One important issue that any material or test designer should bear in mind is to be careful about developing teaching and testing reading materials which would not be to the benefit of a group of readers or examinees and to the detriment of some others. One of the factors which may cause difference between the performances of English learners or test takers is the selection of reading tests wit...

Abstract The present study was an attempt to investigate the effect of IT system-based instruction vs. traditional instruction of teaching English on Iranian low-intermediate EFL learners’ reading comprehension ability in a smart school in Tonekabon, Mazandaran, Iran. To collect the data, 60 low-intermediate high school learners took part in the study. As to the homogeneity of the participants,...

The current article was an attempt to investigate the effect of semantic mapping strategy instruction on reading comprehension performance of EFL learners. To this end, thirty homogeneous Iranian intermediate EFL learners attending a language school in Bonab, Iran, were randomly assigned to two groups, one as the experimental and the other as the control. The experimental group received instruc...

This study considered the sociological explanation of critical thinking on teaching reading skill among young Iranian pre-intermediate EFL learners. For this purpose, 40 pre-intermediate learners, 19-30 years old, were chosen after administering a non-probability sampling design from classes at Foreign Language Institute in Babol. These 40 participants were randomly allocated to two groups (one...

Objectives: Stuttering is one of the most prevalent speech and language disorders. Symptomology of stuttering has been surveyed from different aspects such as biological, developmental, environmental, emotional, learning and linguistic. Previous researches in English-speaking people have suggested that some linguistic features such as word meanings may play a role in the frequency of speech non...

The present quasi-experimental study mainly investigates the role of literature as input for reading comprehension in Iranian EFL classrooms. To be more exact, it investigates the effects of authentic and simplified literary texts on the reading comprehension of Iranian advanced EFL learners. The participants were 35 male and female Iranian EFL learners who were at advanced level, studying in a...

BACKGROUND An intense, 30-year, ongoing biodiversity inventory of Lepidoptera, together with their food plants and parasitoids, is centered on the rearing of wild-caught caterpillars in the 120,000 terrestrial hectares of dry, rain, and cloud forest of Area de Conservacion Guanacaste (ACG) in northwestern Costa Rica. Since 2003, DNA barcoding of all species has aided their identification and di...

In a critique of my views on Marcuse’s relation to phenomenology, John Abromeit claims that Marcuse’s borrowings from Heidegger and Husserl are limited to the notion that modern science and technology are not neutral but are biased toward the domination of nature.2Abromeit thinks I exaggerate the importance of phenomenology for Marcuse in claiming more than this. Rather than replying to the det...