Criteria in the Holistic and Analytic Rating of EFL Learners' Production of Agreement and Disagreement Speech Acts among Non-native English Teachers

, M.Sc. Thesis Sharif University of Technology Motamedi, Mohammad (Author) ; Alemi, Minoo (Supervisor)

Abstract

Conveying a successful message within a language profoundly stems from not only a linguistically appropriate utterance, but also a pragmatically appropriate discourse too. Broadly considering various facets of pragmatics, pragmatic assessment has not been potentially brought into perspective, and, as a result, the literature deserves more comprehensive attention. This study, guided by the principles of mixed methods design, pursued three purposes: to inspect the matches and mismatches, to explore rating variations, and to assess the rater consistency between the holistic and analytic rating methods of agreement and disagreement speech acts in L2 by non-native English teachers. To address...

Conciliationism and the Self-Undermining Problem

, M.Sc. Thesis Sharif University of Technology Fatemi, Hamid (Author) ; Azadegan, Ebrahim (Supervisor) ; Zamani, Mohsen (Supervisor)

Abstract

According to conciliationism in the epistemology of disagreement, after knowing that the belief of our epistemic peer is contrary to what we believe, our initial belief is no longer justified. One of the problems with this view is that it is self-defeating. According to the opponents of conciliationism, with the assumption that conciliationists are epistemically equal to their opponents, their belief in conciliationism is unjustified. In this thesis, in addition to proposing other philosophers' answers to the problem of self-defeat, we examine this problem through the lens of the concept of self-reference, and in this regard, we need to examine theories of reference. One of the developments...

Epistemology of Expertise

, M.Sc. Thesis Sharif University of Technology Besmel, Mostafa (Author) ; Taheri, Ali (Supervisor)

Abstract

The complexity of today's world has led us to the point where we will have problems in the intellectual and practical fields without relying on the testimony of experts. Maybe if we could measure the validity of the information by our own knowledge, we would definitely choose this option. But social life has made us rely on others to get the beliefs we need. We consider most of the beliefs we acquire in school, universities, in science books, news, debates and television documentaries to be examples of knowledge. We also claim to know a set of beliefs presented to us by experts. We consider experts as reliable people and we rely on them. In the meantime, we know that we have no other reason...