phatic communion is a cultural concept which differs across cultures. according to hofstede (2001), the u.s. tends to have individualistic culture; however, asian countries tend to have collectivistic cultures. these cultures view phatic communion differently. in individualistic cultures like u.s., phatic communion reflects speakers’ socio-cultural relationships in conversations. to see whether...

gol-e-gohar iron ore mine of sirjan in southern part of iran is a large open pit that operates below the groundwater table and during mining operation, dewatering is required to prevent operation processes from flooding. current operation is going on by digging wells in or out of the pit and pumping to prevent flooding. as a result of the former dewatering operation a vast deep cone of depressi...

abstract tasks nowadays are at the center of attention in sla research. task types is one of the critical issues in this regard, their effectiveness and suitability to any particular context, their characteristics and the result they yield are among some of these issues. on the other hand, discourse markers (dms) have been very much investigated and their effectiveness in conveying the meaning...

the purpose of this two-phase, sequential mixed methods study was to find out whether there were any decencies between male and female ma students’ theses regarding the common features of academic writing such as syntactic complexity, means of integrating cited information, and organizing arguments. i chose 10 male written theses and 15 female written theses in tefl and linguistics. in the firs...

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...

this study was conducted to investigate the impact of portfolio assessment as a process-oriented assessment mechanism on iranian efl students’ english writing and its subskills of focus, elaboration, organization, conventions, and vocabulary. out of ninety juniors majoring in english literature and translation at the university of isfahan, sixty one of them who were at the same level of writing...

the issue of curriculum and syllabus evaluation and revision has been in center of attention right from when curriculum came into attention of educational institutions. thus everywhere in the world in educational institutions curricula and syllabi are evaluated and revised based on the goals, the needs, existing content, etc.. in iran any curriculum is designed in a committee of specialists and...

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 ...

according to cheng (1999), in recent esl/efl literature, asian (especially east asian) learners of english as a foreign/second language have been arguably reported as reticent and passive learners. the most common allegations are that these students are reluctant to participate in classroom discourse; they are unwilling to give responses; they do not ask questions; and they are passive and over...

this study investigated the potential role of age in inductive and deductive grammar learning among iranian foreign language learners. the experimental population consisted of our randomly selected samples including two groups of children (with age of exposure to english within 8-13), and two groups of adults (with age of exposure to english within 11-13). thus, the comparison was between ch...