With the development of educational technology, the concept of technology-enhanced multimedia instructions is using widely in the educational settings. Technology can be employed in teaching different skills such as listening, reading, speaking and writing. Among these skills, reading comprehension is the skill in which EFL learners have some problems to master. Regarding this issue, the present study aimed at investigating the effect of video materials on improving reading comprehension of Iranian intermediate EFL learners. A Longman Placement Test was administered to 30 EFL learners to ensure that learners are at the same level of proficiency. The students were chosen from the state high schools in Chabahar.  The participants were regarded as intermediate learners and were divided into two groups (one experimental group and one control group). Then, a pre-test of reading comprehension was administered to assess the participants’ reading comprehension. The participants of experimental group used video files to improve their reading comprehension while the control group received conventional approaches of teaching reading comprehension. Finally, all the participants were assigned a 40-item multiple-choice reading comprehension post-test. The results of the study indicated that video materials had a significant effect on promoting reading comprehension of Iranian intermediate EFL learners (p = .000, <.05).

Teaching English as a foreign language to mentally retarded persons is much more complicated than normal EFL Contribution/ OriginalityThis study is one of very few studies that investigate an effective way for teaching a foreign language to children with intellectual disability. It uses new estimation methodology that giving extra affection to children with intellectual disability can be used to facilitate learning a foreign language.

Thirteen novel isatin-ampyrone Schiff bases derivatives were synthesized in only two steps of 70%-90% overall yields. In vitro cytotoxic activity of these new Schiff bases against three human tumor cell lines (MCF-7, A549, and SCOV3) as well as normal breast cell line (MCF-10A) were evaluated by MTT assay. Structure-activity relationship of the tested compounds revealed that chlorine group at C-5 position of the isatin ring significantly increased the cytotoxic activity. This study generally led to introduce a highly active molecule (M 12 ) with IC 50 values of 5.12, 25.5, and 12.9 μΜ, on MCF-7, A549, and SCOV3, respectively. Furthermore, molecular docking studies of the synthesized compounds were also done to investigate their binding modes towards VEGFR-2 and JNK3-MAP kinase as the main targets for isatin-containing anticancer agents. Binding free energy values of the compounds showed positive correlation with their cytotoxic activities. To confirm the docking results, molecular docking simulations of potent compound (M 12 ) against VEGFR-2 and JNK3 MAP kinase were also performed. According to the cytotoxic results and in silico ADMET predictions together, M 12 can be considered as a potent candidate for the future anticancer studies.

The aim of this study was to investigate the use of metadiscourse markers in Mathematics textbooks. To achieve this objective, four chapters of A First Course in Abstract Algebra were selected for data collection. The results showed that interactive markers were more frequent than interactional markers. Among interactive markers, transitions were the most frequent. Logical, proof-based relationship among sentences in Mathematics textbooks is suggested to be the main reason behind the high frequency of transition markers. Endophorics and engagement markers existed in high frequency. Wide use of graphs, figures, charts, and tables are one of the main reasons for the presence of endophorics in Mathematics textbooks. Finally, low frequency of self-mentions and evidentials is another characteristic of Mathematics textbooks that distinguishes them from research articles. The study provides material developers effective implications to apply the metadiscoursal aspects of English in textbooks.

The interrelation of culture and language is to the extent that many classifications of culture are based on linguistic factors. In this article, high and low context cultures division is assessed on English and Persian as they belong to different cultural types. Forty Persian proverbs are contrasted with their equivalents in English to investigate whether there is a difference in the number of word forms used in each. In order to avoid linguistic differences which are effective in enumerating word forms, the second lines in linguistic glosses provided for Persian proverbs including a one to one correspondence of each word in English are used to count word forms. Results show that 70 percent of the Persian proverbs in the data are longer than their English counterparts. This shows that relative length of proverbs can be a distinguishing factor reflecting cultural types. The results not only confirm the applicability of this cultural division in the field of proverbs, but also a matter of tendency rather than a dichotomy in belonging to a high or low context culture is proposed. At the end, there are suggestions for further relevant investigations.