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...

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 following innovations in the field of elt, a new topic which has recently attracted a lot of attention is metaphor analysis. although this area of research is still in its infancy in elt, it seems that the idea can shed more light on the puzzle of english language learning and teaching. therefore, the major aim of this study is to analyze language learning and teaching in formal a...

this study was carried out to investigate the effects of integrative vs. instrumental motivation, learning strategy use and gender on iranian efl learners. to this end, 120 efl learners both male and female majoring in english language and literature at shiraz university participated in the study. in order to conduct this study three instruments were used: oxford quick placement test, motivatio...

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 ...

abstract this study examined the relationship between noticing pronunciation and the improvement pronunciation by administering a 50 item story, as proficiency- test in order to investigate the effectiveness of noticing pronunciation on the improvement of pronunciation. accordingly 60 qualified students were selected and assigned to the two groups of experimental and control randomly, each gr...

the purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of blended learning and multimedia softwares on iranian efl students vocabulary learning. in addition, the present study tried to examine the extent to which multimedia softwares can be applied into efl classes in iran. it also attempted to find out students attitudes toward using these softwares. to this end, 87 iranian efl learners at el...

hydrochlorothiazide (hct) is a diuretic agent which is shown to be effective in the treatment of hypertension. literature reports have demonstrated that urinary excretion data may be used to assess the bioavailability of various formulations containing this thiazide. also hct consumption by the athletes is one of the drugs which should be regulated by world anti-doping agency (wada), because of...

increasing academic and professional language demands around the world are not a deniable fact. the purpose of this study was to investigate english language needs and communication needs of the chemistry students at master and ph.d. levels at the iranian universities. in this research, different methods were used including un-structured interview, structured interview, and two sets of question...

from 1950s onward, new theories and critical approaches burgeoned across humanities. these theories were context-oriented; as a result, the analysis of discursive practices gained significance. thus, social, political, historical and cultural discourses that have been hitherto marginalized and considered inferior to literary texts, were introduced as important texts to be analyzed by critics. o...