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Using a contrastive analysis approach, this study aimed to study emotive words (EWs) in Persian and English short stories for children. It actually tries to find the similarities and differences between the two languages in terms of using emotive words based on different types and tokens of emotions introduced by Wierzbicka (Emotions across cultures: Diversity and universality, 1999) and Devon (The origin of emotions, 2006). Additionally, it sought to investigate the impact of teaching emotive narratives on the learners' practical knowledge of controlling emotions. To fulfill this objective, 20 short stories with similar length and level of difficulty were randomly selected, 10 in English and l0 in Persian, and 35 lines of each story were investigated to identify and classify their EWs based on the two models employed for classification. To examine the extent of similarities and differences between the frequency of EWs used in English and Persian short stories, a Chi-square test was run. The results revealed that there was not a significant difference between the two groups of stories in terms of emotion tokens; however, a significant difference was found between the frequency of EWs used in English and Persian short stories concerning different types of emotion. In the second phase of the study, emotive short stories were explicitly taught to a sample of 25 EFL learners; a DCT was utilized as the pre-test and post-test to find if learners' practical knowledge would improve in the wake of this intervention. The findings revealed a significant improvement in the practical understanding of the participants after being exposed to the instruction of emotive narratives. The results also demonstrated that literature-based activities containing emotional cues could improve young learners' practical knowledge required for controlling their emotions.

This study intended to investigate the effect of spaced and massed distribution instruction on vocabulary learning. To fulfil this objective, 68 Iranian pre-intermediate EFL learners (14-16 years) participated in 16 sessions. The participants were randomly divided in to two experimental groups; spaced distribution group (n = 34) and massed distribution group (n = 34). The massed distribution group had one intensive session on learning the target vocabulary; the spaced distribution group had three sessions at irregular time intervals. Using a before and after design, students were retested after 8 weeks. To collect data, a vocabulary test was performed as the pretest and posttest. The results of the paired samples t test and One-way ANCOVA indicated that the spaced distribution group significantly outperformed the massed distribution group on the posttest (effect size .75). The results propose that EFL practitioners can synthesize spacing as a beneficial teaching technique into the curricula and educational materials to promote vocabulary learning.

The current study tried to investigate the impact of cooperative learning (CL) on improving Iranian intermediate EFL learners' oral proficiency motivations toward learning English. To fulfil this objective, 90 participants were selected and divided into two equal groups; one experimental and one control group. Then, the sample's speaking skills were first examined through an English oral test prior to and after some cooperative learning instructional activities were provided. Next, a seven-point Likert scale-questionnaire was administered to the participants before and at the end of the course to check students' motivations towards the use of cooperative learning in English classes. After analyzing the data, the results indicated a significant improvement in the learners' speaking skills after utilizing cooperative learning techniques. Furthermore, results proposed remarkable differences in favor of cooperative learning in enhancing intrinsic motivation, but no differences were observed on other sorts of motivation. The researchers suggested using CL in English classes might be beneficial for teachers, which may in turn progress students' speaking skills and motivations.

Considering the vital role of comprehensible input, this study attempted to compare the effects of input with various difficulty levels on Iranian EFL learners' reading comprehension and reading motivation. To fulfil this objective, 54 Iranian pre-intermediate EFL learners were selected from two intact classes (n = 27 each). The selected participants were randomly assigned to two equal groups, namely "i + 1? (n = 27) and "i-1? group (n = 27). Then, the groups were pretested by a researcher-made reading comprehension test. After carrying out the pre-test, the treatment (i.e., extensive reading at different levels of difficulty) was practiced on the both groups. The participants in "i + 1? group received reading passages beyond the current level, on the other hand, the "i-1? group received those reading passages which were below their current level. After the instruction ended, a modified version of pre-test was conducted as posttest to determine the impacts of the treatment on the students' reading comprehension. The obtained results indicated that there was a significant difference between the post-tests of "i + 1? and "i-1? groups. The findings showed that the "i + 1? group significantly outperformed the "i-1? group (p < 0.05) on the post-test. Moreover, the findings indicated that "i + 1? group's motivation increased after the treatment. The implications of the study suggest that interactive type of input is beneficial to develop students' language skills.

The empirical studies addressing learners' engagement to teachers' corrective feedback on their writing tasks in the Saudi EFL context as well as its impact on the students' improvement of writing skill are still a few. Therefore, the proposed research project aims to empirically address the Saudi EFL learners' responses to teachers' written corrective feedback on their writing tasks. Addressing the EFL learners' engagement in the teachers' written feedback is a key issue in improving learners' writing skills. As a result, the proposed project attempts to measure Saudi learners' engagement with their learners' feedback from a multi-dimension perspective; learners' uptake, affective engagement, cognitive engagement, and meta-cognitive engagement, and behavioral engagement. Investigating the learners' responses to their teacher's feedback, the proposed project uses a sociocognitive method that contributes to realizing the differences in EFL responses toward their teacher's corrective feedback. The proposed study relies on different sources of data that include students' writing assignments, semi-structured questionnaires. The sample of the study consists of 90 elementary level students belonging to the applied college at PSAU, 30 pre-intermediate students belonging to Business administration College, and 30 intermediate level students belonging to the college of humanities and sciences. The collected data reflect to what extent learners are engaged with the corrective feedback of their teachers, which can be partly accounted for their ideas and experiences about the written corrective feedback and second language writing and the learning context in which the feedback was received and processed. The findings of the research projects proposes that the EFL instructors should have a deeper understanding of the students' cognitive and behavioral, engagement, feedback processing. This deeper understanding of students' responses to written correct feedback would largely contribute to improving learners' writing skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optimization is a process that has long been considered by researchers in various fields and its methods have been utilized to increase productivity while reducing costs. Moreover, it is essential to achieve simultaneously several contradictory goals. In control engineering, optimizing controller parameters to attain several different goals could be considered as a significant challenge. In this paper, a fractional-order PID controller is designed for a training helicopter with two DC motors, called Twin-Rotor Multi Input Multi Output System (TRMS). The design of this controller is based on the optimization of different objective functions with metaheuristic multiobjective optimization algorithms. Finally, their Pareto front and different evaluation criteria such as Spacing Metric and Non- uniformity of Pareto Front are employed to compare the performance of these algorithms for optimization of controller parameters on the decoupled TRMS system. The results show the superiority of the proposed multi-objective fractional-order PID controller for the TRMS system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]