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...

the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of task repetition on accuracy of iranian efl learners ’speaking ability. in order to achieve this purpose, a null hypothesis was developed: there is no statistically significant difference between accuracy speaking ability in iranian efl learners by use of task repetition. ; of course i should mention that, beside this null hypothesis, an...

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...

bserved by many teachers that most of the time, mumbling and searching for their intended words, students complain why they have forgotten the words they have learned in the previous semesters. they ask for some new ways that may help them to recall and apply the learned words more efficiently, since as they declare one of the most important skills in foreign language learning is having a g...

abstract the variables affecting the nature of reading comprehension can be classified into two general categories: reader’s variables, and text variables (alderson, 2000). despite the wave of research on vocabulary knowledge as reader’s variable, the role of this knowledge in c-test as a text-dependent test and its interaction with lexical cohesion of the test as a text feature has remained a...

the present study sought to investigate the impact of using mind-mapping technique instruction on female elementary efl learners reading comprehension; it also investigated their attitudes towards using mind-mapping technique as a tool to improve their reading comprehension. this study followed a quasi-experimental design with two intact groups as experimental, and control groups. the participa...

this exploratory study aimed to investigate a possible relationship between learners’ beliefs about language learning and one of their personality traits; that is,locus of control (loc). both variables, beliefs and locus of control, are assumed to influence the language learning process. the internal control index (ici) and the beliefs about language learning inventory (balli) were administered...

in the past couple of decades sociocultural theory of sla and its implications in efl contexts have attracted attentions of research circles worldwide and aroused some controversies. firth and wagner (1997) have questioned the principles of the cognitive view which gives importance to mental constructs in favor of sociocultural view which highlights social and contextual constructs. but if soci...

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 study investigated (a) the learners’ existing reading strategy repertoire, (b) the effect of instruction in reading strategies on learners’ strategic performance, and (c) the effect of explicit instruction in top-down reading strategies on reading comprehension ability of intermediate learners. the study was conducted with 40 intermediate efl learners in two groups of experimental and cont...