This study intended to explore the linguistic and rhetorical features of written narratives produced by language learners of different levels of proficiency. A large and comprehensive number of linguistic and rhetorical features were analyzed adopted from Hinkel (2002). Learners from a mixed-age group in a private language institute in Iran took part in this study. Three levels of B1, B2, and C1 learners were assigned into two conditions: Differentiated Instruction (DI, N = 84) that received individualized writing instruction according to each writer’s needs and skills and Traditional Instruction (TI, N = 76) that presented the features followed by some exercises. Results revealed that both C1 and B2 learners used more accurate linguistic features, while only C1 learners were successful in employing rhetorical features. In TI, however, C2 learners implemented a restricted number of linguistic and rhetorical features. Significant differences were found between DI and TI groups in each proficiency level. A comparison of the effect sizes, however, indicated that DI was less effective in the case of rhetorical features. پرونده مقاله

The present study intended to compare the complaint responses used by President Rouhani and President Obama in the Iranian and US news interview contexts. For this purpose, Boxer’s (1993) six types of indirect complaint responses were adopted: ‘ignorance’, ‘questions’, ‘topic switch’, ‘contradiction’, ‘joke/teasing’, ‘advice/lecture’ and ‘agreement/commiseration’. The transcripts of the live news interviews were selected from Tehran Times in Iran and ‘The New York Times’, ‘The Atlantic Daily’, and ‘National Public Radio’ all carried out in 2015. The results of quantitative and qualitative data analyses revealed both universal and culture-specific responses. Whereas both nations made nearly equal use of ‘question’ response in order to make solidarity, ‘contradiction’ was used most frequently in the US interviews and ‘topic-switch’ and ‘commiseration’ were more frequent in Iranian transcripts. The findings are discussed with respect to the culture-specificity and universality and the way that news interviews deal with the political information including Iran’s nuclear negotiations. پرونده مقاله