Course Description In this course, we will explore the question of the actual and potential connections between democracy and education. Our focus of attention will be placed on a critical examination of democratic theory and its implications for the civic education roles and contributions of teachers, adult educators, community development practitioners, and community organizers. We will survey and deal critically with a range of competing conceptions of democracy, variously described as classical, republican, liberal, radical, marxist, neomarxist, pragmatist, feminist, populist, pluralist, postmodern, and/or participatory. Using narrative inquiry as a means for illuminating and interpreting contemporary practice, we will analyze the implications of different conceptions of democracy for the practical work of civic education.

Democracy and education.

Principles of Language Learning and Teaching

The culture of education

Keywords: a Vocabulary of Culture and Society

Learning strategies play an important role in Second Language Acquisition.Understanding definitions and classifications of learning strategies as well as trends in resent research has important significance to foreign language teaching.

Learning Strategies in Second Language Acquisition

Listening plays a significant role in daily communication and educational process. In spite of its importance, listening has long been the neglected skill in second language acquisition, research, teaching, and assessment. However, in recent years there has been an increased focus on L2 listening ability because of its perceived importance in language learning and teaching. The study tries to find the factors influencing English listening comprehension and the strategies to be taken that might improve students’ listening comprehension. The paper focuses on four main issues. First, it discusses the definition of listening, significance of listening. Second, it reviews the process of listening comprehension, strategies of listening comprehension. Third, analysis of listening comprehension problems is reviewed. Fourth, teaching methods for listening comprehension will be discussed. Fifth, researchers review teaching listening activities. Sixth, general principles in teaching listening comprehension are discussed. Findings based on the review of the literature along with analysis of the data are of great significance and can be advantageous to improve EFL learners' English listening comprehension skill.

A Study of Factors Affecting EFL Learners' English Listening Comprehension and the Strategies for Improvement

English Pronunciation instruction is difficult for some reasons. Teachers are left without clear guidelines and are faced with contradictory practices for pronunciation instruction. There is no well-established systematic method of deciding what to teach, when, and how to do it. As a result of these problems, pronunciation instruction is less important and teachers are not very comfortable in teaching pronunciation in their classes. This paper reviews some of the important issues of English pronunciation instruction. The aims of this paper are to define the term pronunciation, discuss the goal of pronunciation instruction, explain the importance of pronunciation instruction, elaborate the role of teachers in teaching pronunciation, and finally mention some suggestions in helping teachers to improve learners’ pronunciation. The review of literature shows that if teachers want to teach pronunciation accurately they should be trained in pronunciation instruction.

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English Pronunciation Instruction: A Literature Review

Whenever teachers are faced with the problem of students who do not have adequate comprehension skills, they need to be able to train those students to use metacognitive strategies; otherwise, these students will continue to read texts emphasizing only words and not meaning. One set of metacognitive strategies are the reciprocal teaching strategies used to improve students’ reading comprehension. Reciprocal teaching involves four main metacognitive reading strategies: predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing. The aims of this paper are to define the key terms, explain the models of reading process, review reading process and reading strategies, discuss cognitive and metacognitive strategies and reading comprehension, elaborate reciprocal teaching and its theoretical framework, mention the related research on reciprocal teaching, and state relationship between reciprocal teaching and reading comprehension. The findings indicated that reciprocal teaching had a significantly positive effect on the English reading comprehension and usage of the four main metacognitive reading strategies of EFL students.

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Reciprocal Teaching Strategies and Their Impacts on English Reading Comprehension

When we talk about multimedia learning, we can ask several questions to ourselves understand the effect of information and communication technologies (ICT's) on our lives. ICT's have introduced new instructions that we use to think; consequently, the ways in which we think would also change. New identities are born that are connected to communication tools. From the viewpoint of applied linguistics, we are specifically interested in the effects that these communicative skills can have on the processes of language production and interpretation. Our conceptions of language and communication have changed substantially with the arrival of computer and its digital capabilities. Communications have also changed considerably. These changes have affected the school communities and the relationships established between teachers and students now involve other modes of cognitive involvement and social interactions made possible by digital online communications. In this paper, the researchers discuss the issues of ICT, multimedia learning, its principles, CALL, its advantages and implications of multimedia learning. Then multimodal learning, multimodality and second language acquisition, and implications of multimodality in language learning and teaching will be discussed. A review of the literature will determine how multimodal models affect the teaching and learning processes.

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The Effect of Multimodal Learning Models on Language Teaching and Learning

No concept raises more hackles in second language acquisition circles than consciousness. The role of consciousness in second language acquisition is currently being heatedly debated and should be particularly considered if we are to make progress in understanding how this acquisition takes place. The researchers review the previous empirical studies on the important role of consciousness in second language acquisition (SLA) through stating the views of different authors, philosophers, scholars. Then, the role of consciousness in terms of concepts such as attention, awareness, intentionality, and control comes up for review. These concepts provide growing support for the view that the role of consciousness is vital for second language learning. Finally, it is concluded that conscious awareness of language is necessary if learner wants to use it appropriately. This notion has gained wide support from research findings which state that conscious learning seems to contribute to successful second language acquisition.

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Abbas Pourhossein Gilakjani

Papers

A Study of Factors Affecting EFL Learners' English Listening Comprehension and the Strategies for Improvement

English Pronunciation Instruction: A Literature Review

Reciprocal Teaching Strategies and Their Impacts on English Reading Comprehension

The Effect of Multimodal Learning Models on Language Teaching and Learning

Role of Consciousness in Second Language Acquisition