Social Sciences

The study sought to find out the influence of teachers’ work load on pupils’ academic performance in public primary schools in Nandi north sub county, Nandi County, Kenya. The study adopted descriptive survey research design. The target population was 172 headteachers and 1302 teachers. The sample size was 17 Head teachers and 93 teachers. The consistency of the study instruments was measured using test- retest reliability whereby the same groups of respondents were used repeatedly to test whether the same results could be obtained. The content validity was ascertained by the researcher in consultation with the supervisors and expert opinion from three lecturers of the School of Education, Kisii University. To select the individual teachers, the researcher used simple random sampling method. Data was collected by use of questionnaire and interview schedules. The questionnaire allowed measurement for or against a particular view point. Data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage tables) with the help of SPSS. There was high teaching workload which led to tiresome preparation of teachers in discharging their teaching duties hence lowering performance in national examinations. The study indicated that teachers had no enough time for professional development and workload conditions were not favourable hence the academic performance of pupils was affected

Researchers have long studied how learners produce a new language system (SLA). Theories of SLA, which make the language learning process easier to understand, have roots in such fields as linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychology, neuroscience, and education. To explain how someone acquires a second language, these theories investigate questions of cognition, questions of social influences, and so on. Researchers have commonly acknowledged no one overarching theory of SLA yet, because to express an all-embracing theory of SLA is an extremely intricate undertaking that is beyond research done individually; just as several men found it impossible to fully grasp the elephant in the dark and interpreted the huge animal differently because their palms were not large enough, understanding SLA procedure is enormously complicated and it commands the involvement of various disciplines, from linguistic theory to anthropology to brain science, and the procedure is not yet actually grasped. By collecting previous challenges to explain SLA, this paper attempted to help researchers and teachers shed about the shortcomings of the complementary theories in order to integrate linguistic, psychological, and social perspectives on SLA; this paper may hopefully express the idea of incompleteness, not the fallacy, of these models and may provide a deeper and broader view of the acquisition process, and the findings may suggest some guidelines for L2 learning and teaching.

Blogging is gaining increasing attention as a useful personal and scientific knowledge sharing media in social network technology. Many studies have been done on the personal characteristics of bloggers; who blogs and who does not? (Chai & Kim, 2010; Hollenbaugh, 2010; Smith, 2010). But empirical research addressing bloggers' level of creativity as their personal characteristic has been scant. In this study we try to investigate whether bloggers are creative people or not. Accordingly, a questionnaire survey was distributed between 30 Iranian bloggers and 30 other non- bloggers aged 15-30. The results of the study tend to shed light on the impact of creativity on the likelihood of being a blogger.

A thorough understanding of adolescence in today’s society depends on information from various perspectives, most importantly from the areas of psychology, biology, history, sociology, education and anthropology. Within all of these perspectives, it is safe to say that adolescence is viewed as a transitional period whose chief purpose is the preparation of children for adult roles. During this transition period, adolescence people are facing many challenges due to the incredible changes in physically, mentally, emotionally, intellectually and psychologically. Due to the gender, adolescent girls’ challenges in the above aspects are higher only. The present study investigates almost all the relevant factors that are acting as the challenges faced by adolescent girls in the present social and educational scenario. A cognitive map shows a representation of how humans think about a particular issue, by analyzing, arranging the problems and graphically mapping concepts that all interconnected. In addition, it identifies causes and effects and explains causal links with exact degree [1]. As the problems of adolescents’ belong to an unsupervised data, the most suitable tool is Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM) which is the cognitive map with fuzzy degree. Hence analyzing the problems of adolescent girls by giving structured and organized outline of the appropriate factors and revealing the most important and other impactful factors is the objective of this study. In this manner, this study guarantees that its results are much more useful for psychologists, physiologists, educationists, adolescent girls and their parents to understand the problems that adolescent girls really facing in the present scenario.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of worker remittance on economic growth of Pakistan by using annual data for the years 1991 to 2010. The multiple regression analysis and different diagnostic tests are applied in order to confirm the assumptions of multicollinearity, heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation in the data. On the basis of multiple regression researcher conclude that worker remittances received from overseas Pakistani has a positive and significant impact on economic growth of Pakistan after control for other important determinants of economic growth like household finical consumption, financial development, saving and current account balance. This study facilitates the policy makers, economists and Government of Pakistan in analysis regarding increasing inflows of emigrant’s workers of Pakistan.

This study was an attempt to investigate the tourism in Deylam coastal city to determine the ability of this city in the field of tourism. In this study, library and documents method have been applied and for obtaining information field studies have been used. After gathering the existing data and statistics, potentials and tourism facilities in Deylam, at the end each of them were analyzes by SWOT model. Findings determined that today’s tourism is the most important economic activity of the world and on the other hand it is one of the most important scientific topics. Therefore policies, strategies and planning of tourism are the most important intellectual challenges of human science society; as a result it is the focused topic of interdisciplinary fields. Iran is a country with high tourist attractions. From the tourist attraction of Iran, beaches and ports are famous. Among the coastal cities, Bushehr has high potential of tourism. Among these cities, Deylam coastal town has the multiple abilities in the field of eco-tourism, history and economics. After the investigation and analysis of its’ tourism ability, following results obtained: Between the influential inner factor on tourism development in Deyla, 18 factors were considered as advantage and 10 factors were considered disadvantage. Between the influential external factor on tourism development in Deylam, 15 factors were considered as external opportunities and 11 factors were named as external threat. Majority of advantages of Deylam refers to the eco-tourism and economics abilities. Residential accommodation and reception centers of Deylam are not suitable and appropriate for catering of tourists. Deylam’s infrastructure needs more development for tourism. Foreign goods markets in Deylam are one of the most important abilities of tourism.

Motivation plays an indispensable role in learning. Though motivation has got a lot of attention in literature of language learning, demotivation has not got much attention in general and particularly in Iranian EFL context. As Dörnyei (2001: p. 5) postulates "Demotivation is a salient phenomenon in L2 learning" and "much further research is needed to do this important motivational factor justice". The aim of the present study is to find out what the main demotivating factors in speaking skills among gifted students at SAMPAD schools are. In order to achieve this goal, 571 students who are secondary students in SAMPAD schools in Tehran were selected. The sampling was convenient sampling, and both male and female students participated in this study. A questioner which was validated and reliable was distributed among participants, and 68 students were interviewed. The findings of both quantitative and qualitative data reveal that five demotivating factors hindering learners in speaking classes are, teacher, material and content, facilities, attitude and teaching learning context. The findings can be applied for teacher development courses in which mentors can shed light on the importance of motivational factors in EFL classes. Key Words: motivation, demotivation, speaking skills, exceptionally talented students

The main aim of this study is analysis of job satisfaction and professional commitment between staffs in Kermanshah. Materials and methods: This study is according to descriptive analysis and reaching branch and information gathering tools is question air and for assessing job satisfaction we use briefed and worth 18 question airs and for analysis of professional commitment and organizational commitment receive 83% static and 87% from job satisfaction question air, because crownbakh in both question air is more than 0/7 so both question air necessary static. Sample population volume 150subjects from privet banks in Kermanshah and according to sampling random way some of them had been chosen a stoical population and finally we collected 18 questions airs. Findings: For determining normality of data we use kolomogrove – sminoroph test and results of tests confirm normality of data so meaningful relationship between them had approved.

The focus of this study is to explore EFL teachers’ evaluations and expectations about English language courses as EFL in Iran. In other words, this article aims at creating a new avenue for effective EFL teaching curriculum and syllabus in the Iranian context. Iranian universities offer basic, general, and specific English courses as a part of their program, which are not being very effective. These courses do not promote the students in dealing with their disciplines or programs oriented courses. Even after completion of these courses in three or more semesters, students fail to grasp comprehensive control over the reading materials of their field. This is a common scenario in almost all the universities in Iran. The authors of this paper ventured to study the predicament of EFL courses in some universities. The data were collected through questionnaires from a total of 40 EFL teachers at 8 universities. The research results revealed that the existing English Course syllabus is not tailored appropriately to the needs of the students. It, therefore, suggests that university English courses should be redesigned in assimilating the learners’ need, and course contents should cover the socio-cultural factors of the learners.

From the beginning of creation, human being has always been hostile towards the ecosystem by changing the environment. Dams are one of the important structures in the systems of water transport and resources. The goal of these studies is to evaluate the environmental effects of the dams, obtaining a comprehensive recognition of the present situation of the environment in the location of dam and the span influencing it. These studies also aim at recognizing the design activities which are done in the considered environment. After gaining a dual recognition, the effects of design activities on all components of the environment (consisting of about 100 factors such as air, water, soil, plant, animal, biodiversity, population, culture, monuments, and etcetera) are determined. In this article, the advantages and disadvantages of dams will be investigated from an environmental perspective. From this perspective, there are lots of advantages as well as disadvantages for dams. They provide reliable water resources, protect the surrounding areas from floods, and also provide a clean energy. Hydroelectric energy (generating electricity by the energy of water) has more advantages than the other two major sources of generating electricity i.e. fossil fuel and nuclear energy. However, dams and water resources also cause some problems. In arid and semi-arid areas, water is easily evaporated from the tanks and canals which transport water. This causes a waste of water and an increase in the density of the salt in water. Dams are a barrier to floods. The floods are important since they enrich the soil with the nutrients which are essential and significant for the ecosystems. Dams change the water flow, the temperature, the transparency of a river; change the water from a current state into a stagnant state. The changes in temperature may have an effect on the living creatures of the river because the life cycle of many invertebrates depend on the temperature. These effects may also have an effect on the situation and behavior of weather, biology, culture, monuments, and etcetera and make them change and more complicated. As a result, with regard to the significance of the positive effects of building dams, it is necessary to minimize the negative environmental effects for the sake of sustainable development. In this article, the negative effects and ways for decreasing these effects in the environment are more investigated.