august wilson is undoubtedly one of the rare black playwrights whose works have attracted streams of attention and worldwide audience. the present study aims at analyzing fences and piano lesson which are two of the most successful plays in his pittsburgh cycle from the perspective of michel foucault’s theories and ideas. studying these two plays from foucault’s perspective opens new windows in...

abstract the current study sets out 1) to investigate the strategic needs of iranian efl learners in reading literary and non-literary texts; 2) to shed some light on the differences between reading literary and non-literary texts; and 3) to specify the differences in the interaction of participants with texts while reading two literary subgenres ( i.e., short story and literary essays). to ...

learning a second or foreign language requires the manipulation of four main skills, namely, listening, reading, speaking, and writing which lead to effective communication. it is obvious that vocabulary is an indispensible part of any communication, so without a vocabulary, no meaningful communication can take place and meaningful communication relies heavily on vocabulary. one fundamental fac...

esl/efl books play a crucial role in shaping language learners worldview of gender roles in society. the present study investigated the status of sexism in two sets of efl textbooks, one developed by non-native iranian authors (ili series) and the other by native authors (top notch series). first, two books from each series was selected randomly. then, a quantitative analysis was carried out wi...

until now many studies have been done over recent decades throughout the world to show the right age to start english. in iran, research is still at an early stage in terms of evaluating teachers’ beliefs about teaching children english. the problem of at what age to start teaching english and how to teach english to elementary school children has not been solved neither in this country nor els...

the construct of self-efficacy has received increasing attention in research over the past two decades. many studies have been carried out 1.3 significance of the study this study has pedagogical implications since improving students’ self- efficacy and autonomy is important for promoting actual performance on classroom academic tasks. in academic settings, it has been shown that self-effi...

writing an academic article requires the researchers to provide support for their works by learning how to cite the works of others. various studies regarding the analysis of citation in m.a theses have been done, while little work has been done on comparison of citations among elt scopus journal articles, and so the dearth of research in this area demands for further investigation into citatio...

the aim of the current study was to investigate the relationship among efl learners learning style preferences, use of language learning strategies, and autonomy. a total of 148 male and female learners, between the ages of 18 and 30, majoring in english literature and english translation at islamic azad university, central tehran were randomly selected. a package of three questionnaires was ad...

from its emergence till present time marxist principles has undergone great changes since their promulgation by marx. many theorists and thinkers set at rectifying marxist tenets and introducing those of their own while others advocated its main concepts and attempted at improving them. among marxist philosophers who had an intensive study of marxs ideology, is louis althusser whose reflections...

according to coates’s (2004, as cited in zhang, 2010) definition of "conversational dominance" (p.111), it refers to the phenomenon of a speaker dominating others in interaction. specifically, it means how a speaker makes use of certain strategies to get the floor and maintain the floor. thus, the amount of talk is the main measurement for the dominance of the conversation. whether a speaker do...