over the past decades a number of approaches have been applied for forecasting mortality. in 1992, a new method for long-run forecast of the level and age pattern of mortality was published by lee and carter. this method was welcomed by many authors so it was extended through a wider class of generalized, parametric and nonlinear model. this model represents one of the most influential recent d...

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...

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...

testing plays a vital role in any language teaching program. it allows teachers and stakeholders, including program administrators, parents, admissions officers and prospective employers to be assured that the learners are progressing according to an accepted standard (douglas, 2010). the problems currently facing language testers have both practical and theoretical implications but the first i...

a significant problem in multicarrier communication systems is the necessity to reduce the value of papr (peak-to-average power ratio) of transmitting signal. in this thesis we study the effect of the system parameters such as coding and modulation types on papr and ultimate ber in a mc-cdma system. in this study we consider fading channel as well as the nonlinearity of transmitter’s amplifier ...

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...

abstract the aim of the present study is to explore the impact of the cognitive reading strategy instruction on learners reading self-efficacy and their reading achievement. in order to fulfill this purpose, from 120 participants, 90 intermediate efl learners as an experimental group were chosen from three different educational settings namely, yazd university, yazd science and art un...

this study investigates the strategies native english and persian speakers employ for expressing gratitude in different situations. the strategies of persian efl learners are also compared with english strategies in order to find the differences that may exist between these two languages. social status and size of imposition of the favor are social variables which are investigated in detail for...

abstract this study aimed at investigating the effect of bilingual teaching of cognate words (persian-english) on iranian upper intermediate efl learners’ knowledge of lexical development. for this purpose,100 subjects participated in this study out of which 40 learners were selected for this study and they were assigned into two groups, control and experimental. cross-language cognates (wor...

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...