http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12323/3639 2026-04-04T03:29:05Z http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12323/3645 Title: Teachers’ Understanding-Check Practices and Learners’ Following Orientations in EFL Classroom Interaction: A Conversation Analytic Study Authors: Karimpour, Sedigheh; Yaqubi, Baqer Abstract: Classroom discourse is typically dominated by question and answer routines in which teachers ask most of the questions, a practice constituting one of the principal ways in which they control the discourse and push learners to contribute to classroom interaction (Brock, 1986; Walsh, 2006). Most of previous research on teachers’ questions mainly focused on identifying and discovering different question types which believed to be helpful in creating the opportunities for learners’ interactions. Drawing on conversation analysis through adopting socio-cultural perspective, this study, however, aims to examine how EFL learners orient to the teachers’ understanding-check questions in three sequential contexts (activity-boundary, post instruction and within-activity) which emerged in this study. Informed by the tenets of conversation analysis, we have observed, videotaped, and transcribed line-by-line 6 EFL teachers’ naturally-occurring classroom interaction. Analyses of 8 episodes from the data suggest that learners seemingly orient to the understanding-check questions used by their teachers as preferring no-problem, which is marked in their orientations to show no-problem responses in the preferred format and yesproblem responses in the dispreferred format. The findings of this study have implications for teacher education. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12323/3644 Title: Assessment of Training Needs for Teaching at the elementary schools in Saudi Arabia Authors: Al-Madani, Feras Mohammed Abstract: The study aimed to identify Arabic language teachers' training needs in teaching my beautiful language Textbook with regards to lesson plan, its implementation and evaluation in investigating the statistically significant differences in training needs related to gender differences, years of experience, and number of training courses attendance at the primary level in Arar, Saudi Arabia. The study employed descriptive statistics to describe mean scores of the samples, standard deviation and ANCOVA to determine the statistically significant differences among the respondents. The study tool consisted of (46) item which was divided into three areas namely; planning, implementation and evaluation. The samples were (25) male and (25) female primary school teachers. The study found that the degree of training need for planning, implementation and evaluation is high and the degree of training need for teachers in the implementation and evaluation of lessons is also high regardless of the number of training courses attended. Also it was found that the female teachers are in need of training more than the male teachers and that training need increases with the increase in the number of years of experience. The study recommended capitalizing on training project in solving the problem of teachers for training on the planning and implementation skills and the lesson evaluation of my beautiful language Textbook. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12323/3643 Title: A ‘Thick Description’ Genre Analysis of Death Announcement Notices Authors: Salahshour, Farzad Abstract: As a universally recognized social practice, the discourse of the Death Announcement Notice, henceforth DAN, is subject to macro-cultural and micro-contextual influences, and consequently to various procedural strategies that shape its schematic structure. A ‘thick description’, one which combines outsider theoretical models with insider experiential knowledge was adopted for the analysis of a randomly compiled corpus of 50 DAN texts. Based on Swales’ (1990) model of genre, eight schematic moves were discerned. The researcher’s insider knowledge was employed to yield a deeper understanding of this social practice. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12323/3642 Title: Fiscal decentralization and economic growth: A dilemma between theory and empiricism Authors: Hasanli, Azar Abstract: Abandoning fiscal decision-making, redistributing and dispersing authorities provided by central government in favor of local and regional-level governance bodies is one of the widely discussed issues across the world based on the theory of “fiscal decentralization”. Incumbent theoretical and empiric researches regarding to achieving economic growth in the light of global economic fragilities indicate that managerial allocation of public funds among central and local authorities casts significant attention in terms of optimizing economic efficiency. In the article, it is tried to introduce brief theoretical background and measurement techniques to depict empiric relationship between fiscal decentralization and economic growth. In addition to investigating empiric facts, an effort to reveal the impact of fiscal decentralization on acquiring economic growth is made. Based on the investigations conducted in the framework of the article, it becomes obvious that empirical approaches toward the issue can be differed in several aspects: the selection of different economies, the time period chosen, the economies’ level of development and the estimation methodology. However, there are few empirical studies that analyze the relationship between fiscal decentralization and economic growth, and unfortunately the evidence on this topic is inconclusive. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z