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This study compares the effect of ZPD feedback with explicit feedback on accuracy in second language (L2) writing. It also examines the effect of focused vs. unfocused ZPD feedback on L2 writing development during teacher-student tutorial sessions. Four participants wrote five persuasive essays and were provided with ZPD or explicit feedback either in focused or unfocused form during five tutorial sessions. Following sociocultural theory (SCT) principles, the ZPD feedback provided was graduated, contingent, and dialogical. The results revealed that the learners who received ZPD feedback performed better than those who received explicit feedback in terms of accuracy. The results also showed that the use of focused and unfocused ZPD feedback yields different results both in terms of accuracy across sessions and shifts in the quality of feedback learners need within and across sessions. The findings lend support to the supremacy of SCT-inspired ZPD feedback in general and focused ZPD feedback in particular but raise important questions regarding the nature of teacher-student interaction during tutorial sessions, and the number and function of linguistic targets. The findings are discussed in the light of SCT and cognitive-interactionist views of corrective feedback, and their implications for theory, practice, and research are discussed in detail.

This study investigates Azerbaijani bilinguals' language choice and identity construction processes in family and friendship domains. Individual interviews were conducted with 19 (11 male, 8 female) participants. The emerged themes were classified under three categories, i.e. age, gender and language ideologies. The findings revealed that language attitudes and ideologies are the main reason for Azerbaijani bilinguals' language choice in family and friendship domains. Farsi as the national language and the only language of education is considered important symbolic power compared to Azerbaijani Turkish language. The findings of the study also showed that age and gender in family domain and gender in friendship domain are influential factors in Azerbaijani bilinguals' language choice. Azerbaijani bilingual females use Azerbaijani Turkish to speak to their older family members while they choose Farsi to speak to other family members. Azerbaijani bilingual males choose Azerbaijani Turkish to speak to their older family members, their brothers and their male friends but they speak in Farsi to their female family members and female friends as well as their children. The findings and implications are discussed in detail.

Study of stiffness characteristics plays a key role in application of parallel robots in precision manufacturing. In this study, stiffness index improvement is utilised as the objective function to obtain optimal configurations and dimensions for parallel robots. The optimisation goal is to maximise the stiffness index throughout workspace of the robots. First, stiffness of the robots is obtained by the strain energy of main components of the robots and Castigliano's theorem. For a more realistic simulation, compliance of moving platform of the robots is considered. Then a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) is utilised to solve the optimisation problem. A comprehensive case study of stiffness analysis of three conventional SPS (spherical– prismatic–spherical) Stewart platforms to examine such a platform's optimised design is performed. The relationship between the objective and decision spaces is investigated. A similar approach can be utilised to study optimised design for other parallel robots. Findings of this study provide a general stepwise and conceptual approach to the stiffness analysis of parallel robots that depends on design parameters and configuration of the robots. In case of Stewart platforms, 3SPS configuration was found to be optimised in terms of stiffness performance in their workspace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is common practice in the classes that teachers focus on the outcome of listening rather than the listening process itself. Based on the interventionist view of language teaching, one of the ways proposed for teaching listening is to break it into smaller micro-skills and give learners awareness about them. But before giving awareness, it is important to identify the micro-skills that learners need mostly in performing listening tasks. This study was aimed at exploring the most frequently used listening micro-skills in EFL classes at lower levels. Also, an attempt was made to investigate the impact of awareness raising about these micro-skills on the EFL learners' listening comprehension enhancement. For studying the effect of awareness raising, 252 EFL female learners took part in the study and 30 experts and teachers from different universities took part in identifying the most frequently used micro-skills in the EFL context. After gathering data, 10 listening micro-skills were identified as being the most frequently used skills for performing tasks in EFL classes. Also, after awareness raising activities about these micro-skills, a significant difference was found between the learners in the experimental and control groups. The results of the study are discussed in the light of teachers' language awareness (TLA) and implications for the educators and task designers. (Contains 5 tables and 1 figure.)

The current study examined differential effects of two pre-modification types, syntactic elaboration and syntactic simplification (at the level of syntax and irrespective of problematic lexis), on EST students' reading comprehension. The purpose was to see whether a priori syntactic elaborative adjustment, given its advantages over simplification, can augment comprehensibility of scientific texts in order to replace simplification adjustment. To carry out the study, three versions of 5 passages including Baseline, syntactically simplified, and syntactically elaborated were provided. All the five passages were relevant to civil engineering and they were modified using two above-mentioned techniques. The subjects of the study were composed of 185 homogenous civil engineering students who participated in different phases. The results revealed that syntactic simplification and syntactic elaboration procedures operated nearly in the same way in orienting the EST texts toward comprehensibility. The results of the study even indicated that students benefited more from elaborated than simplified texts although it was not statistically significant. Therefore, the study supports the view that syntactic elaborative adjustment can be exercised in advance on EST materials for pedagogical purposes since it increases the reading comprehension at the same time keeps unfamiliar syntactic units intact to be learned by EST readers.

Creativity has been one of the interesting issues in the field of education and has been subject of some studies. But studying the effect of using handcraft on the enhancing learners' creativity at early stages of education has not been focused on in many studies. Therefore, in this study an effort was made to explore the effect of using handcrafts on the enhancement of the creativity among the learners at elementary schools. The participants in this study were 64 female students who were selected randomly from elementary school learners at grade five in Tehran. For data collection Torrens Creativity Test was used and data gathering was done through pre-test and post-test. Data was analyzed by using descriptive statistics and ANOVA analysis. The data analysis revealed that using handcraft as an instrument was significantly effective in enhancing students' score in originality, flexibility and elaboration at the elementary grades, whereas; there was not any significant difference between their scores in fluency. The findings and their implications are discussed more in detail.

Background: Estimating the total cost of services is crucial for utilizing available resources more efficiently and effectively. By employing the time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) method, not only can costs be calculated, but also the efficiency and unused capacity of resources can be assessed. Objectives: This study aimed to calculate the cost of education for each medical student at one of the AJA medical sciences universities in 2022 using the TDABC method. Methods: This quantitative study was conducted cross-sectionally and retrospectively in a descriptive-analytical manner. The data were collected and analyzed through interviews and observations. To analyze and allocate costs, administrative and educational departments were categorized into three levels: Overhead, intermediate, and final activity centers. Then, using the TDABC approach in Microsoft Excel 2013 software costs from the overhead and intermediate activity centers to the final activity center and students. Results: The study estimated the average cost of educating each medical student to be approximately IRR 6 267 568 065. Additionally, the unused capacity of resources in overhead and intermediate centers was observed to be 30% (range: 4-44%) and 33% (range: 26 - 43%), respectively. Conclusions: The findings indicated that the cost per student is somewhat reasonable; however, there is a high level of unused capacity in the university and faculty activity centers. The effective management of human resources and equipment is necessary to enhance service delivery processes, increase productivity, and reduce unused capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the relationship between task complexity, second language (L2) learners' response and awareness of corrective feedback provided in the form of recasts during teacher–student interaction. Drawing on Robinson's Triadic Componential Framework, the study examined how degrees of task complexity created by two specific task characteristics had an impact on learners' responses (referred to as uptake), and their reported noticing of grammatical and lexical recasts. Data documenting learners' uptake, operationalized as changes in response to feedback during interactions and noticing of recasts, as indicated in students' self reports of detection and attention to recasts, were collected during one-on-one interaction sessions and stimulated recall sessions with ESL learners in Canada. Frequency analysis and Cochran's Q analysis with multiple McNemar post hoc tests were carried out to compare the uptake and noticing of recasts across different tasks. The results revealed that tasks with different degrees of complexity impacted uptake and noticing of recasts differently. The results also showed that linguistic target, i.e., lexical or grammatical features, modulated the relationship between task complexity and recast uptake and noticing. The study calls for a more nuanced approach to investigating task complexity in research, and for practitioners to consider task complexity in decision making related to the use of corrective feedback and the design of classroom-based tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reports on the investigation of young learners' perceptions of FonF tasks regarding enjoyment, ease, performance, and persuasion. It was attempted to explore young learners' attitudes toward FonF tasks in two elementary English classes. The two classes consisted of 13 and 17 female learners aged 12 to 15. In particular, the present study addressed the learners' perceptions of two selected tasks of grammar interpretation and grammaring. For this purpose, questionnaires and an interview were used to elicit their perspectives on the tasks. Based on the analysis of their responses, it was revealed that the determinant features for their preferences fall into five categories: the use of context in teaching grammar, the use of contextual support for practicing the grammatical structure, task demands, the novelty of procedures, and the saliency of linguistic structure. Findings also indicated that in spite of the learners' positive attitudes toward four tasks, variations existed in their perceptions regarding four sources of influence: the required mental processes to do a task, opportunities for group works, textual enhancement and the learning values of the task.

The social learning approach is one of the most effective and emerging approaches to solve multidimensional, long-term and multi-stakeholder problems. It aligns individual efforts to synergize, mitigate, and adapt to climate change. This study sought to identify the factors affecting social learning in farmers' adaptation to climate change in Kurdistan province. The methodology was qualitative conventional content analysis and the method of sampling was snowball sampling. Research tools were semi-structured interviews with 17 researchers and experts who are active in the field of climate change in the region. Data analyzed with MAXQDA12 software and 97 codes and five classes were extracted, This classes includes of: 1- The dimensions of climate change in the province (with 4 subclasses), 2-The existence of adaptive technologies with climate change (with 3 subclasses), 3-Access to communication networks (With 5 subclasses), 4-Integrated stakeholder management (with 3 subclasses) and 5-Individual, social and economic variables (with 5 subclasses). Finally, suggestions and solutions were presented in order to improve the capacity of farmers to adapt to climate change in the province. The results of this study can lead managers, policy makers, planners and researchers in the successful design and implementation of adaptive programs, taking into account the interaction and cooperation of stakeholders and their active participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares the effect of ZPD feedback with explicit feedback on accuracy in second language (L2) writing. It also examines the effect of focused vs. unfocused ZPD feedback on L2 writing development during teacher-student tutorial sessions. Four participants wrote five persuasive essays and were provided with ZPD or explicit feedback either in focused or unfocused form during five tutorial sessions. Following sociocultural theory (SCT) principles, the ZPD feedback provided was graduated, contingent, and dialogical. The results revealed that the learners who received ZPD feedback performed better than those who received explicit feedback in terms of accuracy. The results also showed that the use of focused and unfocused ZPD feedback yields different results both in terms of accuracy across sessions and shifts in the quality of feedback learners need within and across sessions. The findings lend support to the supremacy of SCT-inspired ZPD feedback in general and focused ZPD feedback in particular but raise important questions regarding the nature of teacher-student interaction during tutorial sessions, and the number and function of linguistic targets. The findings are discussed in the light of SCT and cognitive-interactionist views of corrective feedback, and their implications for theory, practice, and research are discussed in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]