The polite listener In England stares at the speaker attentively and blinks his eyes occasionally as a sign of interest. That eye-blink says nothing to Americans, who expect the listener to nod or to murmur something such as "mm - hmm”. And in some parts of  Far East, it is impolite to look at the other person at all during conversation.It is often argued that, in teaching foreign languages, culture and language are interwoven in a way that it is not possible to present language without its culture. However, until a new method of teaching language, called communicative approach, which is sociolinguistically oriented, had not come into existence, this belief was not used to be observed in textbooks and language classes. This method intends to create situations in the classroom in which foreign language can be used as naturally and authentically as the native speakers of target language use it for communicative purposes.The problem of teaching culture, nevertheless, does not end here. Nowadays, foreign languages are taught with different and varied objectives. Is it necessary for all foreign language learners to get familiar with the culture of foreign language they are supposed to learn? As Schumann (1984) claims, is it true that second language learning is impossible, unless one gives up his/her own native culture and adopts the culture of foreign language community? What are some relevant issues regarding teaching English in Iran? These are actually some basic questions raised in this article. Whereas definite answers are not necessarily provided in this paper, some areas of research related to culture, and teaching foreign language are put forward.

Proverbs is among the terms that researchers disagree on both defining and determining its examples, to the extent that some believe that it can never be defined. Due to these ambiguities, some have mixed it with other realms such as irony and allegorical metaphor. It seems that the researches in this field have not sought a systematic and well-founded framework for all kinds of parables. Researchers in linguistics and literature in the 20th century tried to extract general rules for both and present them under the title of "Grammar" considering the similarities of types and literary works, analyzing their structure, and defining different types in the form of a few simple forms. One of these forms is proverb the “grammar” of which can be obtained by analyzing its structure and extracting its components, and by putting them together. It seems that one of these basic components, which can be seen in different forms in proverbs, is opposition. In this research, while categorizing and criticizing the definitions of proverb, examining the types of oppositions in philosophy and semantics, about a thousand Persian and Chinese proverbs have been classified with a descriptive-analytical method. The result of the research shows that in every proverb we are dealing with some kind of opposition, but the frequency of opposition is different, so that types of connotational opposition and complementary opposition are the most frequent, and lexical opposition is placed in the next category, although we have proverbs that have several types of opposites. Also, in the current research, there was no example of the symmetrical opposition or gradable opposition.

Statement of the Problem: The so called “ foreign accent” is one manifestation of phonological transfer. The problems investigated in the present study are: first, “ if a part of Chinese Persian as a Foreign language (PFL) learners’ foreign accent is caused by errors in pronouncing Persian vowels” , and second “ if Chinese PFL learners transfer the acoustic features of the vowels in their mother tongue to their Persian speech” . Theoretical Framework: Knight (2013, p. 16) classifies the status of the speech sounds of a foreign language compared with the corresponding speech sounds in the mother tongue in the three classes of “ new” (as completely different), “ identical” (as completely the same), and “ similar” (as similar sound with slight acoustic differences). The identical speech sounds in the foreign language are mastered with ease by being put in the same class as the phonemes in the mother tongue. The pronunciation of the new speech sounds improve as new phoneme categories are made in mind of the second language (L2) learners through sufficient practice (Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams, 2014, p. 432). Among these three classes, the similar speech sounds are the most difficult to master nativelikely by the L2 learners and the slight acoustic differences they have might be taken as a major source of foreign accent in the target language (Best & Strange, 1992, p. 105). Methodology: Through a process of convenience sampling, 42 Persian and Mandarin Chinese native speakers (11 female and 13 male native Persian speakers, and 8 female and 10 male native Mandarin Chinese PFL learners) were included in the present study. F1 and F2 of The Persian vowels, the Mandarin vowels, and the Persian vowels produced by the native Mandarin PFL speakers were extracted in a laboratory situation and the data was statistically compared. For calculating the mean F1 and F2, all the 24 native Persian speakers and 18 native Mandarin Chinese PFL learners were included; in the second phase 8 native Persian speakers and 2 native Mandarin Chinese PFL learners were randomly left out to conduct the statistical analyses (independent samples t-test for normally distributed data and Mann– Whitney for abnormally distributed data) on quantitatively similar data samples from both genders. Results and Discussion: in accord with what Knight (2013, p. 16) claims about the so called “ identical” speech sound, among the 5 articulatory similar vowels in Persian and Mandarin Chinese, 4 of them turned to be acoustically “ identical” without causing any meaningful pronunciation errors. Only the F2 of the Persian vowel /e/ was observed to be meaningfully different from the corresponding vowel in Mandarin Chinese. However, in contrast with the findings of Best & Strange (1992, p. 105), the native Mandarin Chinese PFL learners did not put this “ similar” speech sound in a corresponding category of a similar vowel from their mother tongue; instead of transferring the acoustic features of a similar vowel in their mother tongue to the pronunciation of the Persian /e/, the data revealed that the Mandarin Chinese PFL learners treated the Persian /e/ as a “ new” speech sound and pronounce it differently from all the similar corresponding vowels in their mother tongue. The vowel /e/ in the Persian speech of the Mandarin Chinese PFL learners, however, was also different from the native Persian /e/; a pronunciation error which might serve as a source of their foreign Persian accent. A comparison of the vocalic spaces of Persian and Mandarin Chinese shows that in the area where the Persian /e/ is expected to be located, Mandarin Chinese already has 4 closely similar front vowels (phonemes /e/, /y/, and /i/ and the allophone [ ]). It seems as if the Mandarin Chinese PFL learners recognize that the Persian /e/ is fronter than the three /e/-like vowels (namely /e/, /y/, and [ ]) and lower than the similar vowel /i/ in their mother tongue. However, it seems that in order to both compensate for this difference in frontness and make the new vowel also different from the corresponding similar vowels in their mother tongue, they exaggerate in the frontness of their Persian /e/ and that could be the reason behind this pronunciation error causing their foreign Persian accent. Conclusions: the findings of the current study show that the error in pronouncing the Persian /e/ in the speech of Mandarin Chinese PFL learners cannot be taken as a manifestation of direct negative language transfer; this is in contrast with the suggestions of the strong version of language transfer in general and Chen & Wang (2011), Wang & Heuven (2006), and Knight (2013) in particular. The Mandarin Chinese PFL learners have not activated the Persian /e/ as a part of the so called innate linguistic competence, but in their Persian speech, they pronounce an /e/ which is different from both native Persian and Mandarin Chinese corresponding vowels; then, these findings do not also confirm the weak version of language transfer. However, the results of the present study seem to corroborate the modified version of the language transfer, since the observed error in the pronunciation of /e/ in the Persian speech of these PFL learners could be taken as a kind of indirect negative interference of the similar linguistic patterns of the mother tongue in L2.

Easy access to social media enables users to express their opinions and ideology about various topics like news, videos, and personalities freely, without any fear, and often in an offensive manner. It is a vital task to detect comments with offensive language on social media platforms and relies on a complete and comprehensive tagged dataset. Therefore, in this paper, we introduce and make publicly available PerBOLD, a new Persian comment dataset collected from Instagram as a popular platform among Iranian. We follow a two-level manual annotation process in order to determine whether a comment has offensive language or not and fine-grained tags of different types of offensive language. Furthermore, we present some interesting aspects of data and analysis them.

In China, the prevalence of academic dishonesty relative to the United States has attracted considerable negative attention—one explanation for observed differences in cultural norms around the acceptability of individual unethical academic behaviors. The unique academic experience of bilingual Chinese students enrolled in Sino-American universities presents an opportunity to investigate whether academic experience in English influences attitudes and behaviors about academic integrity. Drawing from research on the Foreign language Effect, the present study tested the hypothesis that knowledge, and by extension behavior, associated with academic integrity is bound to the English language. Mandarin-English bilingual university students (n = 106) completed objective and self-reporting language experience assessments and responded to two dilemmas that mirror commonly experienced academic scenarios. All experimental stimuli were presented entirely in either Mandarin or English. We identified a modulatory role of English proficiency with higher levels associated with a lower likelihood of plagiarism when dilemmas were presented in English. Additional findings suggest that separable dimensions of the English experience interact to modulate responses to academic integrity dilemmas. This study reports evidence in support of a modulatory influence of English language experience on academic integrity attitudes and behaviors. Findings suggest that higher levels of English proficiency may reflect higher access to Western norms around academic integrity. The present study contributes to our growing understanding of how differences in language experience impact cognition in specific contexts.

Iran and China, as two ancient lands in ancient Asia, have always had extensive relations for a long time. In the present era, regarding the political and economic necessities and the important role of the two countries in region and world alternation, increasing the level of transactions and communication between these two former neighbors is considered essential. The "One Road-One Belt" project, which was proposed by Chinese government in 2013, clearly shows China's determination to expand its political, economic and cultural relations with the countries, locating on the path of this project. Meanwhile, the role of Iran as one of the important countries in the region of the Silk Road is undeniable. Therefore, in recent years, efforts to understand and recognize as much as possible the language and culture of the two nations have become more essential for governments. In this article, we aim to study the condition of Chinese language instruction in Iran and Persian language instruction in China by using existing documents. We provide recommendations and ideas to solve the existing problems and to improve the conditions.

Explaining the meaning of “Clear Arabic language” (Arabic: لسان عربیّ مبین) in the Holy Quran according to the opinions of the commentators (the scholars who interpret the Holy Book of Quran) and the semantic functions of the words is the main issue of this research. Differences of opinion of commentators (Arabic: مفسّر; plural: Arabic: مفسّرون, Romanized: mufassirūn) and citing their views for different reasons necessitated this research. The present article has been studied and evaluated the opinions of the commentators in interpreting the verse and considers their views about “Clear Arabic language” (Arabic: لسان عربیّ مبین) in four parts. These include: Taḥaddī (Arabic: تحدّی, The Quranic Challenge), the language of the audience and the place of revelation, the honor and capacities of the Arabic language, the eloquence and explicitness of the specific language of the Qur'an. The results of the research show that the “Clear Arabic language” beyond the opinions of the commentators is a common understanding that has revealed the superhuman language of revelation through human conversational style and considered the universal characteristics, transhumanism, transhistorical of the Holy Book of Quran while considering the conditions and understanding of the audience. Paying attention to the Quranic meaning of related words and narrations as well as Saussure’s linguistic point of view can confirm the recent meaning.

The comparative study of Chinese and Persian proverbs can, on the one hand, increase the understanding of mutual culture between the people of China and Iran, and on the other hand, it can be used in the teaching of Chinese and Persian languages so that language learners can better understand the language and culture of the two countries. Due to the lack of research for the educational classification of Chinese and Persian proverbs, in this research, Chinese and Persian proverbs have been classified and described in four groups using formal and semantic features: the first group includes proverbs with similar literal and figurative meanings, the second group includes proverbs with similar literal meanings but different figurative meanings, the third group includes proverbs with different literal meanings but similar figurative meanings, and the fourth group includes proverbs with different literal and figurative meanings. The four-fold classification of Chinese and Persian proverbs, along with examples extracted from the selected source, indicates that proverbs with different literal and different figurative meanings rank first in terms of the highest number of proverbs, those with similar literal and similar figurative meanings in second rank, those with different literal meanings but similar figurative meanings in third rank, and those with similar literal meanings but different figurative meanings in fourth rank. The pedagogical implication of this research seems to be as follow: Persian proverbs with similar literal and figurative meanings to their equivalent Chinese proverbs are more effective for teaching at a basic level,Persian proverbs with different literal but similar figurative meanings to their equivalent Chinese proverbs are more effective for teaching at an intermediate level,Persian proverbs with similar literal but different figurative meanings to their equivalent Chinese proverbs are more effective for teaching at an advanced level,while Persian proverbs with different literal and figurative meanings are effective for teaching at all levels.