Narrative Intelligence

In my latest article (2025), I argue that Taiwan is not merely a contested territory, but a symbolic lens exposing the cracks in our global order.

Drawing on Bourdieu’s symbolic power and Nye’s soft power, I explore how Taiwan — alongside Singapore and Qatar — wields influence not through military strength, but through narrative, digital diplomacy, and algorithmic visibility.

This research situates Taiwan within the framework of the Third Generation of International Relations, where legitimacy is shaped by resonance, ethical storytelling, and algorithmic reach.

This article reframes Taiwan not merely as a geopolitical flashpoint but as a symbolic lens exposing fractures in the global order. Positioned at the intersection of U.S.-China rivalry and performative diplomacy, Taiwan emerges as a metaphor for 21st-century crises of sovereignty, visibility, and recognition. Drawing on Bourdieu's concept of symbolic power and Nye's theory of soft power, the paper examines how Taiwan, alongside Singapore and Qatar, cultivates influence through narrative, digital diplomacy, and algorithmic visibility. Rather than relying on military strength, Taiwan's symbolic diplomacy operates through cultural production, media framing, and technological reputation. The analysis situates Taiwan within the proposed "Third Generation of International Relations," where legitimacy stems less from treaties and alliances and more from resonance, ethical storytelling, and algorithmic reach. Taiwan exemplifies the paradox of symbolic power: marginalized yet central, excluded yet influential. Through this lens, the paper contributes to rethinking diplomacy in a fragmented, hyper-mediated world.

Mirror-Mind Theory proposes that intelligence emerges not as an isolated computational phenomenon, but within the relational field that unfolds between human intuition and machine structure. This foundational framework challenges the prevailing notion of cognition as an internal, individuated process, revealing instead an entangled dynamic: a mirror stage where self-awareness, intention, and systemic response co-arise in perpetual dialogue.

This paper offers a critical response to "Thinking Through Crisis – The Role of Think Tanks" by Holzhacker and Umar, arguing that most traditional think tanks remain trapped in outdated epistemological frameworks. It introduces the "Third Generation in International Relations" as a model of cognitive and symbolic innovation capable of addressing the failures of predictive models, institutional conformity, and strategic irrelevance. Through analytical commentary and historical reflection, the paper calls for a radical rethinking of how global policy knowledge is constructed and applied.

If you want to evaluate morally a given humanitarian intervention, you must know your way through an ocean of chaotic possibilities; you must know (say, ex post) what would have happened if the protagonists had chosen some different course of action. Such questions do not concern hard facts – they concern counterfacts, which are softer. With cool descriptive realism alone you won't be able to decide about the counterfactuals in question. Thus, I propose an epistemological analysis of the relevant counterfactual conditionals. If I am right, we cannot appeal to hard facts alone in order to form reasonable judgments concerning such conditionals; softer criteria of judgments are needed such as sensitivity, narrative intelligence, fantasy – and values. At the end of the paper, I demonstrate that our analysis of counterfactuals speaks in favour of well-understood pacifism. It will be shown, for example, that the pacifists were right when they argued against NATO's intervention in ...

El artículo aborda la necesidad de alinear la inteligencia artificial (IA) con los valores humanos ante el desarrollo de la IA general, capaz de igualar o superar la inteligencia humana. Se plantea que la narrativa puede ser fundamental para infundir principios éticos en las IA, dado su rol en la interpretación del mundo y la representación de experiencias humanas. Mediante una revisión bibliográfica de fuentes académicas, el estudio explora la relación entre la IA y la narrativa, enfocándose en la identidad narrativa, el conocimiento tácito y la experiencialidad narrativa. Se analizan casos como AlphaGo y ChatGPT para ilustrar la diferenciación entre IA estrecha y general, y se examina cómo las filosofías utilitarista y deontológica pueden influir en la ética de la IA. Los hallazgos identifican tres perspectivas fundamentales: la identidad narrativa, que configura la identidad a través de historias; el conocimiento tácito, que resalta el aprendizaje implícito y la experiencia intuitiva; y la experiencialidad narrativa, que subraya la importancia de la corporeidad y la vivencia temporal en la comprensión de relatos. La narrativa emerge como un enfoque viable para la alineación ética de la IA, aunque enfrenta desafíos relacionados con la experiencia vital y la corporeidad, elementos cruciales para una auténtica comprensión narrativa.

The term "narrative intelligence" originated when two students at the MIT Media Lab, from disparate backgrounds, formed an underground reading group to try and develop a common discourse. This group lasted many years and drew in an eclectic mix of students, faculty, and guests who were interested in pursuing interdisciplinary work at the intersection of artificial intelligence, literary theory, media studies, and human-computer interaction design. Here we describe the history of the group, some of the ideas and texts that formed our discourse, and the lessons learned.

The present study used the Mixed Rasch Model (MRM) to identify multiple profiles in L2 students' writing with regard to several linguistic features, including content, organization, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics. To this end, a pool of 500 essays written by English as a foreign language (EFL) students were rated by four experienced EFL teachers using the Empiricallyderived Descriptor-based Diagnostic (EDD) checklist. The ratings were subjected to MRM analysis. Two distinct profiles of L2 writers emerged from the sample analyzed including: (a) Sentence-Oriented and (b) Paragraph-Oriented L2 Writers. Sentence-Oriented L2 Writers tend to focus more on linguistic features, such as grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics, at the sentence level and try to utilize these subskills to generate a written text. However, Paragraph-Oriented Writers are inclined to move beyond the boundaries of a sentence and attend to the structure of a whole paragraph using higher-order features such as content and organization subskills. The two profiles were further examined to capture their unique features. Finally, the theoretical and pedagogical implications of the identification of L2 writing profiles and suggestions for further research are discussed.

This chapter explores the emotional and embodied nature of children’s learning to discover biological principles of social awareness, affective contact, and shared sense-making before school. From mid-gestation, the fetus learns to anticipate the sensory effects of simple, self-generated actions. Actions generate a small ‘story’ that progresses through time, giving meaningful satisfaction on their successful completion. Self-made stories become organized after birth into complex projects requiring greater appreciation of their consequences, which are communicated. They are mediated first by brainstem conscious control made with vital feelings, which motivates a more abstract, cortically mediated cognitive and cultural intelligence in later life. By tracing the development of meaning-making from simple projects of the infant to complex shared projects in early childhood, we appreciate the embodied narrative form of human understanding in healthy affective contact, how it may be disru...

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) competencies comprise a subset of ­digital literacy, one of the various areas of technological competencies and skills necessary for real-life functioning in all kind of professional activities and levels of education from preschool to graduate levels. Assessment of ICT competencies involves the definition of specific target activities appropriate to the environment in which they are required. These environments range from the home to the workplace and involve such disparate activities as information-retrieval in healthcare settings or libraries; use of clerical, business, or investment applications; and interactions with government or other public services. The range of ICT competencies also includes the specific abilities needed by professionals responsible for the development of software or communication products and services. This chapter discusses several ICT assessment projects, addresses the primary technical specifications required for evaluation, and explores solutions to problems of test administration. These solutions range from electronic quizzes (similar to paper-and-pencil tests) to more “authentic” forms of assessment using e-portfolios or simulations of real software applications. A detailed analysis of the primary approaches for assessment of social, academic, commercial, or economic environments reveals that these approaches primarily focus on a basic core of skills consisting of Web navigation and the use of e-mail and office tools (text processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and database management). In the future, ICT evaluation will involve automatic scoring of natural language responses in documents, solutions of mathematical problems, and graphical or health applications, among many other real-life endeavors.

With the growing access to new types of reference tools, today’s L2 writers have a plethora of choices when completing an academic writing assignment. Such resources are absent in most high-stakes academic writing exams, making the two situations dissimilar. Aimed to compare the performances of ESL writers in Exam and Non-exam (real-life) academic writing situations, the present study recruited seven ESL university students who had previously taken an IELTS test. The students completed two analogous writing tasks: an exam-setting and a Non-exam writing test which aimed to simulate the real-life setting. Coh-Metrix analysis of the linguistic features of syntactic complexity, lexical sophistication, and text cohesion of the writings suggested that the students improved the textual quality of their writings in real-life academic writing situation. In addition, FACETS analysis of the quality of the writings, as assessed by the human raters, showed that the students did not benefit equally from the merits of the real-life settings compared to the Exam settings. The findings suggest that the students spent different amounts of time and used different types of queries to consult with external resources. Students’ background training and writing strategies can highly affect their performance in real-life academic writing compared to the writing exams, warning against the validity of such tests.

Among intriguing areas in vocabulary acquisition research are such variables as breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge, and their predictability in writing performance. In this spirit, this study set out to determine how receptive breadth, productive breadth, and receptive depth of word knowledge, using word families, predict total writing task score and the vocabulary component of EFL learners' narrative, descriptive, and argumentative writing performance. To this end, by administering Oxford Quick Placement Test to the learners enrolled in an advanced writing course, 70 (49 males, 21 females) EFL upper intermediate learners were selected as the participants of the study. To determine the participants' receptive depth, and productive and receptive breadth of the word knowledge, the Word Associates Test, the Lex30, and the Vocabulary Size Test were administered to the participants respectively. The participants also undertook descriptive, narrative and argumentative writing tasks. The results of the correlation coefficients and regression analyses of the data specified that: a) receptive vocabulary breadth and depth significantly contributed to both overall writing and vocabulary component of narrative, descriptive and argumentative writing; b) The breadth of productive vocabulary knowledge measured by the Lex30 only correlated with the vocabulary component score as well as the total score of narrative, descriptive, and argumentative writing. The implications include the fact that lexical knowledge aspects can be systematically used in both developing syllabus materials and classroom teaching methodologies.

El presente articulo tiene como proposito principal analizar las piezas teatrales de Samuel Beckett: Final de partida, La ultima cinta de Krapp y Dias felices, desde el enfoque hermeneutico-fenomenologico de la teoria literaria, de acuerdo con la presentacion de Paul Ricoeur en Tiempo y Narracion. La investigacion de Ricoeur explica el principio de inteligencia narrativa, el cual comprende la superposicion de una compresion narrativa sobre la racionalidad narrativa y la revision del concepto de mimesis y trama, de frente a la literatura contemporanea. Considerando este marco conceptual intento encontrar los registros temporales de cada pieza dramatica, estudiare las diferentes configuraciones temporales de cada pieza dramatica con la intencion de aclarar el malentendido en relacion a la obra de Beckett. Este marco conceptual nos permitira obervar que la “espera” no es la unica forma de experiencia temporal en la obra de Beckett. Por el contrario, las conclusiones nos arrojaron la cl...

This essay presents the concept of sustainability intelligence as a possible response to the current unsustainable course of society. We expound on the three components shaping this conceptnaive intelligence, native intelligence, and narrative intelligenceand argue why they could thus serve as inspiration and key reference points for rising to our collective sustainability challenge. The essay ends with a brief exploration of the wider practical, policy and political implications of the concept.

In performance-based writing assessment, regular monitoring and modification of the rating scale is essential to ensure reliable test scores and valid score inferences. However, the development and modification of rating scales (particularly writing scales) is rarely discussed in language assessment literature. The few studies documenting the scale development process have derived the rating scale from analyzing one or two data sources: expert intuition, rater discussion, and/or real performance. This study reports on the review and revision of a rating scale for the writing section of a large-scale, advanced-level English language proficiency examination. Specifically, this study first identified from literature, the features of written text that tend to reliably distinguish between essays across levels of proficiency. Next, using corpus-based tools, 796 essays were analyzed for text features that predict writing proficiency levels. Lastly, rater discussions were analyzed to identify components of the existing scale that raters found helpful for assigning scores. Based on these findings, a new rating scale has been prepared. The results of this work demonstrate the benefits of triangulating information from writing research, rater discussions, and real performances in rating scale design.

It is well known that in German (and many other languages) clauses headed by a conditional complementizer can appear as (apparent) arguments of some verbs, including preference predicates and factive verbs. In most of the recent literature, indirect analyses are advocated according to which in such cases the clauses headed by wenn ('if') are adverbial clauses with a conditional interpretation and not real argument-clauses of the embedding verb. I argue in this paper that an argument-analysis is more advantageous for a systematic group of cases. I will propose a slight modification of the semantics of the standard conditional complementizer which will allow to capture its natural distribution between the two other main argument complementizers: dass ('that') and ob ('whether'). The paper strongly focuses on German but also discusses some distributional facts from other European languages such as English, French, Romanian and Hungarian.

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of linguistic and intelligence factors in the Iranian IELTS candidates’ speaking performance. Linguistic factors include depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge as well as grammar knowledge. Narrative and verbal intelligences represent the non-linguistic factors. The participants included 329 learners who took 5 validated tests and also participated in a simulated IELTS interview session. Model 1 (excluding the intelligence factors) represents the conventional view, whereas Model 2 (including all factors) is proposed for the first time in this study. The Structure Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the data. Using the SEM, both proposed models were examined to see which one fits the data more. The results of the comparisons made between the parameter estimates and fit indices of the two models demonstrate that Model 2 outfits Model 1, implying that in contrast to the conventional view, intelligence factors do play a signif...

The  major  aim  of  this  paper  was  to  investigate  the  validity  of  language  and intelligence  factors  for  classifying  Iranian  English  learners`  writing  performance. Iranian  participants  of  the  study  took  three  tests  for  grammar,  breadth,  and  depth  of vocabulary, and two tests for verbal and narrative intelligence. They also produced a corpus  of  argumentative  writings  in  answer  to  IELTS  specimen.  Several  runs  of discriminant function analyses were used to examine the classifying power of the five variables  for  discriminating  between  low  and  high  ability  L2  writers.  The  results revealed that among language factors, depth of vocabulary (collocational knowledge) produces  the  best  discriminant  function.  In  general,  narrative  intelligence  was  found to  be  the  most  reliable  predictor  for  membership  in  low  or  high  groups.  It  was  also found  that,  among  the  five  sub-abilities  of  narrative  intelligence,  emplotm...

His research interests are psychology of language education and sociology of language. Mohammad Ali Shams is a PhD Candidate of TEFL in Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran. His research interests are language assessment and the applications of cognitive science in TEFL.

Am 26. März 1999 -zwei Tage nach Beginn des NATO-Einsatzes -notierte Jasmina Tešanović in ihr Tagebuch, dass sie hoffe, sie alle mögen den Krieg überleben: die Guten wie die Bösen, die Kämpfenden wie die Desertierenden, die Kosovar*innen auf der Flucht durch die Wälder und die Belgrader*innen auf der Suche nach Schutz in den Straßen. 1 Damit erschuf sie das Bild einer Erfahrungsgemeinschaft, in der sich die albanische und die serbische Bevölkerung in Folge des Krieges in einer vermeintlich identischen Situation befanden: flüchtend und nach Schutz suchend. Wenngleich der Krieg für die Menschen an unterschiedlichen Schauplätzen stattfand, so implizierten Tešanovićs Worte doch, dass er sie alle zu Opfern machte. Es ist genau diese Konstruktion einer vermeintlichen Erfahrungsgemeinschaft, die die kroatische Schriftstellerin Slavenka Drakulić im Mai 1999 in einer Stellungnahme in der US-amerikanischen Wochenzeitung The Nation kritisierte. Bezugnehmend auf die zahlreichen serbischen Tagebücher und Erlebnisberichte, die -im Gegensatz zu kosovo-albanischen Zeugnissen des Krieges -die Weltöffentlichkeit über das Internet und andere Medien erreichten und zu denen auch Jasmina Tešanovićs gehörte, stellte sie die Ähnlichkeit der Erfahrungen auf den Prüfstand: »I can see this young writer sitting at his computer (there must have been no shortage of power then) in his Belgrade apartment: He sends his e-mail letter, checks the latest war information on the Internet and goes to bed. Meanwhile, his Albanian counterpart, with whose suffering he identifies so much, sits in a tent somewhere in Albania or stands in the mud, waiting to cross the Macedonian border. His house is burned down, his computer -if

Article history: Received 29 November 2014 Revised 21 December 2014 Accepted 28 December 2014 Published 30 December 2014 This study was conducted to investigate the probable impact of narrative intelligence on self-regulation among Iranian EFL teachers. For this aim, a total of 125 English language teachers teaching in various language institutes in Mashhad took part in this study. They were collected based on convenience sampling. They were asked to complete one questionnaire: Teacher Self-regulation Scale (TSRS). For measuring EFL teachers' narrative intelligence, they were asked to perform on two narrative tasks. Task 1: they were required to talk about a strip story. Task 2: they were asked to talk about the topic "please tell the story of your first day at university". The narratives were recorded, transcribed, and rated based on Narrative Intelligence Scale (NIS). The result of the Correlational analysis indicated that narrative intelligence correlated positively...

The paper describes lessons learned about the design of a form for interactive narrative. The lessons are based on an initial prototype and have ramifications for both a next-step implementation and for broader understanding of the form. Key lessons pertain to pacing, narrative structure, giving feedback through the interface, and contexts for use.

This paper describes how the device of the chorus was used in plays from ancient Greece and posits ways in which these uses may translate as bases for interactions with computer-based stories. In ancient Greek theater, the chorus mediated between the audience and the action. Now, chorus members can be seen as agents who are not directly part of the action, but who reflect or modulate it as the play unfolds. We are considering functions and structures of the chorus as models for roles and behaviors of agents in interactive stories. We see users of interactive story systems as participants in the narrative who are sometimes analogous to the chorus and sometimes analogous to the audience. In plays from ancient Greece, the chorus mediates between the audience and the action. Chorus members can be seen as agents who are not directly part of the action, but who reflect or modulate it as the play unfolds. We are considering functions and structures of the chorus as models for roles and beh...

We present a model for structuring computer-based narratives so that viewers can interact without changing the story. Instead, interactions reveal the story through varying perspectives and at varying levels of detail. The story maintains its integrity while taking on progressively deeper meanings. Viewers are like members of a Greek chorus who query characters and comment on events. We describe lessons learned from a prototype that retells the story of the 1955 arrest of Rosa Parks and events leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Lessons include observations about narrative structure, writing to support narrative unfolding through user interaction, designing the multimedia interface to communicate conditions for interactivity, and implementing the program so that information about viewer interactions helps to control the presentation. We include projections for using the chorus model to support multiuser interactions.

The essential function of critical thinking in education is obvious by many studies done in this field. The main purpose of this article is to find the relationship between critical thinking levels of Iranian EFL learners and their performance on different modes of writing. The sample of the study selected among those who studying English at the advanced level at Kish Institute of Science and Technology, Rasht, Iran. The instruments used in this study included the Longman paper and pencil test (2004) for ensuring the homogeneity of the learners, a critical thinking questionnaire (Honey, 2004) with 30 items into the 5-point Likert scale type that used to divide learners into high and low critical thinkers and an analytic scale of Weir (1990) for assessing participants’ argumentative and descriptive writings. The study followed an ex-post facto design. The results of inferential statistics revealed a statistically significant difference between the writing performance of high and low ...

In cognitive process theories of L2 writing, the rich lexical knowledge plays a key role in facilitated writing performance. Therefore, the inquiry into the relationship between dimentions of vocabulary knowledge and writing performance can proffer theoretical clues on L2 writing process. However, assessing and researching writing is not independent from the type of tasks or genres that are used for eliciting samples of writing. Accordingly, this study probed into the association between vocabulary knowledge and L2 writing performance with a focus on possible differences originating from descriptive and narrative genres of writing. Four distinctive writing tasks were given to 101 Iranian advanced-level EFL learners whose depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge were measured with Word Associates Test and New Vocabulary Levels Test. The analyses indicated moderate positive correlations between depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge and writing performance in both descriptive and ...

In translation studies, the theoretical concept of ‘translation unit’ has traditionally been a subject of debate. This paper will discuss different views of the concept, relating it to the dichotomy between product and process-oriented translation studies. It will be argued that ‘translation unit’ has two readings: ‘unit of analysis’ in product-based studies, and ‘unit of processing’ in cognitive translation studies. With the exception of literary translation, translation services may now be said to fall within the domain of the language industry, which calls for considering the relevance of ‘translation unit’ to machine translation (MT). From a historical perspective, the concept will be related to the main issues of system design and translation quality.

In cognitive process theories of L2 writing, the rich lexical knowledge plays a key role in facilitated writing performance. Therefore, the inquiry into the relationship between dimentions of vocabulary knowledge and writing performance can proffer theoretical clues on L2 writing process. However, assessing and researching writing is not independent from the type of tasks or genres that are used for eliciting samples of writing. Accordingly, this study probed into the association between vocabulary knowledge and L2 writing performance with a focus on possible differences originating from descriptive and narrative genres of writing. Four distinctive writing tasks were given to 101 Iranian advanced-level EFL learners whose depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge were measured with Word Associates Test and New Vocabulary Levels Test. The analyses indicated moderate positive correlations between depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge and writing performance in both descriptive and narrative genres. Moreover, the results of regression analysis revealed a significant positive predictive power for both depth and breadth in descriptive and narrative writings. Also, Iranian EFL learners performed better on descriptive writing than narrative writing. Genric differentiations in the relationship between lexical knowledge and L2 writing performance seem to be mediated by such factors as learners' proficiency level and L1 cultural background. However, achieving an overarching view of the genric differentiations in affecting the relationship between EFL learners' vocabulary knowledge and writing performance awaits further complementary research with a focus on all genres of writing while the multidimensionality of L2 vocabulary knowledge is taken into account.

Given the role of emotional factors in effective teaching and inspired by a number of socio-philosophical, linguistic and psychological theories including Developmental, Individual-difference, Relationship-based (DIR) model and the concept of emotioncy, the present study is an attempt to introduce envolver as a new role for teachers. Sense-related emotions towards a word or an entity that can relativise cognition fluctuate from avolvement (having no feelings) and exvolvement (having heard, seen or touched) to involvement (having had direct experience or having done research). Accordingly, teachers seem to adopt an envolving role in which they avolve, exvolve or involve the learners in different classroom practices. By conducting semi-structured interviews, the researchers asked 24 language teachers to nominate the topics they preferred the learners to be avolved, exvolved or involved in class. The findings revealed thematised topics for each category, including taboos for avolvement, routine topics for exvolvement, and life-related and thought-provoking ones for involvement. Finally, the results were discussed in the context of education.

This chapter explores the emotional and embodied nature of children’s learning to discover biological principles of social awareness, affective contact, and shared sense-making before school. From mid gestation, simple self-generated actions of a foetus learn to anticipate their sensory effects.  They generate a small ‘story’ that progresses through time, giving meaningful satisfaction on their successful completion. Self-made stories become organised after birth into complex projects requiring greater appreciation of their consequences, which are communicated. They are mediated first by brainstem conscious control made with vital feelings, which motivates a more abstract, cortically mediated cognitive and cultural intelligence in later life.  By tracing development of meaning-making from simple projects of the infant to complex shared projects in early childhood, we appreciate the embodied narrative form of human understanding in healthy affective contact, how it may be disrupted in children with clinical disorders or educational difficulties, and how it responds in joyful projects to an understanding teacher's support for learning.

Am 24. März 1999 begannen die NATO-Luftangriffe auf die damalige Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien. In Serbien ist die 78-tägige Bombardierung bis heute ein zentraler Erinnerungsort. Seit Aleksandar Vučićs Aufstieg zum Präsidenten wird mit tradierten Opfernarrativen wieder Politik gemacht.

https://www.zois-berlin.de/publikationen/zois-spotlight/die-nato-luftangriffe-in-serbiens-gedenkpolitik/

Ich möchte ein Wort zurücknehmen. Das wird nicht einfach sein. Ein Wort ist kein Buch, das verborgt wurde und wieder in das eigene Bücherregal auf einen Haufen mit anderen Büchern zurückkehren soll. Ein Wort ist dünner als jedes Buch, es versteckt sich auch in Hintergedanken und wird dann gerne hervorgeholt, wenn es schillert, harmlos ist und Wirkung zeigt. Ein Buch muss aufgeschlagen werden, um gelesen zu werden. Ein Wort ist leicht gesprochen.
Auch mit Wörtern kann man schuldig werden, ohne dies beabsichtig zu haben. Mit meinem Wort habe ich eine Anleihe gezeichnet. Ein Wort als Skizze. Die „Kremser Hasenjagd“. Kein Wort aber ein Bild für die Jagd auf die freigelassenen Häftlinge aus dem Zuchthaus Stein am 6. April 1945, die wieder eingefangen wurden, denen nachgestellt wurde von militärischen Verbänden, von SS, SA, vom Volkssturm und von der Hitlerjugend, von Dorfbewohnern, die den Verfolgern den Weg gewiesen haben, die nicht geschwiegen haben als sie gefragt wurden, ob da nicht jemand vorbeigekommen sei.

Traditionally, second language writing assessment has employed writing tasks that require only a single skill; however, in many academic contexts, writing requires the integration of several abilities, including reading and listening. To improve authenticity, integrated tasks are increasingly used in the research and assessment of second language writing. Scholars have proposed discourse synthesis as an underlying construct for these tasks. This study investigated performances on integrated reading-listening-writing tasks to consider how organization and connection, subprocesses in discourse synthesis, are reflected in scores. Four hundred eighty responses to an integrated writing prompt were analyzed for organizational patterns, coherence, and cohesion in relation to test scores. Raters coded essays for type and appropriateness of organization and coherence quality, while computational analysis was used to look at cohesion features. The results indicate that organization and coherence were related to writing score, with quality improving as score increased. However , the cohesion markers analyzed in this study yielded no statistical differences across the score levels.

Among the recent trends in researching translation and interpreting, the psychological aspects of translation process and the translator's cognitive state are swiftly developing and thriving trends among the scholars in the field. This study sought to implement this psychological approach in translation studies and investigated the possible effect of the cognitive concept of Narrative Intelligence (NI) on successful performance in translation. Over one hundred Iranian undergraduate English translation students were invited and 104 volunteers participated in the study. This qualitative study traces and contrasts the narrative features in translation of two groups of high and low NI English translation students studying their senior year in Iranian universities. The results showed that the translation performance of high NI group reflected a closer congruency with narrative features than that of the low NI group. The findings of the study relating to a) narrative coherence, b) the degree of text complexity/simplicity, c) gaps in translation, and d) creative/aesthetic merit are presented and discussed.

The speaking skill is an important part of the curriculum in language teaching, and this makes it an important object of assessment. This study is based on a qualitative method of research where a description is produced about the quality of the speech production of the candidates. The purpose is to examine whether learners use features of that indicates advanced knowledge of English in their production. For this purpose, forty-seven university students, who were fourth-year majoring in English literature, who are taking the subject " Preparation for International Test " took an interview for their oral production final exam. After the analysis, the results will show the degree of proficiency the students are at as far as their speech production. The results will also reveal if there is statistically significant difference between the students regarding their proficiency levels and frequency of appropriate use of spoken features. Then immediate implications drawn from the results obtained in this study can help sheds light on using curriculum designed to enhance learners' speaking skills in the future. 1. Literature Review The ability to speak in a foreign language is of great importance when it comes to language efficiency. The ability to reason and express our thoughts is reflected in our spoken performance. Speaking is also the most difficult language skill to assess reliably. A person's speaking ability is usually judged during a face-to-face interaction, in real time, between an interlocutor and a candidate. The assessor has to make instantaneous judgments about a range of aspects of what is being said, as it is being said. This means that the assessment might depend not only upon which particular features of speech (e.g., pronunciation, accuracy, fluency) the interlocutor pays attention to at any point in time, but upon a host of other factors such as the language level, gender, and status of the interlocutor and the personal characteristics of the interlocutor. Moreover the nature of the interaction, the sorts of tasks that are presented to the examinee, the questions asked will have an impact on the performance. Therefore, assessing speaking is not an impossible task, but it is difficult (Luoma, 2004). Speaking in a second language has been considered the most challenging of the four skills because it is productive skill that involves a complex process of constructing meaning (Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000). It is also the most complex skill because of the simultaneous monitoring and planning of utterances. This process requires speakers to make decisions about why, how and when to communicate depending on the cultural and social context in which the speaking act occurs (Burns & Seidlhofer, 2002). Reading aloud is a common way of developing this skill in addition to tests using visual material as stimuli are common test procedures for testing speaking. Other activities for testing speaking include oral interviews, group or pair role play tests. The difficulty of testing the speaking skill is a well known fact by language educators. However, one of the great difficulties in testing speaking is the assessment itself and the scoring process. The speaking tasks is preferably recorded and the scoring done from the tape. Aspects of speaking that might be considered in the assessment scale are grammar, pronunciation, fluency, and content. 2. Background One of the primary objectives of teaching oral communication is enhancing students' ability to use oral language in various contexts. Speaking is often interactive, involving more than one person at the same time. It can be monologic, involving one speaker. The social aspect of the skill cannot be denied as it makes the level of student'

The major aim of this study was to design and validate a competency test measuring English language teachers` knowledge for the purpose of teaching in language institutes. To this end, initially based on the guidelines laid down by eminent scholars in the field of second language teaching, a test was designed. The test was then administered among 103 EFL teachers in language institutes. And finally, Rasch measurement was utilized to substantiate the construct validity of the test. The results of the Rasch analysis exhibited that all of the items met the criteria for fit to the Rasch model and no potential multidimensionality was pinpointed. Therefore, the scale constructed can be considered as a Rasch unidimensional scale.

The aim of this study was to construct and validate a narrative intelligence scale. Randall (1999) defines narrative intelligence as the capacity both to compose and follow a story. The researchers developed a 35-item narrative intelligence scale based on the dynamics of NI proposed in Randall‟ framework including emplotment, characterization, narration, genre-ation and thematization. Rasch rating scale model (Andrich, 1978) was utilized to demonstrate the construct validity of the scale. Six items did not fit the model and six other items were found to be redundant. Reliability, person and item separation indices were high for the whole scale and a 5-point Likert scale functioned effectively after eliminating the misfitting items.

Kriege im 21. Jahrhundert – Neue Formen der Gewalt? Brauchen wir einen anderen Lösungsansatz? Seit Jahrhunderten berufen sich Staaten beim Einsatz des Militärischen auf Carl von Clausewitz und seinen Ausspruch " Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln " aus seinem Werk " Vom Kriege ". Gemeint war der Primat der Politik.

The notion of translation norms has been advocated by scholars like Gideon Toury since late 1970s. There are different types of norms concerning different dimensions of the translational phenomenon. The current research addresses expectancy norms which relate to the expectations of the potential TT readership. The purpose of the study was to identify and to categorize the main expectancy norms of Iranian university students as a large part of Iranian translation readership in terms of foreign fiction in Persian. The study comprises two phases. In the first phase, qualitative data were collected through focus groups which were analyzed to provide for the pool of information according to which the questions of the questionnaire were selected and applied. Later, in the second phase, the questionnaire data collected were analyzed using a number of inferential statistics in order to address the research questions. The findings provided insights into the expectancy norms of the sample participants (n = 424), which using exploratory factor analysis were summarized into six basic categories of visualization, source cultural items, target culture, authorial loyalty, TT preface, and TT language, from the most to the least important, and the results of t-tests showed that expectancy norms are not mainly gender-specific drawing on the male (n = 112) and female (n = 312) subgroups.

Several studies have evaluated sentence structure and vocabulary (SSV) as a scoring criterion in assessing writing, but no consensus on its functionality has been reached. The present study presents evidence that this scoring criterion may not be appropriate in writing assessment. Scripts by 182 ESL students at two language centers were analyzed with the Rasch partial credit model. Although other scoring criteria functioned satisfactorily, SSV scores did not fit the Rasch model, and analysis of residuals showed SSV scoring on most test prompts loaded on a benign secondary dimension. The study proposes that a lexico-grammatical scoring criterion has potentially conflicting properties, and therefore recommends considering separate vocabulary and grammar criteria in writing assessment.

The present study was an attempt to investigate the effect of reading Persian literary texts on the quality of literary translations. To this end, 52 students majoring in English translation were randomly assigned to two groups. A Comprehensive English Language Test (CELT) was administered to check the homogeneity of the participants. The treatment for the experimental group consisted of reading 60 Persian short stories and poems. In the meantime, the control group went through their ordinary course curriculum. Both groups were asked to translate extracts of two short stories. The translations were then rated. Through statistical analysis, it was revealed that reading Persian literary works, indeed, improves the quality of literary translations. Therefore, to promote a more fruitful instruction on literary translation, it is suggested that translation teachers attempt to consider reading Persian literary works as part of the curriculum and ask students to read Persian texts to the extent possible, so that more qualified translations would be rendered in the area of literature.

The major aim of this paper was to investigate the validity of language and intelligence factors for classifying Iranian English learners` writing performance. Iranian participants of the study took three tests for grammar, breadth, and depth of vocabulary, and two tests for verbal and narrative intelligence. They also produced a corpus of argumentative writings in answer to IELTS specimen. Several runs of discriminant function analyses were used to examine the classifying power of the five variables for discriminating between low and high ability L2 writers. The results revealed that among language factors, depth of vocabulary (collocational knowledge) produces the best discriminant function. In general, narrative intelligence was found to be the most reliable predictor for membership in low or high groups. It was also found that, among the five sub-abilities of narrative intelligence, emplotment carries the highest classifying value. Finally, the applications and implications of the results for second language researchers, cognitive scientists, and applied linguists were discussed.

(SEM) was used to analyze the data. Using the SEM, both proposed models were examined to see which one fits the data more. The results of the comparisons made between the parameter estimates and fit indices of the two models demonstrate that Model 2 outfits Model 1, implying that in contrast to the conventional view, intelligence factors do play a significant and undeniable role in developing the speaking construct. Finally, the applications of the findings to promote the construct validity of IELTS are discussed.