English intonation can be difficult for L2 speakers to learn, particularly for those whose L1 intonation system works differently from English. This study investigates whether Hong Kong English (HKE) speakers whose L1 is Cantonese have knowledge of the appropriate English intonation patterns in specific contexts. Results from an intonation pattern selection tasks indicate that HKE speakers (n =...

washback refers to the influence of a test on teaching and learning. this study was an attempt to compare the influence of ielts and toefl ibt on the expectations the students brought to their courses and to investigate how these expectations were fulfilled. to this end, 100 ielts and 120 toefl ibt students attending preparation courses took a questionnaire survey, and a sample of their ten cla...

The objective of this research is to design an approach for selecting appropriate raw materials for facial tissues in Iran. There are three possibilities to maintain raw materials: (1) imported virgin pulp; (2) bagasse (sugar cane residue) plus some imported raw materials; and (3) recycled paper plus some imported raw materials. Owing to the shortage of raw materials as well as the high rate of...

As an important long-term incentive mode, the equity incentive promotes the managers to contribute to the interest uniformity of managers and shareholders. By using Paired-Samples T test methods and regression analysis method and choosing companies that issued the equity incentive plan in 2007 as the sample, this paper comparatively analyzes the differences in the performance of companies befor...

being very dynamic, natural and artificial land features are changing somewhat rapidly in over lifetime. it is important that such changes be inventoried accurately so that the physical and human processes at work can be more fully understood. change detection is a technique used in remote sensing to determine the changes in a particular object of study between two or more time periods. this re...

C) Figure 2: The Refine and Abstract operations.

We present an empirical study on the variation of accent type and of context on pragmatic focus interpretation. The material was based on audio-recordings of nine German speakers who were instructed to read dialogues with embedded questionanswer pairs in which the answers constituted the pragmatic focus of the utterance. Different accent types occurred for marking the focus constituent. The aud...