mohammadreza afshar

Understanding the pragmatic meanings of the utterances in exchanges is a serious challenge among English language learners. This study aimed to estimate the pragmatic competence of EFL learners’ listening comprehension concerned with cooperative principles (CPs) of TOEFL candidates taking the listening modules. The maxims of quantity, quality, relation, and manner helped test takers uncover the indirect or figurative meanings of the speakers' intended meaning of utterances. The design of the study was exploratory-quantitative and interpretative. The participants were 150 high and low achievers of MA students majoring in TEFL. The research instrument was a 50-item listening test that was randomly selected from the Educational Testing Service (ETS). The participants took the listening test in the fall semester of 2022. Data from the listening test were collected and analyzed via t-test and ANOVA. Findings showed understanding CPs was effective in the learners’ listening performance. Furthermore, results indicated high and low achievers' recognition of quantity and manner principles was significantly different. However, there was no such difference in learners’ comprehension regarding the maxims of quality and relevance. Implications of the study suggest that EFL learners must focus more on the pragmatic meanings of quantity and manner rather than quality and relevance maxims.

Implied meaning (hereafter, non-literal or indirect implicature) is studied in the field of pragmatics which considers the intended meaning in the context of the situation (Yule, 1996). The implied meaning is not denotatively expressed, but it is only understood through the shared knowledge of the interlocutors. This study explores the MA Persian speakers' lack of mastery on the listening module of TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) since they cannot comprehend the implied (i.e., non-literal) and consequently, they achieve unsatisfactory results in listening section. Sixty-two MA graduate students took the TOEFL listening module and they were divided into two groups of high and low achievers based on their test scores. Data were analyzed through the theoretical framework of Gricean Maxims (1975). K-S test and independent samples t-test showed that the sub-groups of high and low achievers are significantly different in understanding the implied meanings of relevance and quantity maxims. However, both high and low achievers were not significantly different in quality and manner maxims; however, the scores of high achievers were greater than the low achievers. The difference did not meet the significant level (.05). The findings of the study suggest that teachers should focus on relevance and quantity maxims as the problematic maxims in recognizing the implied meaning of the items. The nature of relevance and quantity maxims should be clarified to the MA learners who need to infer the implied meanings of the TOEFL listening module. Linguists always note the study of sentence meaning because an utterance may convey various interpretations. Implied meanings of these interpretations may not attract the attention of people since they are so conventionalized that we consider them as literal. However, they may hinder communication or cause misunderstanding on the part of the listener or reader. This problem can be amended through apologizing or giving background knowledge. Although everyone has various interpretations of the utterances, the context of the situation may limit a set of meanings. In this case, the listeners' meaning can be different from the speakers' intended meaning which is implied and this is the role of the listener or reader who should discover the implied or indirect meaning of the utterances. Thus, the receivers should distinguish the sentence and utterance meanings of the senders' speech. Certainly, linguistic structures convey fixed meanings at the syntactic level (e.g., It is very hot.) to open a small talk on the bus. This is different from the same utterance (e.g., It is very hot.) when the speaker implies a request (i.e., get me a glass of water.). If the addressee does not understand the implied meaning of the latter, he/she may get confused (Verschueren, 2016(.In this study, we analyzed the participants’ responses to pragmatically loaded TOEFL short dialogues to identify the characteristics that made them difficult for MA students. The origin of the difficulty of understanding the nonliteral meaning is the employment of Grice cooperative principles in the tests. The short dialogues, which are characterized by the quantity principle, are the most difficult ones but those that are characterized by the relevance principle are the simplest. These simple dialogues may become difficult if they are culturally loaded or if there is a combination of implicatures. Some items are tricky and do not indicate the complexity of the dialogue or the implicature. Although the words “implied” and “inferred” are interchangeably used, they do not convey the same meaning and are not processed similarly. They may be a source of difficulty even for native speakers. If words such as “imply” “mean”, and “suggest” are used in the item (e.g. what does the man imply?), it is the signal that there is an implicature in one of the utterances in the short talk exchange. This can help the learner to identify the nonliteral meaning. Although the scenarios in the TOEFL exam correspond to the real communication context, there is no one to help and signal the learner that her/his interlocutor may convey a nonliteral or implied meaning. In sum, it is recommended to consider these as well as Grice principles in teaching and learning listening comprehension module.The study of the application of Gricean principles in the TOEFL listening exam revealed the difficulties in inferring the implied meanings of the listening items which contain pragmatic and connotative aspects of language. Thus, the learners even at the graduate level need to learn the inferring strategies. Administrators of the listening comprehension test may encourage the students to focus their attention on the implied meanings. Moreover, this study reveals the effective role of the distracters which may be used as an inappropriate implicature.Further research may deal with the other international exams like IELTS, TOLIMO, GRE to discover the nature of listening items, their correct choices, and distractors as well. Reading, speaking, and writing skills could be the subject of future studies since both receptive and productive language skills need to be evaluated in terms of the quality of their items regarding the reliability and validity of test construction.

The present study, as a text analysis study, aimed to determine the most commonly used academic words in Nursing and Midwifery studies. Analyzing a collection of 7759635 words extracted from 1939 articles from the top 10 journals in the fields of Nursing and Midwifery, 894 widely academic words were obtained, which accounted for about 16.89% of the words used in the entire corpus. This list of academic words included useful and practical words that students, researchers and professors of Nursing and Midwifery needed for English studying and publishing articles. The results of this study showed that the list of field-oriented words in the area of medical sciences strengthened and enhanced the linguistic and written knowledge of non-English students. The educational implications and suggestions presented as the result of study can help teachers, researchers, providers and responsibles of educational content, and Nursing and Midwifery students.

 Dysphagia is commonly encountered in Multiple Sclerosis (MS). It can consequently cause severe complications such as the increased risk of dehydration, malnutrition and aspiration pneumonia that associated with an increased risk of death in the late stages of the disease. These complications can be prevented with an effective screening protocol. The Dysphagia in Multiple Sclerosis (DYMUS) is the only questionnaire developed specifically for patients with MS. The aim of the present study was translation and cross-culturally adaptation of DYMUS for the Persian population and estimation of the questionnairechr('39')s reliability and validity. Also, we investigated the frequency and severity of dysphagia in the patients referring to the Tehran MS Society and its association with the course of MS, disease duration, and Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS).

This is a methodological and descriptive-analytic study. The statistical populations consist of the patients with MS referring to the Tehran Multiple Sclerosis Society in 2018. The study sample consisted of 108 patients who were selected through a convenient sampling method. The research instruments consisted of 10-items DYMUS questionnaire (in the first part of the study, translated and its psychometric properties examined), Dysphagia Handicap Index and a demographic information questionnaire. In methodological section, translation and cross-cultural adaptation were fulfilled and the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was used to assess the construct validity and to test the goodness-of-fit of the presented model. The association between the DYMUS and Dysphagia Handicap Index (DHI) scores investigated to convergent validity. ‏ The inter-item correlation matrix was calculated to assess the homogeneity of the questionnaire items. Kuder - Richardson (KR-20) was measured to assess the internal consistency of the questionnaire. Also, the test-retest procedure was conducted on the 19 subjects understudy to assess the reliability. Finally, the frequency and severity of dysphagia and its association with the course of MS, disease duration, and EDSS was investigated. KR-20 reliability coefficient, Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC), inter-item correlation matrix, Mann-Whitney U test and rank correlation coefficient or Spearmanchr('39')s were used to inferential statistical analysis.

 Analysis of the inter-item correlations matrix indicated a positive correlation between all items, exception item 10. Based on the results of the inter-item correlation, item 10 had the lowest correlation coefficient that was deleted from the questionnaire. CFA results confirmed the two-factor model of DYMUS, “dysphagia for solids” and “dysphagia for liquids”, and revealed that the item 10 was minimally contributing to the measurement of "dysphagia of solids" and internal consistency increased after the deletion of this item. Also, the solution of the 9-item Model was the best goodness-of-fit indicator for the sample. The obtained results from the convergent validity indicated a positive significant correlation between the DYMUS and DHI (rs=0.693, P<0.001). A KR-20 reliability coefficient of the DYMUS was 0.856, indicating high internal consistency of the Persian translation of the questionnaire items. Test-retest reliability was excellent with 0.965 value. The results also showed that 65.7% of multiple sclerosis patients had a swallowing disorder. In terms of the dysphagia severity, 25.9% of participants had mild dysphagia, and 39.8% of participants had alarming dysphagia. DYMUS values were significantly correlated with disease duration (rs=0.198, P= 0.040), and EDSS (rs=0.235, P= 0.014) and significantly higher mean scores were observed in the patients with secondary progressive than the other subgroups of multiple sclerosis.

 The Persian adjusted 9-item questionnaire was demonstrated to be a simple, consistent, valid and reliable tool for the detection of patients who need more specific instrumental evaluations of swallowing. Also, about the dysphagia is very frequent in these patients, it is important that clinicians monitor these patients carefully even in early stages of the disease‏ for early detection and planning a rehabilitation program to the prevention of serious subsequence complications.

Construction projects play an important role in the economic development of every country. Nevertheless, review of projects documents indicates that in most cases, the projects are not finished on schedule and on assigned budget, such that they sometimes loss their economic justification, and simply fail. Consequently, devising suitable solutions is essential to prevention of such failures. This is impossible without identifying the foremost causes of failure. In this study, first, all factors of failure are identified using Fault Tree Analysis (FTA). FTA as a diagnostic tool allows us to efficiently isolate root causes of failure. To rank these factors, dedicated specialists are requested to assess the risk of each cause using linguistic terms; thereby relevant calculations are carried out using the Linguistic Weighted Average (LWA). Undeniably, considering the complexity of construction projects and incomplete expert knowledge, judgments must not be made using crisp value conception. Hence, fuzzy theory is utilized to achieve more accurate results. Results indicate that the majority of problems in projects stem from financial concerns and shortcoming of bidding process. In the last section, an actual case study is used to validate our results.

In this paper, a Fully Informed Particle Swarm (FIPS) algorithm is proposed for solving the Multi-mode Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (MRCPSP) with minimization of project makespan as the objective subject to resource and precedence constraints. In the proposed FIPS, A random key and the related mode list (ML) representation scheme are used as encoding schemes and the multi-mode serial schedule generation scheme (MSSGS) is considered as the decoding procedure. In particular, a new fitness function which reduces the average deviation from optimality and CPU-time is presented. Comparing the results of the proposed FIPS with other approaches using the well-known benchmark sets in PSPLIB validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm to solve the MRCPSP.

In this paper, a new genetic algorithm (GA) is presented for solving the multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling problem (MRCPSP) with minimization of project makespan as the objective subject to resource and precedence constraints. A random key and the related mode list (ML) representation scheme are used as encoding schemes and the multi-mode serial schedule generation scheme (MSSGS) is considered as the decoding procedure. In this paper, a simple, efficient fitness function is proposed which has better performance compared to the other fitness functions in the literature. Defining a new mutation operator for ML is the other contribution of the current study. Comparing the results of the proposed GA with other approaches using the well-known benchmark sets in PSPLIB validates the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm to solve the MRCPSP.

Speech Sound Disorders (SSD) is a common childhood disorder characterized by developmentally inappropriate errors in speech production that can reduce intelligibility. Some data suggests that a deficit in phonological working memory may contribute to the disorder. Phonological working memory as a part of the working memory system which is responsible for coding and storage of phonological information. Many researchers have employed Non-Word Repetition (NWR) to measure phonological working memory. The aim of this study was to providing a Non-Word Repetition test and determining its validity and reliability and explore differences the phonological working memory in 4 to 6 years old Farsi-speaking normal and SSD children. The participants in this study were 32 SSD children and 32 normal children-matched for age and sex- as a control group. Phonological working memory was examined in both groups with NWR task. For this purpose، NWR task was designed، and after determining its validity and reliability، was employed in both groups. Mann-Whitney U Test was conducted to examine the differences in mean scores in NWR task. 25 non-words in this test، has content validity. Coefficient correlation between consecutive performances was obtained. 997 (P<. 001). Mean scores in SSD children compared with the control group was lower and results of statistical test revealed that the children’s ability to repeat non-words in normal and SSD group are significantly different (P<. 001). Non-word Repetition test showed high validity and reliability. Weaker performance of the SSD children in NWR task could be due to a weakness in hold novel sound sequences in phonological working memory presumably doesn’t allow stable long-term phonological representations to be established. In the absence of known etiological factors، a deficit in phonological working memory may consider as a cause of SSD in children.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of L-arginine (L Arg) and L-NAME on coronary vascular and aortic endothelial permeability in normocholesterolemic (NC) and hypercholesterolemic (HC) rats. Forty-eight male rats were divided into NC and HC groups and each group was divided into L-Arginine-treated, L-NAME-treated and control subgroups. L-Arg (2.25%) and LNAME (0.75 mg/ml) were dissolved in drinking water and control groups received tap water.After 8 weeks, endothelial permeability was assessed by using the Evans Blue (EB) dye method. Aortic endothelial permeability was significantly higher in HC group compared toNC group (15.1±0.7 vs. 7.7±0.8 μgEB/g tissue, respectively; P<0.05). L-Arg and L-NAME treatment decreased aortic endothelial permeability in HC animals (L-Arg: 8.4±0.4 & L-NAME: 10.8±0.6 vs. 15.1±0.7 μgEB/g tissue, respectively; P<0.05). There was no significant difference in endothelial permeability in coronary circulation between HC and NC groups and L-Arg and L-NAME did not alter endothelial permeability. It seems that L-Arg and L-NAME have different effects on endothelial permeability based on physiological and pathological conditions and type of vessel.