Goal Questionnaire (Elliot & Murayama, 2008) were used to collect data. Correlation and regression analyses were conducted to account for the dynamic relationship between the variables. Results Statistical analyses revealed a negative correlation between anxiety and enjoyment though this correlation was supported only with a weak effect size (r2= .07), indicating that there was a negative and weak relationship between Persian learners’ positive and negative emotions. To further examine the dynamicity between FLCA and types of goal orientation, a regression analysis was conducted. Learners with performance-avoidance goals felt a high level of anxiety while performance-approach goals were negatively correlated with anxiety. Also, learners with mastery-avoidance goals experienced high level of enjoyment.  A total of 57 % of the variance in FLCA was predicted by performance goal orientations, 42 % of which is the unique contribution of performance avoidance goals and 15 % is the unique role of performance-approach goals. Totally 52.5 % of the variance in PFL learners’ enjoyment was predicted by their mastery goal, of which 44.1 % belongs to mastery avoidance and 8.4 % originates from mastery approach goals. On the other hand, only 16.4 % of FLE variance is attributed to performance goals, of which 6.9 % is predicted by performance approach goal and 9.5 % is explained by performance avoidance goals. Discussion and Conclusion The negative correlation between anxiety and enjoyment obtained in most of the studies on a variety of foreign language classes which was also ratified in the current research for PFL learners can be interpreted as a proof for the facilitative effect of positive emotions such as enjoyment as supported by positive psychology (MacIntyre & Gregersen, 2012) and Broaden and Build theory (Fredrickson, 2001, 2003). The findings endorse the predictions of achievement goal theory that learners with performance goals experience more anxiety and those with mastery goals feel a higher level of enjoyment. However, the results concerning the role of approach/avoidance dimensions are inconsistent. This inconsistency can be accounted for when a Dynamic Systems Theory perspective is adopted. In this view, classroom emotions and achievement goals function in dynamic interaction with each other for the foreign language learner. Therefore, the emotional and motivational element should not be viewed in linear relationships with each other. Further studies concerning the dynamic interactions between different types of classroom emotions on the one hand and a set of situational and learner-related variables on the other hand are required by resorting to novel methodological techniques that can take dynamicity between variables into account. Resorting to such methods as idioymamic method (Boudreau, et al., 2018) as well as structural modeling can provide better opportunities of accounting for the dynamic relations so that a more lucid image of foreign language classroom emotions is achieved.

There is little doubt that learning a language is a challenging task. In the case of languages such as Persian, which do not enjoy the status of an international language and, consequently, the extensive investment of international agencies, the task of learning appears to be even thornier. To overcome this thorny task, language learners need to be quite motivated and self-regulated. The underlying assumption behind the present study was that some of the language learning strategies that language learners employ might be more strongly connected with their motivational and self-regulated learning. Therefore,   the aim of the present study was to investigate language learning strategy use of Persian as Second Language (PSL) learners as predictors of their meta-cognitive and motivational self-regulated learning components.To this end, a sample of 149 male and female B.A level non-Iranian learners of Persian at Imam Khomeini International University in Qazvin, Iran were selected through convenience sampling based on availability. The selected participants were then asked to fill in two questionnaires including the translated version of the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) and the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ). The participants were required to answer the questionnaire by choosing the right alternative from among five choices on a Likert type scale. The collected data were summarized, processed and analyzed using four separate stepwise multiple regression analyses. To see how strong the relationship between the meta-cognitive self-regulated learning and each of the predictors is, the unstandardized as well as standardized coefficients of the three models, along with the observed t-values and significance levels were checked. The results showed that, from among the language learning strategies, cognitive, compensation, and meta-cognitive strategies could make significant contribution to predicting meta-cognitive self-regulated learning. Moreover, meta-cognitive, memory, and affective strategies turned out to be significant predictors of task value. Meanwhile, meta-cognitive strategies and task value shared about 18%, and meta-cognitive and memory strategies together shared over 25% of variance with task value. Meta-cognitive, memory, and affective strategies collectively accounted for about 27% of the total variance with task value. The findings also showed significant relationships between meta-cognitive strategies and control of learning beliefs. In fact, meta-cognitive strategies entered into the regression equation as the single predictor of control of learning beliefs and meta-cognitive strategies and control of learning beliefs shared over 8% of variance. It also turned out that for every one standard deviation of change in meta-cognitive strategies score, there was .30 of a standard deviation change in the control of learning beliefs score.  In addition, to examine the relationship between types of language learning strategies and test anxiety as a component of motivational self-regulated learning, another stepwise multiple regression procedure was used. Based on the results, the single negative predictor of test anxiety was compensation strategies. The result further indicated that for every one standard deviation change in one's compensation strategies, there will be .23 of a standard deviation negative change in one's test anxiety. These findings may have theoretical and pedagogical implications for language learners, teachers, and syllabus designers. If teachers and materials developers are cognizant of the nature of the relationships between meta-cognitive and motivational self-regulated learning components and language learning strategy use, they will be better prepared to make more informed decisions about introducing and encouraging the use of certain types of strategies (and probably discouraging the use of certain other less productive or counterproductive strategies) in the classroom, or about using useful instructional books and materials to encourage students to use those language learning strategies which have predictive power on meta-cognitive and motivational self-regulated learning components (task value, control of learning beliefs, and test anxiety). By designing the right kind of materials and adopting the right kinds of teaching activities (which require the students’ use of certain strategies), materials developers and teachers may be able to contribute to improving learners’ motivation and self-regulation, and by so doing, help improve learners’ achievements. The knowledge of how language learning strategies are related to metacognitive and motivational self-regulated learning can also help learners become more self-regulated and motivated. If they know that certain learning strategies are closely connected with being motivated and self-regulated, they will be more open and receptive to those strategies and will avoid resisting to use those strategies. Alternatively, they may come to the realization that some strategies are not very useful in this regard, and that they should not be overused.

Classroom management and immediacy have always been the interesting topics for the researchers throughout the time. However, barely has any study been done on both of teacher/learner points of view. This study is a survey type research, investigating the relationship between teachers' classroom management, verbal and nonverbal immediacy as perceived by their students. The sample contained 20 teachers and 244 students taught by the same teachers from three English language institutes in Tabriz. The instruments for the measurement of classroom management was Teacher Classroom Management Self-Reflection Inventory called "The Incredible Years" designed by Webster-Stratton (2012), and the questionnaire for measuring verbal and nonverbal immediacy was designed by Gorham (1988). The Wilcoxon test and spearman correlation revealed that although there was a relationship between verbal teacher immediacy (VTI) and classroom management (CM), but, there was no relationship between CM and nonverbal teacher immediacy (NVTI). Further data analysis showed that teachers VTI was higher than NVTI. The basic tool for interacting with students is the behavioral cues, so for the improvement of NVTI of teachers some pedagogical implications were provided, like including it in teacher training courses (TTC). Finally, some suggestions for further studies are stated for other researchers to conduct more comprehensible studies. Extended Abstract Classroom management and immediacy have always been the interesting topics for the researchers throughout the time. However, barely has any study been done on both of teacher/learner points of view.  This study is a survey type research, investigating the relationship between teachers' classroom management and verbal and nonverbal immediacy as perceived by their students. The sample contained 20 teachers and 244 students taught by these 20 teachers from three English language institutes in Tabriz. The instruments for the measurement of classroom management was Teacher Classroom Management Self-Reflection Inventory called "The Incredible Years" designed by Webster-Stratton (2012), and the questionnaire for measuring verbal and nonverbal immediacy was designed by Gorham (1988). The Wilcoxon test and spearman correlation revealed that although there was a relationship between verbal teacher immediacy (VTI) and classroom management (CM), but there was no relationship between CM and nonverbal teacher immediacy (NVTI). Further data analysis showed that teachers VTI was higher than NVTI. The basic tool for interacting with students is the behavioral cues, so some pedagogical implications were provided for the improvement of NVTI of teachers like including it in teacher training courses (TTC). Finally, some suggestions for further studies are stated for other researchers to conduct more comprehensible studies. 1. Introduction To make a class as effective and productive as possible, we have to manage it with orchestration and coordination of entire classroom processes (Dobrescu & Grosu, 2014). According to Van Petegem, Creemers, Rosseel and Aelterman, (2006), in order to create a classroom in which the students have good feelings, a teacher must manage the conditions of the class and be cautious and make a strong learning environment. Marzano and Marzanos' research (2003) revealed that the action taken by teachers in classrooms is important compared to what educational systems are doing. They believe that learning and teaching can't occur in a classroom which is not managed properly. Talebi, Davodi and Khoshroo, (2015, p.592) believe that teachers' aim is to create positive or negative interactions with herself/himself and the learners. If the interaction is positive, then the learners are more eager to do their duties, do exercises, carry out assignments, and learn enthusiastically. As stated by Mehrabian (1996) for the first time, immediacy is the communication behaviors that “enhance closeness to and nonverbal interaction with another” (p. 203). He believes that by increasing “physical proximity” and “perceptual availability” of the speaker to the listener, the instructor is able to have greater immediacy. There are various studies about the relationship between immediacy and the successful learning in teaching processes. “The relationship of teacher immediacy to student learning has been explored in a series of studies which indicate that a teacher's use of communicative behavior that enhances physical and psychological closeness is positively related to learning outcomes” (Gorham & Christophel, 1990, p.46). The study is going to answer the following research questions: 1- Is there any significant relationship between the learners’ perceptions of their teachers' verbal and nonverbal immediacy? 2- Is there any significant relationship between the teachers’ classroom management skills and the learners' perceptions of their verbal immediacy? 3- Is there any significant relationship between the teachers’ classroom management skills and the learners’ perceptions of their non-verbal immediacy? 2. Literature Review 2.1. Classroom Management Studies have shown that despite the courses for teacher training in most countries, teachers have always had problem with class management in real context of teaching process (Martin, Yin & Baldwin, 1998).  Teachers' point of views and opinions on student behaviors and the interaction between student and teacher shapes the way they behave about classroom management tasks. Moreover, their basic understanding of classroom management and dynamics can affect this important task (Kagan, 1992).  Classroom management is not just merely the physical arrangement. A teacher should manage to teach a subject in a given period of time. Thus without the control in a teaching process, a teacher might not be successful because no one can force a student to learn a subject (Demirel, 2009). 4. Results and Discussion 4.1. Results and Discussion This research had three parts of classroom management, verbal immediacy and nonverbal immediacy. For the accurate results among these three variables, the questionnaires were given to both sides (teachers and the learners). The classroom management questionnaire was filled by the teachers and the immediacy questionnaires were filled by the learners, to see if actually what do they think of the accomplishments of these variables. The previous researches were all one sided as they investigated these variables from teacher or learner point of view. However, the main aim of this research was to mix their ideas and see if there is any relationship between their ideas. Unlike Derkhshani's (2016) study, in which the data analysis revealed that there was a significant relationship between nonverbal behavior of teachers and their classroom management, surprisingly, the present research revealed the fact that there is no relationship between these two variables. The reason behind this difference of results may be the process of data gathering in which the present study gathered the classroom management questionnaire from the teacher and nonverbal immediacy questionnaire from learners of the same teacher.  This comparison of the ideas of both sides may result in more accurate conclusions.

Method section constitutes the key element of Research Articles (RAs) since it gives the readers sufficient information on the steps taken, instruments used, and the reliability and validity of the study, thus most editors and reviewers pay a great deal of attention to this section. This study investigates the method section of all the 141 RAs published between 2012 and 2020 in the Journal of Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages (TPSOL). To be more exact, it is a content analysis of the research approaches and designs, data collection tools and data sources, number of participants, statistical tests and techniques used in data analysis, and the missing elements of the method section of the said RAs. Analyzing the data through inductive content analysis revealed that almost 57% of the papers followed quantitative approach, followed by 31% mixed-methods approach. Descriptive, comparative, and correlational studies were the most frequent research designs, while case study was the least frequent one. Researchers collected the needed data mostly through questionnaires, achievement tests, pre-test and post-tests, and documents. The number of participants varied according to the research designs and purposes, with few studies employing sample sizes smaller than the standard size. The data of RAs were analyzed through descriptive statistics, content analysis, and t-test. It was also revealed that data analysis section, participants, and instruments were the most problematic sub-sections in the method section. The study ends with several practical suggestions for future researchers, present reviewers, and editors of the journal.   

The use of hedges can be an indispensable part of academic writing. Hedges are generally used to moderate the impact of an utterance or the certainty of its content and therefore play an important role in academic writing. This study was a pioneering work in Persian as a second language. Based on the academic goals perused by Persian as a Second Language (PSL) learners and the importance of hedges in writing, the present study aimed to investigate the type and order of occurrence of hedges in the writings of PSL learners. Using Estaji and Salimi’s (2018) taxonomy, a writing test was conducted with 100 (50 male and 50 female) adult learners from different nationalities consisting of Chinese, Iraqi, Lebanese, Palestinian, Saudi Arabian, and Syrian. The participants were selected using convenience sampling. The data derived from the writing samples were analyzed and categorized. The categorized output was analyzed through MANOVA to check the impact of gender and first language on hedge type and order of occurrence. The findings revealed that there was a significant difference between male and female PSL learners in terms of using hedges, with females using hedges more than males; and Arab PSL learners using modal verbs, lexical verbs, and nouns more than their Chinese counterparts. The results of this study can aid instructors and learners of Persian as a second language regarding academic writing.

In the language teaching and learning context, with the increase in communicative language teaching theories worldwide, the use of video as an audio-visual material has proliferated (Bal-Gezegin, 2014). Nowadays, many publishers produce language learning videos tailored specifically for students in a foreign language program to accompany and complete textbooks. Videos are multimodal because they rely on various semiotic modes or sources (language, gesture, visual imagery, movement, color, music, sounds, and so on). Videos can act as powerful elements in creating learners' knowledge of the real world (Katchen, 2002, as cited BalGezegin, 2014). Despite the abundance of research on images (e.g., Elmiana, 2019; Roohani & Saeidfar, 2013, Tahririan & Sadri, 2013, to name but a few), research on other kinds of visual materials such as videos has received scant attention. Considering the possible effects of videos on constructing learners' views and their psychological effects on the mind of learners, this study aims to analyze the elements of the Rasa Persian teaching video series (hence, RPTVS) created for non-Iranian Persian language learners from a social semiotic perspective. Accordingly, the research questions which guided this study are (1) What is the function of visual aspects in RPTVS?, (2) In what way do the visual aspects of RPTVS support interaction between learners and represented participants? To answer the research questions, three Rasa videos were randomly selected and analyzed based on Kress and van Leeuwen's (2006) three-fold metafunction of visual grammar. The materials selected for analysis in this study were the language teaching videos which accompany the Rasa series, for teaching Persian to non-Persian speakers, authored by Shirmohammdi and published in Iran by Al-Mustafa International University in 2012. Al-Mustafa University, established to promote and advance Persian language-learning worldwide for nonPersian speakers, is an international academic, Islamic, and Howzawi Institute in Qom, Iran. RPTVS comes in soft copy featuring 21 units on the whole with each unit accompanying one or two videos related to the particular topic of that unit. It should be mentioned here that the Fundamental level has been chosen because examination of all the levels was beyond the scope of this study and more importantly, the Rasa series is just at the elementary level. The details of the qualitatively analyzed videos were described separately based on the components of visual grammar, namely representational, interactional, and compositional meanings. In response to the first research question, i.e., the function of visual aspects in RPTVS, the findings of the study showed that the visual elements of RPTVS had a naturalistic and humanistic trend. In other words, RPTVS represents the participants in familiar and factual ways. Moreover, all human characters were adults, which might show that the videos were designed for adult users. Regarding the settings and locations, RPTVS portrays common objects which were familiar to students/learners; however, the selection of objects and locations seem somewhat outdated and outstripped by the Iranian lifestyle at present. The represented objects (e.g., clock, Television sets, sofas, tables and many more) are portrayed in ways that could hardly associate with the current life-ways of the Iranian people. Therefore, RPTVS did not show any indications of recent technological improvements in current Iranian society. The findings were in line with Tahririan and Sadri's (2013) findings in which Iranian high school old textbooks used outdated portrayal of objects, overdramatized national identity with poor modality and used grayscale printing. In response to the second research question which was to investigate whether the visual aspects of RPTVS support interaction between learners and represented participants, the results indicate that in the videos of the RPTVS, the medium shot is used more frequently. In this fashion, it can be concluded that the language learners are supposed to keep a personal relationship with the participants as much as possible. The most common contact in videos is the gaze of represented participants toward each other, which shows that represented participants are communicating and encouraging the learners to communicate. Moreover, the results show all visual elements form a demand video through their gaze. In terms of contextualization, the study showed that all videos contained background, except few scenes with a blank background. However, the videos represented real-life activities, which is in line with Ahmadi et al.’s (2020) study of Persian learning textbooks in which the images contained real-life activities to introduce Iranian social life at the national level. Thus, the analysis of the videos based on contextualization modality indicates that theyrepresent authentic meaning in real-life settings. The results of this study suggest that locally developed materials for language teaching, be it teaching English to Iranian learners or Persian to international students, share a lot of similarities in transmitting language and cultural norms to learners, which distinguish it from international publications such as Touchstone or Interchange series. Specifically, Iranian locally developed materials display substantial commonality in terms of culture load. The major implication of this finding is that to enhance the efficacy of the content, instructors need to raise international learners' cognizance of the intricacies, customs, traditions, and values in the Persian culture which make it unique and different in its own right.

Lesson study is a recent development in Education to boost the quality of learning, but it has not received the attention it deserves in Iran. Given that the lesson study has been adapted from Japan, it is essential to examine and study its implementation and examine the strengths and weaknesses in the educational systems of different countries (Fujii, 2019; Saito, 2012; Stigler & Hiebert, 2016). Considering that lesson study has become a long-standing tradition in the Japanese educational system, and school reform and teacher education centers, the results of studies of (Emamipour & Khakbaz, 2019, Khakbaz et al., 2009, Maleki Arzin Abadi, 2016; Sobhani, 2018) showed that lesson study in Iran differs in style and implementation from that of the Japanese model and other countries. Therefore, it is necessary to study the experiences of practitioners qualitatively. Teachers sometimes face administrative difficulties and obstacles in the implementation and use of lesson study. Identifying these barriers and problems is only possible through their own experiences. This phenomenological study was conducted at the headquarters of education in East Azarbaijan, Tabriz, Iran. The headquarters of education in Tabriz is an organization with five branches. It has about 670 primary schools, 145,000 enrolled grade 1-6 students, and 3,600 primary teachers throughout Tabriz in (2018-2019) (Headquarters of education of East Azarbaijan, 2020). The participants were 15 primary teachers selected through purposeful sampling, as this was the number at which “saturation” of the data was reached. After the 15th interview, there were no new themes generated from the interviews. The primary purpose of this research was to study the experiences of teachers regarding lesson study. We selected primary school teachers who were in the lesson study team. They participated voluntarily. We provided a privacy consent agreement to protect the rights, autonomy, privacy, and confidentiality of the participants. They were fully informed of all aspects of the study, and their ways of involvement in the research. We reserved them an unconditional right of withdrawal at any time without giving any reason, obtained permission to use their data in any scientific platform such as international journals and conferences, and promised to conceal their identifiable information in the results. The research was carried out in the academic year of (2018-19). The study participants, participating in the interview voluntarily, had more than ten years of teaching experience at elementary schools. Furthermore, they had participated in the conferences in the field twice and inservice lesson study courses. A semi-structured interview was used to collect the data. The data were analyzed using the inductive thematic analysis, as one of the best-known methods for analyzing and reporting themes within qualitative data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). To analyze the data, interview transcripts were read several times independently by the research team member to minimize researcher bias. Next, open coding was used, and initial codes were generated and grouped into categories according to their similarities. Then, emergent themes were extracted, and a comprehensive analysis was done to examine how the themes contributed to an understanding of the data. Finally, each team members reviewed each other's codes and themes. To ensure the reliability of the coding and classification process of themes, Cohen’s kappa coefficient was calculated ,and it was .85. Based on the results of the interviews, eight main themes were extracted: The perception of lesson study; insufficient teacher knowledge of the lesson study; low collaboration in the lesson study; the existence of administrative limitations in the lesson study; lack of motivation in teachers; improvement of teacher-related factors; the development of collaboration; and improvement of facilities. The results suggest that teachers are not necessarily well prepared for this innovative technique, but they suggest several strategies to improve the quality of this technique in classrooms. The findings can be used for identifying problems, improving administration methods of lesson study in schools, the removal of obstacles and developing the knowledge and skills of lesson study. The findings of the present study showed that teachers are not satisfied with the way lesson study is implemented in schools, and they are not well prepared for it. However, it should be noted that lesson study as a method of professional development is only theoretically discussed among teachers, and the educational system has not paid serious attention to it; most importantly, teachers and school agents do not yet view it as an improvement of teachers’ professional development. The study's findings may carry some implications for teachers’ professional development, learner autonomy, and PSL teacher action research. Teachers need to keep abreast of the latest methodological developments in the field to be able to help their students to be autonomous learners. To do so, teachers can draw on lesson study as a methodological option to share their ideas with other teachers which they can benefit from and observe how these ideas work with their students.

In Chomsky’s Government and Binding theory, a number of parameters have been the subject of a plethora of investigations. One of the parameters of UG which has received attention of linguists in the past decade or so is the wh-parameter. In addition to the variation between languages with respect to single wh-questions (i.e. wh-movement vs. wh-in-situ), it has been noted that languages also differ in the way they produce multiple wh-questions (MWQs). In English MWQs, there is a single strict constraint on the movement of wh-elements known as the Superiority effect, where the wh-phrase that C-commands the other moves to Spec-CP. In contrast, Persian is a language with a productive scrambling property, which demonstrates two basic strategies for the formation of MWQs: (i) multiple wh-in-situ, where wh-elements are not subject to the Superiority effect, (ii) optional multiple wh-fronting with multiply filled specifiers (i.e. [+MFS]), where wh-words are bound to the Superiority effect. There are specific conditions under which the violation of the Superiority effect in English MWQs disappears, and their ungrammaticality is ameliorated: D(iscourse)-linking and ternary (non-binary) wh-questions. As the overarching goal of the study, this paper examines the distributional pattern of wh-elements in Persian and English multiple wh-questions (MWQs) based on a Grammaticality Judgement (GJ) task administered to Persian speakers of English (PSEs) and native speakers of Persian (NSEs). More specifically put, the study intends to answer the two research questions: (i) How do native speakers of Persian distinguish among the six types of wh2 elements in Persian binary multiple whquestions (MWQs)?, and (ii) Are there any grammaticality differences between English native speakers’ ratings of English binary, D-linked and ternary MWQs and Persian native speakers’ ratings of translationequivalent Persian binary, D-linked and ternary MWQs? Since the purpose of the present study was to simply characterize Persian speakers’ and native English speakers’ syntactic knowledge at one particular time, a one-shot design was used. Two groups of participants were included in the current study: (1) a group of native speakers of English (NSEs) and (2) a group of Persian speakers of English (PSEs). The NSE group included a pool of 30 American university students and professors who participated in the study through completing an online Google Docs version of the GJ task. Two types of tests were employed in the study: (i) an English GJ task which sought to obtain the judgements of native speakers of English (NSEs) as well as Persian speakers of English (PSEs) on three components investigating English MWQs: 30 binary MWQs, 15 D-linked MWQs, and 15 ternary MWQs, and (ii) a translation-equivalent Persian Grammaticality Judgment (GJ) task. Persian speakers of English (PSEs) took the two tests, but native speakers of English (NSEs) only took the English GJ task. The items pertaining to the Superiority effect in 30 binary MWQs examined the participants’ judgments on different combinations of the first wh-element (Wh1) and the second wh-element (Wh2) in multiple wh-questions (e.g. <who, what>, <what, where>, <where, what>, and <when, what>, etc.). Also, in order to investigate NSEs’ as well as PSEs’ knowledge of the ameliorated Superiority violations, two other components were included in the English GJ task: 15 D-linked MWQs and 15 ternary MWQs, which were the D-linked/ternary equivalents for the 15 ungrammatical binary MWQs. The goal of these two components was to explore whether NSEs and PSEs considered the D-linked (e.g. Which book did which person buy?) and ternary MWQs (e.g. What did who give to whom?) more grammatical in comparison with their binary counterparts (e.g. *What did who buy?). The data were analysed using hierarchical cluster analysis, and grammatical and ungrammatical MWQs were sharply distinguished into separate clusters in the resulting dendrogram. The results of the first research question revealed that Persian MWQs are divided into two major clusters in the relevant dendrogram: 19 grammatical ordered pairs, and 11 ungrammatical ordered pairs. Although Persian resists a neat classification of the six types of wh-elements with regard to the Superiority effect, the 7 ordered pairs <who, what>, <who, where>, <who, when>, <what, where>, <what, when>, <where, what>, and <when, what>, which were considered grammatical in English, are equally deemed grammatical by Persian speakers. The results of the second research question showed significant differences in terms of the grammaticality of Persian/English binary and ternary MWQs, while there is generally no significant difference between NSEs’ ratings of English D-linked MWQs and PSEs’ ratings of the translationequivalent Persian D-linked MWQs. The results of the study have pedagogical implications for teaching Persian to non-native speakers of Persian in terms of the order of teaching different types of Persian MWQs, the contexts for the use of such structures, and the proficiency level at which Persian MWQs could be taught to non-native speakers of Persian.

The primary purpose of this research was to present a task-based framework for developing the reading course materials to teach Persian to speakers of other languages. The base of this framework was Nunan’s (2004) task-based framework and the reading comprehension strategies of Lai (1997), and also the realistic strategies of Thompson and Rubin (1982), which have been determined for language learners and teachers. Nunan’s (2004) framework is distinct from other frameworks because it considers the teacher’s and learner’s roles (Nunan, 2004). According to Nunan (2004), teacher and learner roles are two sides of a coin. Giving the learners a more active role in the classroom requires the teacher to adopt a different role. Considering the role of the teacher and learner in the process of developing and carrying out the tasks helps to educate active, autonomous, and reflective learners. Goals, input, procedure, and settings are other components of Nunan’s framework that make the learner experience the real world of language use in the classroom. According to this model, seven reading tasks were provided. Reading texts were selected based on Lai's strategies. The reading goals were matched with these strategies.. Texts written and translated by native speakers were selected. These texts were supposed to increase the general knowledge of the reader or to entertain them. They were at the level of the target learners and could be matched with the intended strategies. The level of the chosen texts was determined by one of the teachers and authors of Persian language teaching textbooks at Dehkhoda International Institute. These texts were reviewed by her. They were also given to advanced-level learners to determine their readability.. After confirming the appropriateness of the texts for this level of language learners, the proposed framework for developing reading tasks out of the readers was implemented. The results indicated that if these approaches are integrated, richer texts could be provided that might improve the reading comprehension of language learners and train independent language learners. Extended Abstract: The content of educational materials in language teaching plays an important role in the learning process. Accordingly, educational content should be developed based on effective and efficient frameworks. From the past to the present, various frameworks for foreign language teaching materials development have been proposed, and their effectiveness has been investigated in various studies (Prabho, 1987, Nunan, 2004, Elis, 2004). Meanwhile, the task-based framework, which is relatively new, has received more attention due to real opportunities for language learning. On the other hand, researchers have concluded that material development as an academic discipline is critical both theoretically and practically. It is essential that the developers of materials, prepare educational materials based on research, principles, and observations. In recent years, instructors and curriculum developers have become more inclined to use a task-based approach, because task-based teaching facilitates the learning process. In this regard, studies have been conducted to examine the theoretical foundations employed in the development of Persian language teaching contents to speakers of other languages. A study has been conducted based on developing materials including books and syllabus design in teaching Persian to speakers of other languages (Sahraei,2012). This study shows that as the content of these materials is developed based on the personal experience of the authors, they have their style and context. The literature reviewed for the present study shows that in teaching Persian to speakers of other languages, regarding material development based on a task-based approach, there is a lack of research studies. The main purpose of this research was to offer a task-based framework for developing reading course materials in Persian language teaching texts based on Nunan's (2004) framework, the reading skills strategies adapted from Lai (1997) by Nunan (2004), and the roles provided by Thomson and Rubin (1982) for the successful learners and teachers. Nunan (2004) considers the components of the task as goals, inputs, and procedures. These components are supported by the role of the teacher and learner and the settings in which the task is performed. The study made an effort to integrate Nunan's (2004) task-based framework and Lai's (1997) reading skills strategies and the roles suggested by Thomson and Rubin (1982) to offer a framework for developing reading course materials. After integrating the intended frameworks, tasks were prepared to examine the application of this framework in the preparation of content for reading skills and comprehension. In this study, real sources were used to prepare these texts. Brado (2006) argues that real sources for producing authentic texts are unlimited. Newspapers, magazines, television programs, movies, songs, and literary texts are the most common instances of these texts. One of the most useful and widely used resources is Internet. In this study, texts were selected that were written or translated by native speakers. These texts were supposed to increase the general knowledge of the readers or entertain them. Texts that were at the level of learners and could be matched with the intended strategies were selected. Lai (1997) believes that if the text matches the strategies and goals of reading skills, it significantly increases the speed of reading and comprehension. Considering the role of the teacher and learner in the materials helps to educate active, autonomous, and reflective learners. The data employed for developing the tasks in this study were at the advanced language level. Efforts were made to choose texts relevant to the learners' language level and appropriate for adult learners and in line with reading skills strategies and goals. The texts were selected according to the strategies and goals of reading skills by searching various internet sites that contained various scientific and educational articles. According to Clark and Silberstein (1977), if the goal is to strengthen the learner's skills in finding the main idea of the text and the intended strategy of scanning, texts should be selected whose first sentence contains the main idea of the whole paragraph and supports the details of the text. The strategies used in this study were the strategies proposed by Lai (1997) for reading skills. The level of the chosen texts was determined by one of the teachers and authors of Persian language teaching textbooks at Dehkhoda International Institute. These texts were reviewed by her. They were also given to advanced-level learners to determine their readability. After confirming the appropriateness of the texts for this level of language learners, the proposed framework for developing reading tasks out of the texts was implemented. The results indicated that if these approaches are integrated, richer texts could be provided that might improve the reading comprehension of language learners and train independent language learners.