This study set out to evaluate a rather newly developed textbook entitled "Prospect I". The textbook is developed as the main text for the nationwide application at the first grade of high school English courses by the Iranian ministry of education. To this end, a researcher-made questionnaire was developed and pilot tested.  Bartlett's test of Sphericity, Keiser-Meyer-Olkin sampling adequacy measure, exploratory factor analysis and factor loadings, and Cronbach's Alpha measure of internal consistency were all run on the pilot study data, and the results verified acceptable levels of validity and reliability for the questionnaire. The validated questionnaire was given to 188 high school English teachers chosen based on convenience sampling procedure from seven provinces of the country. Moreover, 146 teachers sat for a semi-structured interview. The questionnaire and interview  data analyses results revealed that the participating teachers were not satisfied with several aspects of the text including layout and design, the exercises and activities, the integration of the four skills, teachers  book, grammar, vocabulary, language functions, and the proposed teaching methodology of the text.

The present article introduces and evaluates the textbook “Japanese through Newspaper Articles” written by Osamu and Nobuko Mizutani which is commonly taught in “Journalistic Japanese” classes both in and outside Japan. This article reviews the book from two different points of view: first, the linguistic and pedagogical functions of the book are evaluated, and its achievements as a language textbook are criticized. Second, the cultural aspects of the book are evaluated and the image it tries to portray from Japanese society is analyzed. In order to achieve these goals, 60 real journal articles are randomly selected from Japanese press and their content is compared to that of the news articles in the book by using polarity tags.

In spite of the quintessential significance to integrate language and culture, there have been few attempts to investigate the cultural elements of English teaching textbooks based on a valid framework. Consequently, the purpose of this exploratory study was to describe how culture has been addressed in the second edition of six textbooks of American English File Series (Latham-Koenig, Oxenden, & Boyle, 2013), taught in the private institutes in Iran. To this end, a model of cultural patterns, developed by Zarei and Khalessi (2011), was utilized to analyze the content of the series. The model has four constituents of value, norm, institution, and artifact. Overall, the results indicated that textbooks are artifacts which are strongly grounded in cultural assumptions and biases. Moreover, results revealed that these instructional materials are filled with cultural values unique to the Western world, the most prevalent of which include girlfriend-boyfriend relationship, consumerism, lack of studying, Western music, artifacts, lack of trust between the couples, rate of divorce and break-up, and inculcation of Western culture. It is concluded that textbooks are carriers of cultural values that not only transfer knowledge but also inculcate the cultural values of the native speakers of that language. Therefore, the role of the English teachers in prompting intercultural competence is to preserve the Iranian cultural heritage and values and make a balance between the integration of culture and language.

In the present article, Teaching Phonetic Topic in Russian Language at a bachelor degree was examined. The purpose of this study was to investigate the necessities, identify problems and provide solutions for them. The main questions are to find out the educational requirements and necessities in the field of Russian phonetic, whether these needs have been addressed in the undergraduate curriculum, and what challenges students face. In this paper, a library-based research, the nature of phonetics topics and the necessities that should be taught in this category are considered. Then field research was conducted among 140 undergraduate Russian language students. The results showed that students are weak in many phonological categories that have a direct impact on their speech. Proposals for optimizing the curriculum for phonology have been proposed to empower students.

  It has been long believed that the Japanese are typical collectivists whereas Americans are typical individualists. To examine the validity of this common view, Takano reviewed empirical studies that compared Japanese and Americans and found that the overwhelming majority of those studies had not supported the common view. Takano examined whether the common view that Japanese are more collectivistic than Americans is valid or not in line with such these respects. He pointed out that those empirical studies that were directly related to the commonly accepted definition of individualism and collectivism did not support the common view and that those studies whose relations to individualism and collectivism were merely inferred were inappropriate in judging its validity. Also, he showed that the reference-group effect cannot entirely explain the past questionnaire studies failure to support the common view. In the current paper, the focus is on the meaning of “collectivism“, and it discusses the additional aspects of individualism/collectivism. This paper also focuses on the collectivism in Japanese business culture. The business culture in Japan stresses teamwork or collectivism, which ranks in stark contrast to the sense of individualism that stems from individual liberty and freedom espoused by western culture. Japanese culture places high importance on teamwork based on their philosophy of “wa”, or group harmony that holds the value of the greater good, as more important than valuing individual needs.

Aldo Palazzeschi, with the pen name of Aldo Giurlani, is a celebrated 20th-century Italian poet and novelist. In the early years of the twentieth century, Palazzeschi, following some of the Western theories of thought such as that of Nietzsche's, has created unique works in modern Italian literature, and that is why his poems and novels have significant innovations. Undoubtedly, the author's early literary activities were influenced by his close relationships with artists, especially painters of his time. The traces of theater art can also be clearly seen in the works of the author's youth years. The present study attempts to study the literary works of Aldo Palazzeschi from the viewpoint of contemporary Italian literary critics such as Sanguinetti, Ungaretti, etc., and also attempts to examine the influence of Crepuscolarismo principles on Palazzeschi's attitudes and works of his youth years on the one hand, as well as, to study the influence of Futurism's theories on his other works, on the other hand.

The purpose of this article was to analyze English language teaching program for students with intellectual disabilities, and review the English course book (student book and workbook developed for 7th graders with intellectual disabilities) as well as the teachers’ guide. The method applied was descriptive–analytic. Regarding the proposed criteria by the Council for Reviewing Books and Texts on Humanities, strengths and weaknesses in terms of form and content were presented. The vital strong points were presenting frequent language functions and social routines, and color printing of the student book. The crucial weaknesses included the old-fashioned way of teaching English alphabets, the inappropriate method of introducing numbers, designing improper activities regarding the students’ capabilities, and the low quality of the pictures both in student book and workbook. For reviewing the teacher’s guide, the evaluation criteria proposed by Hemsley (1997) known as global evaluation and detailed evaluation, has been applied. The strong points of the teachers’ guide were providing clear teaching guidelines, considering learning procedures based on recent researches and modern theories, presenting the objective of the course, and providing appropriate guidelines for evaluation. Some of the weaknesses were ignoring students’ different learning styles, not introducing appropriate way of error correction, and inappropriate bookbinding. At last, some suggestions were proposed to ameliorate both the quality and the content of the course book and work book considering the students’ capabilities.

Historical Criticism looked for the reality of the literary work at the extra-textual element that is the author. This approach considered to emphasis on the creation step and regarded the author’s intention as an only definite meaning and mere reality of the work. Lack of usefulness in analyzing some of literary works and also lack of suffice consideration on it and applying the human science’s different majors’ results in literal studying paved the way for the revelation of the set of new approaches each of which had ended to the meaning different from the work, unconscious meaning hidden from the author. The New Criticism phenomenon should defend itself against reprimands and complaints of traditional and academic Criticism, and prove its existence. Passing from philology to hermeneutic and to interpretation or somehow from absolutism to relativism, Barthes had a significant role. After New Criticism triumph against the literary history, he took a long step toward perfect erasing of the author from the entire field of the literary studies and consequently made it possible to pass from structuralism to post-structuralism. The result of the death of the author was the destruction of Criticism. After them, new notions such as text, writing, plurality of meaning, reader, reading, reception, and literary theory were taken into the core of considerations. The following article tries to analyze above subjects overtly, points out the case that has been neglected: The influence of Benveniste and Febvre on Barthes, Picard’s complaints on New Criticism, Doubrovsky’s existential psychology approach and opposition place between meaning and signification.

In this article we try to have a contextual and structural review about the first part of Nuova Grammatica Pratica Della Lingua Italiana written by Susanna Nocchi. This book was published in 2002 for the first time by Alma publications; and in 2011 was republished in a new and modified version. In current academic year (2017-2018), the first part of this book has been used for teaching Italian grammar to pre-university students of Italian literature in Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures of University of Tehran. The current article not only tries to express weaknesses and strengths of this grammar book but also attempts to highlight its cultural orientation.

This article aims to examine the process of text reading and understanding, based on the concept of implied reader, for the definition of which, we have synthesized herein the seemingly antithetical methods of ‘authorial’ and ‘reader-oriented’ criticism. Of this definition, we have taken benefit against rhetorical hermeneutics. Adopting such an anti-objectivist approach, we have taken the text as nothing but a ground for the fusion of authorial horizon with that of the readership, and the implied reader, as a theoretical construct drawn out of rules and regulations most prevalent in story-telling and reading. The ideal reader as such does not denote any specific referent, though may duly bind different kinds of over-reading. In the end, it is concluded that by pulling together the rubrics of story reading under the cover term ‘implied reader’, the exaggerated discordance usually held between intentionalist and reader-response critics would be resolved in favor of an explication more attentive to the synergistic nature of meaning assignment to a text.

Critical evaluation of language learning books is a vital step in a successful curriculum. The need is especially conspicuous for newly-published materials. Consequently, the present paper tried to explore and evaluate the ESP book entitled English for the Students of Sociology recently written by Mohammad Hossein Kesharvarz and Musa Nushi Kochaksaraie and published by SAMT in 2016. The paper critically examined the overall pedagogical value and suitability of the book. To achieve this goal, the book was evaluated based on Mahmoodi and Ahmadi Safa’s (2015) model. Semi-structured interviews based on the model were also conducted to delve into content teachers’ perspectives who were specialists in sociology. Seven experts in the field of sociology from Bu-Ali Sina, Ilam and Guilan universities were interviewed by the researchers. The results showed that the new book has improved quite dramatically compared to the previous book published by SAMT. Moreover, the findings revealed that in spite of some deficiencies in the selection of the activities, exercises, and texts, the book is suitable and can be used as an ESP source. The researchers provide some useful suggestions for improving the shortcomings of the book.

Literary criticism, as a special branch of humanities and social sciences, is one of the most important topics in foreign literary studies and therefore mostly focused at the universities all around the world. Although the comprehension of literary and intellectual theories in its own historical contexts does not seem always simple. In Iranian universities the history of criticism is abundantly studied too, and so many useful works in this case have been translated into Persian and are used by academic staffs and students today. The book presented here is recommended for the literary criticism in Italian language and literature course. However, the main flaw of this book, according to this paper, might be the lack of a detailed historical and methodical introduction about theories of literary criticism. Then some suggestions are given to improve these aspects.

The subject of this article is about introduction and review of the book «Comprehensive Study of Russian Texts» which is compiled by Dr. Hossein Gholami and Azadeh Mozayeni from the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies Publication (IHCS). This book is for teaching of «Reading comprehension» and «Verbalization» for master’s students in Russian language. The passages of this book are short stories from the book «Книга для чтения». In addition to the above, in order to better understand the texts, the authors have added parts to it. There are drawbacks in terms of form, content and writing principles which cause students to have trouble reading it. So, in order to achieve pleasant results and choosing the book as a source of teaching by professors and Russian language teachers, editions and necessary information should be applied in the book in order to be used as specified targets of the authors. The book has been evaluated from the content and simulate criticism.

Textbook evaluation is one of the important steps in developing instructional materials process. The present article evaluates and criticizes the book English for the Students of Engineering (Atai, Zare Alanagh, Nasiri, Taherkhani & Iranmehr, 2016), which belongs to the new generation of English for specific purposes (ESP) textbooks. To this end, the textbook evaluation model proposed by Mahmoodi and Ahmadisafa (2014) was used. This model is specifically designed for evaluating ESP books. This study showed that this book, in contrast to previous ESP books developed by SAMT, has higher technical qualities and conforms to scientific theories and experimental findings in the field of TEFL. However, besides its advantages, this book suffers from some weak points which are discussed below.

In the Philippe Daros’s narration of the history of European literary criticism after the Second World War, three main periods are distinguished. First, a formalist/structuralist period, centered by language and linguistic approaches, which is a negative reaction to the horrors of War and a symbol of desire to forget the History. In the second period, the revival of historical approaches makes that the Time is situated at the center of criticism, more or less simultaneously to the emergence of a “littérature de témoignage”, which is a direct or indirect witness of the "Catastrophe". The third period – ours – begins when the literary representation of the most routine dimensions of “little lives”, here and now, pushes the criticism towards a “humanistic” reading of this kind of “crisis of historical consciousness” which characterizes the contemporary humanity.  When it seems that each of these periods in Europe has followed a lawful evolution, while European contemporary criticism tries to explain the laws of this evolution and uncover mankind's crises at various times, nowadays Iranian critique still has its own ease in linguistic and textual studies. Beyond discussions about convergence, divergence, updating, or timing of humanistic and linguistic approaches, this paper speaks of a process in which each of these approaches becomes a “safe” environment for deterrence and prevents the immediate confrontation with Human and Language. This security threatens, not only the authenticity of the criticism, but also its existence, which depends on its “critical” conditions.

In this article, while introducing Konstantin Balmont, the symbolist poet of the twentieth century of Russia, known as Poet Laureate in Russian literature, attention has been paid to his oriental themes in the context of the Russian Symbolist School. Balmont is one of the founders of the Russian Symbolist School. The idea of divine religions, which means that only body of man is destroyed by the death and the man returns to God, is also the basis of Russian symbolism, which is frequently seen in Balmont's poetry. Then, the article deals with  the origin and form of some of the eastern themes. The four elements (fire, water, earth, and air) are the main themes of Balmont's poems. Balmont was familiar with Iranian poets such as Mawlānā, Khaghani, and Hafez, and it seems that his poems have been composed of the elements by Persian poets. He tries to find "Shams" in this world under the influence of the Holy Quran, the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and the mystical Iranian-Oriental works, the Sufism of Hafez and Mawlānā, and the poems "Do not Forget: The Quran is the Book of Avoidance", "From there", "Star of the Desert", "Silence", "Jalal Al-Din Rumi", "advice", "Andalib", etc. based on the oriental themes and poems of Iranian poets. The themes that influenced the formation of the mystical and Sufi thoughts of the Russian poet and the poet's main attention are in the "world of existence" and the concept of "pre-existence and eternity".