one of the major criticisms leveled at task-based language teaching (tblt), despite its countless merits, is developing fluency at the cost of accuracy. the post-task stage affords a number of options to counteract this downside through task repetition and task recycling. these two options are considered to positively affect learners' oral performance in terms of fluency, accuracy, and complexi...

This paper examines a decision support system (DSS) for the appraisal of complex decision problems using multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). The DSS makes use of a structured hierarchical approach featuring the multiplicative AHP also known as the REMBRANDT technique. The paper addresses the influence of the progression factor used when transforming the decisionmakers verbal responses from...

American Indians are the most under-represented minority group across all levels of education. The present study investigates sociocultural, psychological, and nontraditional academic factors that influence American Indian students’ decisions to pursue higher education (e.g., vocational training, college). Nineteen American Indians with previous academic difficulties completed several self-repo...

politicians adopt a variety of linguistic strategies in their speeches to connect with their audience. to name one, appraisal, as a system of interpersonal meaning, is concerned with evaluation where resources are used for negotiating social relationships. despite their significance in shaping texts, there have hardly been any extensive inventories of appraisal tools contrasting electoral speec...

this correlational study focused on formal organizations' administrative performance values. it examined the managers' (unit supervisors') employee performance appraisal process in relation to sex and personality differences among unit supervisors in tehran, shahid beheshti and iran medical sciences university hospitals (tehran, 1996). first 537 male and female managers performin...

BACKGROUND Thyroid disease in pregnancy is a common clinical problem. Since the guidelines for the management of these disorders by the American Thyroid Association (ATA) were first published in 2011, significant clinical and scientific advances have occurred in the field. The aim of these guidelines is to inform clinicians, patients, researchers, and health policy makers on published evidence ...

BACKGROUND Health economic evaluations support the health care decision-making process by providing information on costs and consequences of health interventions. The quality of such studies is assessed by health economic evaluation (HEE) quality appraisal instruments. At present, there is no instrument for measuring and improving the quality of such HEE quality appraisal instruments. Therefore...

Given the difficulty of converting population-based estimates of cancer risk into precise statements of individual risk, it is not surprising that (a) individual differences in risk perception are at best poorly correlated to the best available determination of "actual risk" and to behaviors to prevent and detect and treat cancer, and (b) success in bringing perceived risk into line with actual...

One application of virtual environments is to form an affective appraisal of an environment, such as a building before it is constructed. But the affective appraisal attributed to a real environment can differ from the affective appraisal of the simulated virtual environment. One virtual environment specific problem is that people can experience cybersickness by watching virtual scene movement....

We report on results of a paper-based lab study that used information on task performance, self appraisal and personal learning need assessment to validate the adaptation mechanisms for a work-integrated learning system. We discuss the results in the wider context of the evaluation of adaptive systems where the validation methods we used can be transferred to a work-based setting to iteratively...