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...

the following question poped up: is there any relationship between iranian high school efl learners reading comprehension and listening comprehension? then the following null hypothesis (ho) was developed to the test the above, mentioned question. "there is no relationship between high school efl learners reading comprehension and listening comprehension. for nearly 16 weeks, the experimental g...

this study was conducted to investigate the impact of podcasts as a learning and teaching tool on iranian efl learners’ motivation for listening as well as on their listening comprehension ability. the study also investigated the learners’ perception towards listening to podcasts and examined whether the learners were likely to accept podcasts. out of fifty-five intermediate learners studying e...

abstract: research purpose: the purpose of this research is to identify academic databases assessment factors and criteria at law and political science majors. the necessity of this research is to distinguish academic databases assessment factors and criteria and to identify the most important ones and rank them in order to select an appropriate database according to students’ and faculty memb...

abstract: the present study is about prophet ishmael, some parts of his life; his personality in the quran and the bible; and the comparison of the content of these two religious books. compilation of the study has been done with a new perspective and new presentation approach. since prophets have been human beings’ role model and their life has been a perfect example for humanity in all ages,...

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...

this study investigated the effects of manipulating the cognitive complexity of tasks along +/- few elements and the time limits on l2 learners writing performance. to conduct the study, 60 iranian efl learners with two levels of proficiency, low and high intermediate, were selected and assigned to three groups based on the time devoted to task completion. the participants performed both a simp...

the present study is an attempt to investigate the potential impact of inspirational quotes on improving english abstract vocabulary recall. to achieve this goal, a multiple choice language proficiency test of 60 items including vocabulary and grammar component was administered to a sample of 63 second-semester male and female students whose age ranged between 17 to 22 and they were studying en...

hedging is a multi-purpose rhetorical strategy which is usually used in scientific arguments to secure ratification of claims, reduce the risk of negation, avoid conflict, manage disagreement and leave room for the audience to assess presented information. hedges are frequently used in research articles to mitigate the findings of research endeavors. the present research aims to investigate the...

abstract previous studies on willingness to communicate (wtc) have shown the influence of many individual or situational factors on students’ tendency to engage in classroom communication, in which wtc has been viewed either at the trait-level or situational level. however, due to the complexity of the notion of willingness to communicate, the present study suggests that these two strands are ...