thermal barrier coatings (tbcs) are used to provide thermal insulation to the hot section components of gas turbines in order to enhance the operating temperature and turbine efficiency. hot corrosion and thermal shocks are the main destructive factors in tbcs which comes as a result of oxygen and molten salt diffusion into the coating. in this thesis atmospheric plasma spraying was used to dep...

this thesis attempts to measure learning styles, self efficacy and intrinsic motivation as predictors of iranian ielts reading comprehension. in order to address this issue, a quantitative study was conducted on some randomly selected intact students at ferdowsi university. these two groups were assigned as they were undergraduate (ba=91) and graduate (ma =74) students; they were all aged betwe...

this study was conducted to investigate the effect of favorite-text on iranian intermediate efl learners’ vocabulary development. sixty learners from nour-al-mahdi english institute participated in the present study. having been homogenized by oxford placement test (opt), they were randomly assigned into two groups of 30, control and experimental. then both groups sat for a pre-test which was a...

?it is of utmost priority for an experienced teacher to train the mind of the students, and enable them to think critically and correctly. the most important question here is that how to develop such a crucial ability? this study examines a new way to the development of critical thinking utilizing critical discourse analytical tools. to attain this goal, two classes of senior english la...

building on previous studies on intellectual features and learners’ grammar learning, the present study aimed at investigating whether intelligence criterion had any impact on efl learners’ english grammar learning across two intelligence levels. in the current study, the participants were divided into two experimental and control groups by administration of raven i.q. test. this led to the 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...

efl/esl textbooks have been regarded as essential language teaching materials with which the learners spend about 70 up to 90 percent of their class time. the important role they play and their vast use make them not only influential in learning the language but also in shaping values and attitudes. put it another way, textbooks socialize learners using their contents (i.e. texts, illustrations...

when we return to the concept of poetry and the age-old discussion about the uselessness or the usefulness of the poets to the private and public state of human beings, originating from plato and aristotles views about poets respectively, there emerges the question of the role of poetry in human beings lives. in the same manner, with the advance of technology and the daily progress and improvem...

the speech act of disagreement has been one of the speech acts that has received the least attention in the field of pragmatics. this study investigates the ways power relations, social distance, formality of the context, gender, and language proficiency (for efl learners) influence disagreement and politeness strategies. the participants of the study were 200 male and female native persian s...

with the growth of more humanistic approaches towards teaching foreign languages, more emphasis has been put on learners’ feelings, emotions and individual differences. one of the issues in teaching and learning english as a foreign language is demotivation. the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the components of language learning strategies, optimism, duration o...