Teaching English as a Second Language Quarterly
Volume:1 Issue: 1, Spring 2009

The inscription of Rabatak was found in 1993 near an ancient hill in the north part of Baghlan in Afghanistan. The village of Rabatak is situated at the kilometer forty in the north-western part of the ancient province of Sorkh-Kotal near the border between Baghlan and Samangan provinces.The Rabatak inscription includes 23 lines in Bactrian language and a Greco-Bactrian script. The Bactrian language is one of the Eastern Middle Iranian Languages. It was spoken by the people of northern part of Afghanistan. It is noteworthy that Bactrian is the only Middle Iranian language whose writing system is based on the Greek alphabet, a fact ultimately attributable to Alexander’s conquest of Bactria and to maintenance of Greek rule for some 200 years after his death (323B.C.). In spite of the invasion of Bacteria by Alexander of Macedonia and his successors the Bactrian language continued to be in use.Around the Middle of the second century B.C. Bactria was overrun by nomads from the north called Tokharoi. They settled in northern part of Afghanistan and later gave their name to the area (Tokharistan). The Kushan Empire was founded early in the Christian era by Kujula Kadphises whose tribe obtained supremacy over the Tokharoi.With the collapse of the Kushan dynasty their lands fell into the hand of the Sasanians, under whom the administration of these provinces was entrusted to a governor styled Kušanšah. From the middle of the fourth century Bactria and northwestern India were overrun by Hunnish tribes, of whom the Hephtahalites proved the most durable, maintaining their rule in parts of Afghanistan up to the Arab conquest in the seventh century.The aim of this article is to throw a new light both an the Bactrian history and language through Rabatak inscription by presenting its transliteration, transcription and translation into Persian language following with a commentary and an etymological word list. It is worth mentioning that in this study the historical and linguistic points are examined.Method of Research: I have examined the Bactrian inscription of Rabatak according to the reading and interpreting of Nicholas Sims-Williams from University ofLondon whose reading is based on the original copies and the photograph prepared by British Museum. I have used the method of translation and transcription used by him in his several editions of Bactrian documents as well as his edition of Bactrian Legal and Economical Documents. The result of studying Rabatak inscription indicates that Kanishka thegreat, who was the ruler of Kushan Empire, obtained his kingship from Nana and from all the gods. He discontinued the use of Greek language to be replaced by the Aryan language. In fact, any of the Indo-European languages of Iran or India could be called “Aryan”; but we are now sure that when he mentions the Aryan language, he means Bactrian, the language of his inscription, just as Darius meant Old Persian, the language of his inscription, when he wrote: “By the favor of Ahuramazda, I made anothertext in Aryan”.He also announced the beginning of a new era starting with the year 1 of his reign. Kanishka’s era was used as a calendar reference by the Kushans for about a century, until the decline of the Kushan dynasty. The inscription mentions the chief cities of north India which were controled by Kanishka. The Rabatak inscription is written on a rock in the Bactrian languageand the Greek script. It was found in 1993 at the site of Rabatak, in Afghanistan. According to this inscription Kanishka the great was a righteous and just king who was worthy of divine worship. It seems that the Aryan was a language used by the most Iranian people as a formal language of communication. The Rabatak inscription describes events of the first year of Kanishka in words strikingly similar to those used by Dariuš the Great in the inscription of Bisotun.The inscription also names the cities which were under the rule of Kanishka (lines 4-7). It is significant in implying the actual extent of Kushan rule under Kanishka. The inscription will therefore lead to a fundamental reassessment of our understanding of the Kushan kings who ruled an ancient empire centered on the territory now known as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Finally, it is very informative and important that Kanishka mentions the name of the kings who ruled up to his time. They were Kujula Kadphises as his great randfather, Vima Taktu as his grandfather, Vima Kadphises as his father.

IntroductionA dialect is a variety of a language used by group of people whoselexicon, syntax, phonetics and phonology are different from those of other people. The existence of many geographical, economic and social barriers among the speakers of a language cause the emergence of many dialects. As such, each language has many dialects and accents and each dialect has many different accents.(Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol, 2: P.1237)Many of the dialects in the Fars and Bushehr provinces belong to the languages on the south western part of Iran. In some of these dialects, a distinctive and important feature such as ergative structure in the transitive verbs still exists which contrasts with the intransitive verbs which remained in the modern Persian from the middle era. Method In this study, five dialects of the regions of fars, Bushehr and Yazd provinces including “Ardakani”, Dashtaki” and “Lari” belonging to Fars, “Dashti” and “Yazdi Jewish” belonging to Bushehr and Yazd provinces, respectively, have been investigated and analyzed extensively from the ergative structure point of view. As such, regarding the investigation of these five dialects of the three provinces, two research methods have been utilized. The first one concerns the empirical research based on which thedata heve been collected from interviews done with the speakers of the mentioned dialects ranging in age from 50 to 70, both illiterate and literate benefiting from the tape-recorders. Accordingly, the data were recorded on some tapes. The second research method relates to library research based on which the researcher took notes through referring to the sources including Extended Abstracts of the Persian 105 Articles in Englishbooks, article, theses and dissertations. As such the comparative and historical investigation of the ergative verbs had been done in the Iranian languages and dialects of different regions of the three mentioned provinces; namely, Fars, Bushehr and Yazd.Discussion and Conclusion Ergative as a technical expression has been used in the modernlinguistics especially the typology of languages. The etymology of it goes back to Greeke which means “to cause, to make something happen, to create”. This feature is a grammatical marker which is related to the subject of transitive verbs. Moreover, it is one the features of ancient languages which have not been changed greatly; that is, those languages which are conservative and tend to maintain its ancient origins. Many samples ofergative structure can be found in languages such as ancient Sumerian, Tabati, Barmei, Borouvshaski, Eskimo, Bask and other languages such as Australian, Ghafghazian and Indian. (Kalbasi, Iran: P.70-87). The results of the study showed that ergative in Ancient Persian which is a totally inflectionl language has a dark manfestaion and is used only in apassive voice.Ergative in m iddle Persian which is a continuation of ancient Persian and where the eight inflectional cases have been disappeared has a dominat manifestation.In the development of the Iranian languages from midd le Persian to the modern one, the ergative structure has not been applied in modern Persian due to the fact that the modern Persian has been modified and developed in the east of Iran and the feature of ergative structure has a very dark manifestation in the eastern Iranian languages.The ergative structure in the dialects such as Ardakani, Dashti, Dashtaki, Yazdi Jewish and Lari which belong to the dialects in the south western part of Iran has a wide and extensive application. Moreover, due to the existence of ergative structure in these dialects, they belong to the absolute and complete ergative.

IntroductionOne very important aspect of any textbook is its content in terms of the motivation it creates in the readers. This is specifically true in EFL textbooks where the learners need more than just content since content-wise, such books are not very much different from the learners’ world knowledge level. That is why material developers working in this area are usually consciously choosing content which interests the users of the texts morethan just the ordinary content they design for the level of proficiency they presuppose in developing the texts. High school texts developed in Iran seem to fail to meet the standards normally used in the preparation of materials of this type. The reason forthis drawback might be cultural in that the socio-cultural patterns observed tend to be those dictated by the authorities not very much aware of standards universally observed in the development of ELT materials. Incorporating the cultural and social aspects of language based on a sound basis in such texts is an important issue which seems to have been neglected. The present paper, therefore, investigates some cultural and socialpatterns in Iranian high school textbooks from the view point of motivation for research.The major question in this study is the following: Do socio-cultural patterns incorporated in ELT books used in high schools in Iran motivate the learners for research on their own in their area of study?Method This study is post-facto in nature since we compare two types of textsprepared diachronically, i.e. texts prepared before the Islamic Revolution Extended Abstracts of the Persian 107 Articles in English and those prepared in the past 30 years. The rationale for the selection of these two groups of texts is that the authors had a hunch and the situation was not very much different in the two periods of time in question, i.e. in terms of the type of materials prepared, despite the significant changes both in the academic study of English as a foreign or second language and also interms of the objectives of ELT in Iran. The model for analysis was that proposed by Talebinezhad & Aliakbari (2001). In their model, they take EIL in the sense Crystal (1997) suggests to be the paradigm we need to shift to. As Mackay (2002:1) says: “the teachingand learning of an international language must be based on an entirely different set of assumptions than the teaching and learning of any other second or foreign language.” The purpose of any material developed to teach English should therefore be to clarify these assumptions and advocate that they be considered in the design of English as an international language (EIL) teaching methods and materials.After reviewing some methods of teaching cultural and social aspects of language, three high school English textbooks in the two different periods mentioned are surveyed. The following three books were selected from the period before the Islamic Revolution for investigation: Manoochehri, P., Pazargadi, A., and Strin, J.(1354/1973). GradedEnglish Book (1). Tehran: Iranian Educational Textbooks Organization. Manoochehri, P., Pazargadi, A., and Strin, J.(1354/1973). Graded English Book (2). Tehran: Iranian Educational Textbooks Organization. Manoochehri, P., Pazargadi, A., and Strin, J.(1355/1974). Graded English Book (3). Tehran: Iranian Educational Textbooks Organization. As from the time after the Islamic Revolution, the following threebooks were selected for analysis: Birjandi, P., Norouzi, M. and Mahmoodi, G. (1376/1997). English Book (1). Tehran: Iranian Educational Textbooks Printing and PublishingCompany. Birjandi, P., Norouzi, M. and Mahmoodi, G. (1373/1994). English Book(2). Tehran: Iranian Educational Textbooks Printing and Publishing Company.Birjandi, P., Norouzi, M. and Mahmoodi, G. (1376/1997). English Book (3). Tehran: Iranian Educational Textbooks Printing and Publishing Company.Discussion and conclusion The findings show that the texts create very little motivation in the learners for research in general. One obvious reason statistically shown isThe Journal of Teaching Language Skills (JTLS) 108 the low number of passages on scientific issues as compared with ideological issues. Descriptive statistics are also presented to show how each text analyzed treats the issue of motivating the young learners who are in need of models for their education.Based on the analysis of the data and the findings, some suggestions are made as how to tackle the problem, among which the most important are the following: the necessity of paying special attention to the required framework for the present day Iranian society; incorporating cultural differences and an awareness of these differences for motivating learners to do research on their own; giving the learners models for their futureresearch careers; and above all, providing a more constructive environment for ELT by increasing the number of hours students are exposed to English, either in the classroom or outside. This, however, does not seem to be possible without the help of the authorities interested in the development of educational interest in the pupils.

IntroductionGathic texts are a collection of religious songs of Zarothustra who lived about 1200 BC. Of the seventy two hats (stanzas) of Yasna (one of the five chapters of Avesta), seventeen hats belong to five Gathas. These seventeen hats have been classified into five categories based on their syllabic meter and the number of the song: 1) ahunavaiti, 2) ushtavaiti, 3)spanta.mainyu, 4) vohu.xsheara, and 5) vahishtoishti.Method This study is a text analysis based on modern definitions of figures ofspeech, so explication de text is used to analyze the translation of Gathas. DiscussionFourteen different figures of speech were analyzed in this paper such as: congeries, oxymorons, rhetorical questions, conglobation, apostrophe, allegory, debate, invention, allusion, decorum, and conceit. Most of the stanzas of the first four Gathas are addressed to Ahura Mazda invoking and glorifying him, and communicating with him about both spiritual and worldly subjects, such as the elimination of evil in the world and thefreedom from evil in the after-world. The nature of the Gathas is mystical but formal poetry plays an essential part in them. The fifth Gatha shows the nature of Gathas as didactical poetry.

The purpose of this study was to expose a group of Iranian students to an e-Learning program and find out the effects of this exposure on their learning and motivation strategies. This study made an attempt to evaluate the degree of strategy use in both traditional and e-Learning modes of learning. Moreover, the effects of the e-Learning program of the participants of the study on learning strategies, motivation and volition regarding sex, age, educational degree and internet literacy were sought. The data for this study were collected from 100 Iranian EFL students (62 females and 38 males) who were exposed to an e-Learning class for a period of two months. The students were mostly mature and educated studying at university or holding a degree. This study used a translated and modified version of the MSLQ (Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire), a volitional questionnaire, a demography questionnaire and a series of interviews with the students and teachers involved in this research. Regarding the theoretical framework of the study, self-regulation was adopted. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively to find out the changes the students might undergo moving from conventional mode of learning to e-Learning and get some insights for prospective e-Learning programs in Iran.

Literary criticism is one of the most challenging courses, if not the most problematic course, to teach on the curriculum of Literature in Iranian universities. This course has in fact been designed to familiarise students with a variety of critical approaches to literature. As such, faculty members who teach this course are required to cover a range of theories that often negate or dialectically complete each other. Each of these theories offers certain possibilities but also has some limitations in the critical reading of literary texts. In this paper I argue that teaching literary theory and criticism to Iranian students is often a disappointing and unsuccessful undertaking mainly because they cannot think of the critical reading of texts as an act that can be performed through various conflicting discourses. What our audience at Iranian universities seeks is the assurance of an “ultimate word” in literary theory and criticism, an approach which offers them a “complete” strategy for decoding every aspect of texts. Even when introduced to an easily applicable approach, students typically do not show much enthusiasm for engaging in a critical reading of texts but prefer their teachers to “reveal” to them the “secrets” of a text or its supposed “message”. It is argued in this paper that the difficulty of teaching literary criticism at Iranian universities stems from an undemocratic mentality which believes in the authority of a single voice and, therefore, is unable to grasp the pluralism of critical approaches. I conclude that no significant improvement can be envisaged in the current condition of teaching literary criticism in Iranian universities unless there is a change of attitude towards criticism and cultural plurality, both on the part of students and faculty members.

Gravity''s Rainbow is among the “most widely celebrated, unread novels” of American literature and already “a piece of minor folklore.” Pynchon''s genius manifests itself in his uniquely wide range of subject matter and literary techniques of presentation, narration, and interpretation. Gravity''s Rainbow is a novel based on various sets of parallels, oppositions and double structures. These parallel patterns are abundant both in the structure of the novel, and in the content, characterization, and themes. In this paper two of these binaries, paranoia and anti-paranoia, are discussed to show how Pynchon enjoys involving his characters and his readers in a cosmos in which no absolute truth and no singular concept can survive on its own; a universe in which certainty is a luxury that no one can reach.

This article examines Lord Byron’s allusions to Persian literature, history, culture and its ancient religion. The influence of Persia on Byron is considerable. Byron was greatly influenced by orientalists such as Sir William Jones and their translations of Eastern literatures. After examining Byron’s allusions to Persia, one realizes that Byron’s attitude with regard to Persia appears to be ambivalent. Byron dismisses the Persian king, Nader, as the “costive sophy”, but reveres the Persian poet, Hafiz and mentions other Persian poets such as Ferdowsi with great respect. Sometimes he refers to Zoroaster’s religion as “devilish” and sometimes Zoroaster figures as a good person in his work. Byron makes use of the Zoroastrian Janus-like philosophy in explaining some of the predicaments that his characters face in life. Zoroastrianism provides Byron with a metaphor for the two confused sides of his characters’ nature, the one which struggles towards the light, and the one which, at the same time, involves characters in darkness and destroys them.