abstract in aggregate, active forms of reactive silica with mineral names are sometimes associated with sand and gravel in concrete mixture. alkali hydroxides originated from alkalis in the cement or other resources form an alkaline silica gel with this reactive silica which becomes swallowed and expanded during time causing damage to concrete. there have been growing researches on alkaline r...

this study investigates the strategies native english and persian speakers employ for expressing gratitude in different situations. the strategies of persian efl learners are also compared with english strategies in order to find the differences that may exist between these two languages. social status and size of imposition of the favor are social variables which are investigated in detail for...

there are two major theories of measurement in psychometrics: classical test theory (ctt) and item-response theory (irt). despite its widespread and long use, ctt has a number of shortcomings, which make it problematic to be used for practical and theoretical purposes. irt tries to solve these shortcomings, and provide better and more dependable answers. one of the applications of irt is the as...

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...

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...

monumental changes occurring on a daily basis have altered the world into a global village of expanding technology and shrinking geography in which preparing language learners for intercultural communication seems to be a sine qua non for modern language education. employing a cross-sectional design in its first phase, this study investigated the intercultural sensitivity and language proficien...

chapter i provides an overview of structural linguistics and touches upon the saussurean dichotomies with the final goal of exploring their relevance to the stylistic studies of literature. to provide evidence for the singificance of the study, chapter ii deals with the controversial issue of linguistics and literature, and presents opposing views which, at the same time, have been central to t...

in fact, this study focused on the following questions: 1. is there any difference between the effect of functional/notional approach and the structural approaches to language teaching on the proficiency test of efl learners? 2. can a rather innovative language test referred to as "functional test" ge devised so so to measure the proficiency test of efl learners, and thus be as much reliable an...

this thesis attempts to investigate the effects of prelistening activities on enhancing iranian efl learners` listening comprehension. the present study investigated ways in which learners` background knowledge could be activated in order to enhance their l2 listening comprehension by limiting the number of possible text interpretations prior to listening. the experiments conducted in this stud...

the history of plant’s used for mankind is as old as the start of humankind. initially, people used plants for their nutritional proposes but after the discovery of medicinal properties, this natural ?ora became a useful source of disease cure and health improvement across various human communities. berberis vulgaris is one of the medicinal plants used in iranian traditional medicine. berberis ...