data envelopment analysis (dea) is a powerful tool for measuring relative efficiency of organizational units referred to as decision making units (dmus). in most cases dmus have network structures with internal linking activities. traditional dea models, however, consider dmus as black boxes with no regard to their linking activities and therefore do not provide decision makers with the reasons...

1. to determine whether difference in birth body mass influenced growth performance in pipistrellus kuhlii we studied a total of 12 captive-born neonates. bats were assigned to two body mass groups: light birth body mass (lbw: 0.89 ± 0.05, n=8) and heavy birth body mass (hbw: 1.35 ± 0.08, n=4). heavier body mass at birth was associated with rapid postnatal growth (body mass and forearm length) ...

abstract this study aimed at investigating the impact of etymology strategy instruction on the development of vocabulary of iranian intermediate efl learners. etymology, knowledge of origin of words, roots, and affixes, has proved to be a controversial issue and a question of long debate with regard to its impact on the process of vocabulary learning. this study employed etymology strategy in ...

abstract this mixed method study examines whether there is any relationship among the variables of the study (job satisfaction, social capital and motivation). the researcher considered job satisfaction and social capital as independent variables; motivation is the dependent variable of the study. the researcher applied a questionnaire to assess each variable. to measure efl teachers’ job sati...

previous studies regarding teachers’ beliefs have revealed that teachers’ beliefs have influence on their classroom practices. the current study aimed to investigate the effect of teachers’ beliefs about teaching reading strategies on students’ motivation and success in reading comprehension in the context of english teaching as a foreign language in high schools of mazandaran, iran. data were ...

iv abstract this study examined the linguistic behaviors of two iranian efl teachers each of them teaching learners of two similar proficiency levels, a beginner level and an intermediate level, to investigate the relationship between the learners proficiency levels and the amounts and purposes for l1 use by the two teachers. the study was carried out to investigate whether there were differe...

nowadays enhancing critical thinking in learners is considered one of the foreign language teachers’ tasks due to its high position in foreign language classrooms. when it comes to selecting materials for language classrooms, there are obviously some criteria that teachers should apply. the present study aimed at a critical thinking based analysis of ten picture story books and ten folktales th...

vocabulary as a major component of language learning has been the object of numerous studies each of which has its own contribution to the field. finding the best way of learning the words deeply and extensively is the common objective of most of those studies. however, one effective way for achieving this goal is somehow neglected in the field. using a variety of activities such as games can r...

the present study reports an analysis of response articles in four different disciplines in the social sciences, i.e., linguistics, english for specific purposes (esp), accounting, and psychology. the study has three phases: micro analysis, macro analysis, and e-mail interview. the results of the micro analysis indicate that a three-level linguistic pattern is used by the writers in order to cr...

methodology non-native participants in this study were sixty ba students majoring in english literature and teaching english as a foreign language at khayyam university of mashhad. they were senior students, between 21 to 24 years old, who had studied english for at least three and a half years and had passed several courses including grammar, reading, conversation, and writing. this was assum...