testing plays a vital role in any language teaching program. it allows teachers and stakeholders, including program administrators, parents, admissions officers and prospective employers to be assured that the learners are progressing according to an accepted standard (douglas, 2010). the problems currently facing language testers have both practical and theoretical implications but the first i...

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...

the aim of the present study was to investigate the frequency and the type of discourse markers used in the argumentative and expository writings of iranian efl learners and the differences between these text features in the two essay genres. the study also aimed at examining the influence of the use of discourse markers on the participants’ writing quality. to this end the discourse markers us...

the present study sought to examine whether a task-based approach could have an impact on raising awareness of collocations. moreover, it sought to investigate the facilitative role of consciousness-raising tasks of collocations in the communicative instances of use. to this end, 68 intermediate learners of english were selected via a placement test. the participants were taught with classroom ...

anxiety is one common disorder during childhood. in curing anxiety disorders, there are different types of psychological remedies, pharmotherapy, family therapy, and music therapy that can improve the individual’s anxiety, but we need some other remedies to improve social and emotional relationship and interactions. considering the importance of curing the anxiety disorders, the effect of sand ...

this study investigated how group formation method, namely student-selected vs. teacher-assigned, influences the results of the community model of teaching creative writing; i.e., group dynamics and group outcome (the quality of performance). the study adopted an experimental comparison group and microgenetic research design to observe the change process over a relatively short period of time. ...

drought is transient phenomenon , slow , repetitive and integral part of the climate of each region. drought begins with a substantial reduction in precipitation over the long-term average rainfall and over time, reduced soil moisture and surface and ground water resources will continue to decrease. this phenomenon is the most important in bakhtegan basin because of its importance in strategic ...

a one dimensional dynamic model for a riser reactor in a fluidized bed catalytic cracking unit (fccu) for gasoil feed has been developed in two distinct conditions, one for industrial fccu and another for fccu using various frequencies of microwave energy spaced at the height of the riser reactor (fccu-mw). in addition, in order to increase the accuracy of component and bulk diffusion, instanta...

attempts have been made to study the thermodynamic behavior of 1,3 butadiene purification columns with the aim of retrofitting those columns to more energy efficient separation schemes. 1,3 butadiene is purified in two columns in series through being separated from methyl acetylene and 1,2 butadiene in the first and second column respectively. comparisons have been made among different therm...

the present study is paid to the evaluation of the welfare program of the unemployment insurance in iran. the main purpose which was the main reason for performing this thesis, was the unemployment insurance plan’s challenges in iran such as financial problems of this plan, prolongation of the credit receipt for some insured people, unemployment slow exiting from the unemployment insurance fund...