the aim of the present study was to investigate the frequency and the type of discourse markers used in the argumentative and expository writings of iranian efl learners and the differences between these text features in the two essay genres. the study also aimed at examining the influence of the use of discourse markers on the participants’ writing quality. to this end the discourse markers us...

abstract: advertisements are the most accessible type of authentic materials, and this is one reason why they are used more and more in english teaching classes. for this cause, studies in the field of advertisements are very widespread nowadays. for pun is one aspect which makes advertisements more interesting, it is used more than before in advertisements. use of puns makes an advertisement m...

learning-oriented assessment seeks to emphasise that a fundamental purpose of assessment should be to promote learning. it mirrors formative assessment and assessment for learning processes. it can be defined as actions undertaken by teachers and / or students, which provide feedback for the improvement of teaching and learning. it also contrasts with equally important measurement-focused appro...

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...

regarding the ever evolving and improving world on different aspects of knowledge, the need to a worldwide communication would emerge stronger than ever before which calls for special attention on the judgments and best choices for intermediating between the nations. as the language skills for translation are tested separately from translation skills themselves, to assess translation skills pro...

this study investigated how group formation method, namely student-selected vs. teacher-assigned, influences the results of the community model of teaching creative writing; i.e., group dynamics and group outcome (the quality of performance). the study adopted an experimental comparison group and microgenetic research design to observe the change process over a relatively short period of time. ...

the purpose of this study is identifying effective factors which make customers shop online in iran and investigating the importance of discovered factors in online customers’ decision. in the identifying phase, to discover the factors affecting online shopping behavior of customers in iran, the derived reference model summarizing antecedents of online shopping proposed by change et al. was us...

nowadays in trade and economic issues, prediction is proposed as the most important branch of science. existence of effective variables, caused various sectors of the economic and business executives to prefer having mechanisms which can be used in their decisions. in recent years, several advances have led to various challenges in the science of forecasting. economical managers in various fi...

abstract i the purpose of this study was to launch a thorough investigation concerning the possibility of differing orientations to the writing proficiency construct by native and non-native english speaking teacher raters. it mainly revolved around the international english language testing system (ielts) that is widely administered and employed as a measure of general proficiency in englis...

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...