abstract recent studies suggest that prelistening activities play an important role in the development of listening comprehension (e.g. long 1990;chiang and dunkel 1992; schmidt-rinehart 1994; jensen and hansen 1995; robinson et al., 1995; buck, 1995; foster and skehan,1996; teng 1996; robinson, 2001; chang and read 2006). in line with previous studies and to shed light on a new aspect of schemata-building, this study tried to investigate the effect of vocabulary preparation on efl learners listening comprehension development and their confidence level. the sample consisted of a total of 36 freshman english language and literature majors at semnan university divided into experimental and control groups. both groups took listening comprehension pretest and posttest. the participants in the experimental group were given the vocabulary list at each session as a prelistening activity, and after the treatment, they filled in a questionnaire concerning their confidence. subjects’ scores in experimental group were compared to those in control group. the results of the t-test (observed-t) revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group. the students’ overall responses also indicated a positive view towards vocabulary preparation. it is concluded that the preparation of vocabulary like many other prelistening activities contributes to the development of listening comprehension ability. it also influences the learners’ confidence for further cognitive and affective involvement. key words: efl learners, listening comprehension, vocabulary preparation, confidence

?it is of utmost priority for an experienced teacher to train the mind of the students, and enable them to think critically and correctly. the most important question here is that how to develop such a crucial ability? this study examines a new way to the development of critical thinking utilizing critical discourse analytical tools. to attain this goal, two classes of senior english language and literature university students, studying reading comprehension courses were chosen. one class went on with the usual instructions; the other group was treated with the special treatment that is, the use of critical discourse analytical tools. a pretest (which was the combination of three test namely critical thinking, reading comprehension and critical discourse analysis) was conducted at the beginning of the instruction phase to measure the critical abilities of the students and to make sure that they are homogeneous and a parallel posttest at the end of the instruction phase. the comparison of the results revealed that the experiment group showed a noticeable development on their level of critical thinking. this new method can be used in areas other than reading comprehension such as listening, speaking, and writing.

this thesis is an evaluation of poetry of sylvia plath (1932- 1963) and forough farrokhzad (1935-1967) using feminist approach and finds the positive concepts of hope, reason and strength through feminine images in their poetry. plath and farrokhzad are from different cultures and different countries but they share the same concepts and themes in their poetry. by applying feminist theory to their works and finding the same concepts of hope, reason and strength in their poetry they break the boundaries and connect to each other in the world of literature. first it gives a critical biography of plath and farrokhzad. this part is a study of their family, cultural and educational background. the second chapter gives an account of feminist movement in general, and then it assesses poetry of plaths and farrokhzads relationship to the womens movement. it will bring examples from their poetry to prove that plath and farrokhzad are feminist and their poems can be categorized as feminist poems. in order to criticize womanhood as a confinement, farrokhzad in her mask of love challenges the traditional constricting social expectation of womanhood and wifehood while plath scorns conventional submissive and obedient femininity and severely denounces a kind of marriage which alienate and enforce the passivity of women. the third chapter examines concepts of hope, reason and strength in the poetry of plath and farrokhzad. in fact it shows how women in their poetry reflect the three above mentioned concepts. many critics considered only concepts of death, frustration, confusion, emotion and confessional ideas in both plaths and farrokhzads poetry. but the present research proves that there are still positive and hopeful images of women in their poetry. then chapter four is the last part of this thesis. this study examines how the woman poets in their distinctive poetic voice repossess a power to seek liberation from social conformity and reorient and affirm their unconventional poetic selves in the male literary tradition. and also it examines how women are dependent on their intellect and have hope toward life.

today, persian poetry is of great importance to many scholars around the world. the interest and attention of various cultures toward such a fine literature has given quite a good motivation for a comparative study. the major concern of the study is to investigate how nature is depicted through the works of the great english poet, william wordsworth (1770-1850) and the outstanding contemporary persian poet sohrab sepehri (1928-1980). the two express a rather similar concept of worshiping nature and choosing solitary places to avoid the corruptions which city life can bring, while being sharply separated in time and geographical place. thus, the work holds its major issues, piety toward nature, industrialization and pantheism, as the concern of both poets, and would illustrate from the mentioned points the role of nature as a meditative craft and similarity of attitudes toward pantheism, rural areas and modernity in the poetry of both. what would come next is the study of selected prominent symbolism in poetry of sepehri and wordsworth.

postcolonial feminism, also dubbed as third world feminism, is an innovative approach, demonstrating the way women of colonized countries suffer from both native patriarchies and imperial ideology. also due to this double-colonization, postcolonial feminists contend that third world women are subjected to both colonial domination of empire and male domination of patriarchy. while western feminism focuses on gender discrimination, postcolonial feminism works to extend the analysis of intersection of gender and multicultural identity formation. the present thesis is written based on the conviction that e. m forsters a passage to india (1924) possesses the quality to be interpreted from the postcolonial feminism vantage point. this novel is the account of two british women who question the standard behaviors of the english toward the indians and suffer permanently from unsettling experience in india. the female victim in this novel is not a third-world black woman as usual, but a white british woman who fails in her quest to see the real india. after bringing a short introduction in the first chapter, the second chapter of this thesis provides a definition of postcolonial studies generally, and then postcolonial feminism specifically. here we are going to get familiar with this new approach, its concerns, and opinion of some of its most prominent critics. in the third chapter, a detailed reading of a passage to india is presented. the postcolonial feminism approach is applied to the novel in this chapter, and it can be visualized that how much the western feminism is inattentive to the differences pertaining to class, race, feelings, and settings of women of colonized territories. by depicting the limited worldview of the two british women, the thesis concludes that the privilege attributed to them is the western feminist prejudice and a one- dimensional view.