according to cheng (1999), in recent esl/efl literature, asian (especially east asian) learners of english as a foreign/second language have been arguably reported as reticent and passive learners. the most common allegations are that these students are reluctant to participate in classroom discourse; they are unwilling to give responses; they do not ask questions; and they are passive and over...

critical thinking ability has an important role in education. accordingly, scholars around the world are searching for new ways for teaching and improving students critical thinking ability. in line with the studies in efl contexts supporting the positive relationship between critical thinking and writing performances, this study investigated the differential effects of halverson’s critical thi...

in the first part of this thesis we explored wetting and its dynamics for small droplets. first, we showed how a simple feature of water droplets on a surface, i.e. laplace pressure, can be exploited to build a micropump. we investigated capillary pumping in microchannels both experimentally and numerically. putting two droplets of different sizes at the in/outlet of a microchannel, will ge...

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...

esl/efl books play a crucial role in shaping language learners worldview of gender roles in society. the present study investigated the status of sexism in two sets of efl textbooks, one developed by non-native iranian authors (ili series) and the other by native authors (top notch series). first, two books from each series was selected randomly. then, a quantitative analysis was carried out wi...

simplification universal as a universal feature of translation means translated texts tend to use simpler language than original texts in the same language and it can be critically investigated through common concepts: type/token ratio, lexical density, and mean sentence length. although steps have been taken to test this hypothesis in various text types in different linguistic communities, in ...

this study examines the effetivenss of task-based activities in helping students learn english language structures for a better communication. initially, a michigan test was administered to the two groups of 52 students majoring in english at the allameh ghotb -e- ravandi university to ensure their homogeneity. the students scores on the grammar part of this test were also regarded as their pre...

abstract poor reading comprehension can result in failure in using references, benefiting from professional gatherings and resources, keeping up with the growing body of knowledge in the virtual world of the internet, and failing to achieve in efl programs. the purpose of the present quasi-experimental study was to explore the effects of background knowledge and previewing narrative and expos...

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...

abstract this quasi-experimental study was aimed at examining the impact of storyline complexity on the grammatical accuracy and complexity of advanced and intermediate efl learners. a total of 65 advanced and intermediate efl learners were selected from iran language institute (ili). an intact group including 35 intermediate participants and another intact group with 30 advanced participants ...