Research Article
Reza Pishghadam; Haniyeh Jajarmi
Abstract
IntroductionGiven the essential role of research in our country and considering the Perspective Document of 1404 and its increasing emphasis on science-based knowledge production, it seems crucial to address the issue of research and the probable problems and obstacles in the way of valuable and high ...
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IntroductionGiven the essential role of research in our country and considering the Perspective Document of 1404 and its increasing emphasis on science-based knowledge production, it seems crucial to address the issue of research and the probable problems and obstacles in the way of valuable and high quality studies. One way to assess the state of research in a country and find and address the intervening obstacles and problems is investigating its cultural context. In reality, different cultures exist in one country. One type of culture is that of trust and distrust. Trust can be considered as an individual perception and at the group level, as a culture. It has been introduced as a dimension of social capital and a preservative agent among the values that should be created, enhanced and published in every social groups of the society. However, numerous studies have shown that social trust is not of a desirable condition in many societies, including Iran. The question here is how the cultural context of a society affects its research procedures; a momentous subject which has taken notice of fewer researchers in the field of research in Iran. Thus, in this study, we intend to investigate trust, as a cultural element, and its probable impact on citation in the field of foreign languages.
Theoretical FrameworkTrust is a psychological state, shown in response to others' behavior, on the basis of expectations that are created based on the behavior of others. As Fukuyama (1995) believes, in order to progress and develop, we need to raise the awareness of the existence of trust (or distrust). According to Origgi (2004), trust in the integrity of the speaker is an important component of the process of mutual understanding. In fact, in recent years, the acknowledgment of "trust" as reflecting sundry roles, functions, and levels of analysis is considered as a turning point for theory and research on this issue.
MethodologyIn this study, a group of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad professors (4 females and 6 males) ranging from 30 to 65 years of age, majoring in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), English Language and Literature, English Translation, and French Language and Literature, along with a group of PhD students in TEFL (8 females and 3 males) in the age range of 28 to 38 were recruited based on purposive sampling. With 21 participants, the data reached saturation and no new results were extracted. Subsequently, semi-structured interviews were utilized for data collection.
Results and Discussion
Content analysis of the interviews indicated the influential role of trust in selecting and citing articles. Our sample professors emphasized that they cite articles on the basis of trusting their authors. A number of professors believed that if the articles have the necessary quality, they will place their trust in their authors and cite them. Additionally, a number of students said that they put their trust in the authors who specifically carry out research in a particular field of study. Moreover, the participants often preferred to take advantage of articles by foreign authors. Their reasons were: Iranian author's disrespecting the principles of writing, their lack of authority, plagiarism, inaccuracy of data collection, and the low scientific level of the articles. Most of the professors stated the reasons of their distrust in national articles as lack of supervision over the procedure of article writing, the quantitative view of our educational system, and the lack of dialogue between colleagues. Consequently, most of the professors would not trust their students' research projects, if they didn't know them well. Fifty percent of the professors trusted their own works and cited them. However, the other 50 percent, in spite of trusting their own works, didn't use self-citation inorder to observe the research ethics. Furthermore, a consensus of opinion was reached by both groups in that there have been few citations to the Iranian articles by foreign researchers. Finally, the participants attributed the low trust in national scientific-research productions to the wrong policy of our educational system and as a result, the Iranians' attention to the quantity rather than the quality of the articles.
ConclusionAccording to the results of this study, it is concluded that the root of distrust in the studies conducted by the Iranians in Iran, especially in the field of foreign languages, can be sought in two basic issues:1- The country's educational system2- The macro policy and the article-oriented educational and research system of the country in recent years.With regards to the first issue, most of the participants in this study contended that there is not sufficient and specialized training to educate capable researchers in national as well as international arenas. Th e necessity of enhancing skills such as critical thinking, initiation, and creativity is clearly felt, not only in the graduate levels but also in elementary and secondary levels. Furthermore, with regards to the second issue and according to the participants of the present study, the macro policy and the article-oriented educational and research system of the country in recent years is considered as a big blow for research and scientific productions in our country, deserving of a fundamental note and a revision of the existing laws and policies in this regard.
Research Article
Hamid Reza Shairi; Babak Ashtari
Abstract
Translation is an active process in which a meaning is transferred from a source to a target language. During this process, meaning must have accordance with two main semantic sub-systems: signification and evaluation. Signification is related to a signified unit of a linguistic sign and its encompassing ...
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Translation is an active process in which a meaning is transferred from a source to a target language. During this process, meaning must have accordance with two main semantic sub-systems: signification and evaluation. Signification is related to a signified unit of a linguistic sign and its encompassing properties known as seme. However, evaluation includes a range of different actualizations from more tangible referential properties to the most abstract ones. In this research, which is specially marked for its concentration on semantic features and their relationship with evaluation attributes (or values), we will have a look on afferent and inherent semantic features, notions first used by Rastier, and considering the inborn interculturality of translation, we will establish an explanation, in a semantic framework, about meaning-making process and its variations in practice. In this regard, we assume that inherent features satisfy initial needs of translation while afferent properties are for answering its essential needs. Yet evaluation systems and semantic values can always interfere with the discourse meaning-making process during translation and break the boundaries of semantics. The purpose of the present article is to provide an analysis of the semantic features and their status in translation studies based on textual values and evaluation systems of the target language and its culture.
Research Article
Mohammad Hadi Mahmoodi; Rozhin Ghaslani
Abstract
1. IntroductionNowadays, teachers` stress has become a global concern as one of their common problems and about as many as a third of the teachers, investigated through different studies around the world, reported that they consider teaching as a stressful job (Borg, 1990). A great deal of chronic stress ...
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1. IntroductionNowadays, teachers` stress has become a global concern as one of their common problems and about as many as a third of the teachers, investigated through different studies around the world, reported that they consider teaching as a stressful job (Borg, 1990). A great deal of chronic stress might lead to burnout. Although reasons of stress are different among teachers, some of teachers are less prone to burnout. Therefore, there is an important question that why some teachers are more successful in dealing with occupational stress (Vaezi & Fallah, 2011). It seems that one of the factors which help teachers to deal with occupational stress is emotional intelligence (Vaezi & Fallah, 2011). Another important factor, which may contribute to teachers' burnout, can be teachers’ reflectivity which is “the active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it” (Dewey, 1933, p. 9). In an educational system, teachers` burnout can waste occupational investments and decrease teachers` efficiency. Therefore, recognizing teachers who are susceptible to burnout and finding solutions in order to prevent burnout is necessary. To this end, this study was conducted to bridge this gap in the Iranian EFL context and to examine the relationships among teachers’ emotional intelligence, reflectivity, and burnout and their components on the one hand, and to investigate probable differences among their level of burnout, emotional intelligence, and reflectivity and the components of these variables with respect to their educational degree on the other hand 2. MethodologyThe participants of this study were 125 EFL teachers within the age range of 20-47. Teachers` educational degrees were B.A. and M.A. in TEFL and English Translation. The participants were selected randomly from 7 private language institutes in Kurdistan and Hamedan, Iran. To answer the research questions, the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educators Survey (Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 1996), Teacher reflectivity (Akbari, Behzadpour,& Dadvand, 2010) and Bar-On EQ-I (1997) were used and Pearson Product-Moment Correlation and MANOVA analyses were utilized to test the hypotheses.3. Results and DiscussionThe results of the current study revealed that there were negative correlations between EFL teachers’ emotional intelligence and reflectivity on the one hand, and their burnout, on the other. Jude and Grace (2011) mention that emotionally intelligent teachers can understand and control emotions of themselves and others and can also use coping strategies in different situations. Therefore, they can control prolonged stress, which leads to job burnout. Regarding the negative relationship between teachers` reflectivity and burnout, Larrivee and Cooper (2006) believe that reflective teachers free themselves from “routine and impulsive acts, enabling them to act in a more deliberative and intentional manner” (p. 1). When teachers engage in a routine action continuously, they eventually feel powerless in affecting their future jobs and this can in turn lead to burnout (Larrivee & Cooper, 2006). In addition, negative correlations between all the components of emotional intelligence and emotional exhaustion and depersonalization as the components of burnout and also negative significant correlations between interpersonal and general mood with lack of personal accomplishment were found. High adaptability can help teachers to adjust themselves to different situations and find useful solutions for solving difficult problems in their work environment easily and ultimately makes them less susceptible to depersonalization or emotional exhaustion. Moreover, interpersonal and intrapersonal components of emotional intelligence can help teachers to increase their personal accomplishment and decrease their level of depersonalization and emotional exhaustion. Interpersonal component is also related to social relationship and awareness of involvement and accomplishment of rules. Therefore, this component is necessary for job resistance, and it can increase personal accomplishment (Pishghadam & Sahebjam, 2012). There were negative correlations among some of the components of reflectivity and components of burnout. Akbari (2007) believes that, teachers` reflection on their own personal characteristics can lead to shaping and changing teachers` beliefs, values, and their personality and can finally improve their performance. Teachers` reflection can help them to recognize their own capabilities and can ultimately lead to an increase in their personal accomplishment. Moreover, teachers can reflect on their interaction with learners to improve their interpersonal relationship. This can finally help them to reduce their working environment stress. In addition, significant differences were found in teachers’ emotional intelligence regarding their educational degree. However, there were no significant differences in the level of teachers’ burnout and reflectivity with respect to their educational degree. On the part of components, it was revealed that intrapersonal, stress management, and general mood of emotional intelligence along with the critical component of reflectivity were different among teachers holding different educational degrees. 4. ConclusionIt can be concluded that level of emotional intelligence and reflectivity in EFL teachers were negatively correlated with their degree of burnout. Moreover, there were negative and significant relationships among most of the components of emotional intelligence and reflectivity and those of burnout. Based on the results of this study, it can be recommended that reflection and emotional learning programs be incorporated into teacher training courses. These programs can help teachers to develop their awareness of emotional intelligence and reflectivity skills and increase their skills in each of the components of these variables. Therefore, they can develop their interpersonal and intrapersonal abilities to become aware of their own and others' emotions and increase their relationship with people. In addition, they can be more optimistic toward their life, job, students and people who are involved with them emotionally. Developing each of these components can help teachers to decrease their level of burnout. Moreover, these programs can increase teachers’ skills in each of the components of teachers reflectivity. Therefore they can increase their motivation to take part in different workshops, seminars and conferences related to their teaching methods. Consequently, they can develop their teaching quality and decrease their level of stress which may lead to burnout.
Research Article
Parisa Taheri; Majid Elahi Shirvan; Behzad Ghonsooly; Ahmad Saffar Moghadam
Abstract
In today’s multiculturally interconnected world, cultural understanding is the key to communication and a buffer to communication breakdown. That is, the objectives of language learning cannot be viewed as a mainly linguistic task anymore; they should be directed towards achievement of intercultural ...
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In today’s multiculturally interconnected world, cultural understanding is the key to communication and a buffer to communication breakdown. That is, the objectives of language learning cannot be viewed as a mainly linguistic task anymore; they should be directed towards achievement of intercultural communicative competence. Therefore, the foreign language teachers should utilize and promote the acquisition of intercultural competence in their learners. However, they themselves, in the first place, ought to be sufficiently familiar with the foreign cultures of the language they teach. Hence, the rational of this study was to explore how familiar Iranian teachers are with the foreign cultures and to what extent they are prepared for teaching intercultural competence. On the other hand, this study addresses teachers’ perceptions of their pupils’ language-and-culture learning profile as well. To do so, 120 Iranian English teachers teaching in private English institutes of Mashhad were asked to answer the sections 4 and 5 of a survey entitled ‘Foreign Language Teachers and Intercultural Competence’ organized by Lies Sercu (2005). The findings revealed that teachers need additional familiarity and preparation to interculturalize their foreign language education and improve their students’ culture learning profile in terms of intercultural competence.
Research Article
Seyed Mohammad Hosseini-Maasoum; Elahe Alizadeh
Abstract
The translation of Persian poems necessitates the fluency of the translator in source and target languages as well as great knowledge about the delicacies of poetry and the intellectual, social and cultural background of the poet. One of the problems in the process of translation is the incompatibility ...
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The translation of Persian poems necessitates the fluency of the translator in source and target languages as well as great knowledge about the delicacies of poetry and the intellectual, social and cultural background of the poet. One of the problems in the process of translation is the incompatibility of the syntactic structures and morphological and grammatical features of the two languages. The source of many of the attractive ambiguities in Hafez is the different and contradictory interpretations concerning the addressee in his poems. Persian lacks grammatical gender and the third person pronoun in Persian /?u/, which refers to the beloved of Hafez, defies translation since in English, the translator has to use either masculine or feminine pronouns, each of which provoking a different interpretation. The present study surveys samples of the translation of Hafez’s lyrics by three translators, thus analyzing and classifying different methods in the translation of this pronoun.
Research Article
Fatemeh Heidari; Masoud Khoshsaligheh; Mohamad Reaza Hashemi
Abstract
Apart from the linguistic ability in translation which has constantly been the focus of scholars in the past decades, many recent arguments and research on translation quality point to the indispensable effect of mental and cognitive aspects of translator on his translation performance. In this paper ...
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Apart from the linguistic ability in translation which has constantly been the focus of scholars in the past decades, many recent arguments and research on translation quality point to the indispensable effect of mental and cognitive aspects of translator on his translation performance. In this paper we sought to implement this psychological approach and to investigate the probable relationship between the new-fangled cognitive concept of narrative intelligence in the area of Translation Studies and translation quality (TQ). The likely relationship between narrative intelligence and translation quality from first language (Persian) to foreign language (English) was probed. In this research 104 undergraduate translation students took part. The findings showed that there exist a significant relationship between students' TQ and their narrative intelligence. All the subcategories of narrative intelligence also proved a significant relation between TQ and narrative intelligence. In addition, there was a significant difference between high and low narrative intelligence translation students participating in this study in regards to their TQ. In the end, the findings were discussed and some implications were indicated.
