نشریه زبان کاوی کاربردی
سال ششم شماره 4 (پیاپی 14، پاییز 1402)

The term dynamic assessment (DA) refers to an assessment, by an active teaching process, of a child's perception, learning, thinking, and problem solving. Dynamic assessment (DA) is a kind of interactive assessment used in education. Dynamic assessment is a product of the research conducted by developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky. The term dynamic assessment refers to an assessment, by an active teaching process, of a child's perception, learning, thinking, and problem solving. The process is aimed at modifying an individual's cognitive functioning and observing subsequent changes in learning and problem-solving patterns within the testing situation. The goals of the DA are to: (a) assess the capacity of the child to grasp the principle underlying an initial problem and to solve it, (b) assess the nature and amount of investment (teaching) that is required to teach a child a given rule or principle, and (c) identify the specific deficient cognitive functions and non-intellective factors that are responsible for failure in performance and how modifiable they are as a result of teaching. DA is usually administered to children who demonstrate some learning disability, low scores on standardized tests, or some emotional or personality disturbance. The study was conducted based on three stages, inspired by the evident role of Dynamic Evaluation in changing traditional assessment in favor of students. Its goal was to investigate the impact of dynamic assessment on the IELTS writing performance of applicants. To that end, 28 IELTS candidates were selected to undergo the procedure of three Mediated Learning Experience components namely: Intentionality, Reciprocity, and Transcendence. T-test results showed that IELTS candidates who took part in dynamic assessments improved more than those who took part in nondynamic assessments. The Intelligent Essay Assessor TM (IEA) online scoring method was used in the second half of the study. Students were given 40 minutes to complete a writing assignment that appeared in their IEA electronic portfolios. Online feedback can help improve IELTS writing scores by identifying and correcting grammatical faults, but it has little effect on the length or organization of a piece of writing. A structured interview was used to elicit participants' thoughts and feelings about DA and online evaluation as part of the study's third component. Students' attitudes toward DA were very positive, with nearly unanimous agreement that online assessment was superior to the previous method and that it was more time efficient.

Exploring the relationship between listening skills and reading skills with the vocabulary level of students is a hot topic in the history of language teaching which has attracted the attention of many scholars in the field of ELT. Therefore, the present research study tried to probe the effect of reading passages and listening tasks on vocabulary retention and learning of Iranian male high school students based on the VISION series, the newly published English books in Iran for high school students. Sixty students were chosen and divided into two experimental groups, that is one experimental group for listening tasks and one experimental group for reading tasks. At first, a pretest was run to check their language level, especially their lexical level and then both groups went through treatment, and at the end, immediate and delayed posttests were run to check the retention and learning of new words. It should be noted that during the treatment sessions, the meaning of the new words was taught through L1 translation, synonyms, and antonyms. In the reading section, the students should take a multiple choice exam of new words and for the listening section, the students went through answering the meaning of new words orally. After the treatment session, the students went through immediate and delayed posttest. The interval between immediate and delayed posttest was one month. The new words were chosen from the tenth-grade English book high school, that is, Vision1. Then, by using SPSS software including mean comparison and descriptive statistics, the data were analyzed and the findings showed that both types of tasks, that is, reading and listening tasks had an effect on the improvement of vocabulary level of the students but the reading passages outperformed the listening passages. The mean of the reading group was 16 and 15 for both immediate and delayed posttests but the mean of the listening group was 14 and 13 respectively. Also, there was a significant difference between the means of both groups in both posttest 1 and posttest 2. All in all, the results disclosed that the reading section of the Vision series, especially Vision 1 for tenth graders, is much more effective in the improvement of the vocabulary level of high school students compared to the listening section of Vision1. The current findings and results could help teachers, material developers, and book authors.

Within the Persian language, various resources exist for deriving and compounding words to express occupations and professions. These resources generate compound and derivative nouns that convey agentivity and agency when combined with nouns and adjectives. This study aims to investigate the syntactic elements "-Chi," "-Kar," "-Forush," and "-Gar" within the framework of Morphological Construction Theory. The research provides a foundational analysis of how words formed with these suffixes and free morphemes are constructed. Morphological Construction Theory is a recent morphological approach that employs "construction" to describe the systematic relationship between form and meaning in word formation. According to this theory, non-simple words are considered constructions, and each word functions as a linguistic sign, representing the pairing of form and meaning. Each word encompasses three types of information, which are represented by three signs in the lexical approach: PHON (representing the phoneme dimension), SYN (representing the morpheme-syntax dimension), and SEM (representing the semantic dimension of the word). This research takes an empirical corpus-based approach and is theoretically grounded in a cognitive framework. The study data consist of 212 derivative and compound words formed using the suffixes "Chi" and "Gar" and the free morphemes "Forush" and "Kar," extracted from Persian corpora such as Bijankhan, Moin Encyclopedic Dictionary and Dehkhoda Dictionary. The words derived from these elements exhibit 4, 3, 4, and 3 schemas, conveying agentivity and agency in their overall meaning. However, they differ in terms of their reference to the concept of occupation or their basic syntactic role to which each of these four elements is attached. Another significant finding of this research is establishing a bidirectional relationship between construction and meaning, whereby the construction of a word determines the meaning and conceptualization derived from the word as a whole.

In conjunction with other research methods, cultural anthropology is employed to investigate social and cultural transformations. It involves examining the ideological aspects of texts and speeches and the vocabulary and elements that imbue them with meaning. The selection and usage of specific words and phrases in proverbs reflect people's perspectives, attitudes, and thoughts toward various events, phenomena, situations, and social issues. In orally transmitted stories, the geographical and environmental culture of the narrator and the primary storyteller, whether known or anonymous, play a pivotal role in shaping the narrative's structure. This article compares two versions of the Sheikh San'Aan story (the Kurdish narrative by Mam Ahmad Lotfi Mahabadi and the Persian narrative by Attar) from a cultural anthropological standpoint to explore the cultural similarities and differences between the two works. The analysis reveals that both narratives feature Sheikh San'Aan and his daughter as the main characters, with disciples playing subordinate roles. Customs and traditions are mentioned in both works; however, a distinction lies in the presence of a character named Hazrat Ghaws, rooted in mystical and regional beliefs concerning spiritual leaders. The role of the father figure is also significant, reflecting the influence of fathers on the institution of the family and patriarchy, particularly evident in the Kurdish narrative where the Christian daughter introduces herself and Sheikh to her father. Both narratives contain customs related to Christianity, which Sheikh San'Aan must adhere to for conversion. Nevertheless, there are variations in customs and traditions between the Kurdish and Persian narratives, such as the Khanqah ceremony and wedding rituals. Clothing is another cultural element featured in both works, described as Kurdish attire in the Kurdish narrative and Sufi clothing in the Persian narrative due to its literary nature.

This study aims to comparatively investigate the semantic frames of motion directional verbs in Persian and English within the framework of the frame semantics theory (Fillmore 1977; 1982; 1985). Motion event is analyzed from different realizations in linguistics. On the one hand, in discussion regarding the meaning of word, verbs have an important function in interpreting the meaning.  The different syntactic realizations and different coding of direction in Persian motion directional verbs show that FrameNet should take into account the differences among languages. However, direction in Persian language is encoded as prefix or satellite. Furthermore, this type of investigation also shows us that figurative relations and fictive motions and polysemy should be analyzed in detail by FrameNet. These problems indicate that the language specific features have an important role in frame- to- frame relations. Our discussion of culture and language specific words has shown that not all semantic frames derived on the basis of English are good candidates for universal frame-hood. The case of Persian motion directional verbs has shown that that there are cases in which it is necessary to define more fine-grained semantic sub-frames and augment these with more specific cultural information. Direction is represented as prepositional phrase in verb argument. As far as motion verbs are concerned, direction is considered as one of the motion components expressed by either the verb or any element other than the verb. In English — a satellite-framed language (Talmy 2000b) — direction is shown by motion verbs, whereas in Persian it is typically indicated by non-verbal elements, although there are also some verbs via which direction is encoded. Within this study, 117 Persian verbs of direction were selected from Soxan Dictionary based on 10 verbs which was introduced in motion directional frame in FrameNet and then looked up through the Persian Corpus of Bijankhan to achieve their contexts of use. Next, FrameNet was asked for the semantic frame each verb evoked. Thereafter, comparing the semantic frames in the two languages, it was revealed that not every verb of direction does exist as a Lexical Unit in FrameNet. Likewise, not for every verb was a specified semantic frame either. Moreover, the frames for some other verbs have been defined in such a way that they cannot semantically distinguish those verbs from each other, whereas such distinctions are prominent in both directional verbs and the frames they evoke especially in Persian.

Narratology, a field within literary studies, focuses on analyzing narratives, narrative systems, story structures, and storytelling techniques. It aims to uncover the more profound meaning embedded within texts and enhance our understanding of narratives. Postmodern literature often challenges conventional notions of time and narrative in prose fiction. Nader Ebrahimi's "A Quiet Romance" exemplifies this type of narrative. This descriptive-analytical study examines "A Quiet Romance" through the lens of Gérard Genette's theory of narrative time. Genette, a prominent figure in structuralist narratology, emphasizes the significance of order, duration, frequency, focalization, and voice in describing and analyzing the structures of literary texts. The research findings reveal that "A Quiet Romance" exhibits strong coherence. However, deliberate temporal disruptions in the events add artistic depth to the story. These temporal disruptions are prevalent throughout the novel, with frequent shifts between the past and the present. The initial chapter primarily focuses on the past, incorporating retrospective elements contributing to a slower pace. In terms of duration, the surface layer of the novel follows the passage of days, creating a sense of positive acceleration and time omission. Conversely, the content layer of the story conveys a negative sense of acceleration. Dialogues, predominantly conveyed through the emotions and beliefs of the character "Gile Mard," form the narrative's core. The story often includes extended descriptive pauses, contributing to a slower narrative progression. Repetition and recounting are also prominent features of the narrative. Regarding focalization, the story utilizes two perspectives: an omniscient narrator and a first-person narrator, with the majority of the novel adopting the first-person viewpoint while the third-person perspective is sparingly employed.