abstract since heubners (1985) pioneering study, there have been many studies on (mis) use/ non-use of articles by l2 learners from article-less and article languages. the present study investigated how persian l2 learners of english produce and interpret english definite descriptions and demonstrative descriptions. it was assumed that definite and demonstrative descriptions share the same cen...

teachers beliefs have usually been left unattended in the realm of educational research in iranian context. one of those beliefs which seems to impact teachers performance in the classroom is their sense of self-efficacy, which refers to teachers belief in their ability to enhance student achievement and in bringing about positive learning outcomes. the present study aimed to investigate the pr...

the purpose of this study was to investigate iranian efl learners’ beliefs about the role of rote learning (rl) in vocabulary learning strategies; besides, the study examined if english proficiency would influence learners’ vocabulary learning strategy use. this study addresses the need for a clear understanding of the role of rl in efl vocabulary learning by looking at iranian efl learners’ ow...

this thesis is an evaluation of poetry of sylvia plath (1932- 1963) and forough farrokhzad (1935-1967) using feminist approach and finds the positive concepts of hope, reason and strength through feminine images in their poetry. plath and farrokhzad are from different cultures and different countries but they share the same concepts and themes in their poetry. by applying feminist theory to the...

the present research was conducted to accomplish two purposes. firstly, it aimed to explore and describe schematic structure or what halliday and hassan (1989, p.64) have called “generic structure potential” (gsp) of american english, iranian persian and iranian english newspaper editorials within systemic functional linguistics. secondly, a quantitative cross-comparison was made to investigate...

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...

acknowledgements i wish to express my gratitude to all those who have helped me in preparing this thesis. i would like to express my deep gratitude to my respected advisor dr. kourosh akef, whose advice and comments helped me in the early stages of the research and throughout the writing process. i would also like to express my gratitude to dr. hajar khanmohammad whose invaluable guidance he...

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...

supervisors play an undeniable role in training teachers, before starting their professional experience by preparing them, at the initial years of their teaching by checking their work within the proper framework, and later on during their teaching by assessing their progress. but surprisingly, exploring their attributes, professional demands, and qualifications has remained a neglected theme i...

although there are studies on pragmatic assessment, to date, literature has been almost silent about native and non-native english raters’ criteria for the assessment of efl learners’ pragmatic performance. focusing on this topic, this study pursued four purposes. the first one was to find criteria for rating the speech acts of apology and refusal in l2 by native and non-native english teachers...