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 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...

in this study, scour of mashkid bridge pier located in mashkid river of saravan county has been studied and to measure the scour rate, the numerical model hec-ras 4.0 has been used. upon selection of mashkid river as the case study and whereas the studied zone is important with respect to the climatic conditions and showery monsoon raining and flowing the great and destructive floodwaters, ther...

the present study aimed at investigating how different news agencies using the concept of legitimation/delegitimation represent the same event differently. to this end, van leeuwens (2008) legitimatory/delegitimatory framework was applied to the data gleaned from the iranian state-run news agency fars news, british state-run news agency bbc, and also american state-run news agency voa. the resu...

the study reflected in this thesis aims at finding out relationships between critical thinking (ct), and the reading sections of tofel and ielts tests. the study tries to find any relationships between the ct ability of students and their performance on reading tests of tofel and academic ielts. however, no research has ever been conducted to investigate the relationship between ct and the read...

the present study has tried to accomplish an analysis of margaret atwood’s novels oryx and crake, and the year of the flood in the light of posthuman and cyborg theories. considering posthumanism as a critical reading of some notions of humanism focus of which in this thesis has been identity, new definitions for humanity and human identity are formed. haraway’s cyborg, as one possible new figu...

the construct of self-efficacy has received increasing attention in research over the past two decades. many studies have been carried out 1.3 significance of the study this study has pedagogical implications since improving students’ self- efficacy and autonomy is important for promoting actual performance on classroom academic tasks. in academic settings, it has been shown that self-effi...

the main purpose of this study was to investigate any relationship between high school efl teachers metaphorical understandings of their role in class and their self-efficacy beliefs. teachers metaphors were elicited through two different prompts: one picturing what they believed a language teacher should be like in class, and the other demonstrating what they are actually like in class; such...

one very decisive factor in students’ academic destiny is the result they get at final term examinations. because of its importance, both students and teachers are curiously anxious about them. as normally it is the case, these final term tests are prepared hurriedly in short time by teachers which result in students’ dissatisfaction, complaining on how the test was different from their expecta...

this study sought to examine the effect of cooperative game on iranian students achievements in english alphabet learning. cooperative games are games, in which players or teams work together towards a common goal without defeating someone. the methodology used in this study was experimental. the population of the study was 60 female students from the grade one in secondary school in tabriz, ir...