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...

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...

in the past couple of decades sociocultural theory of sla and its implications in efl contexts have attracted attentions of research circles worldwide and aroused some controversies. firth and wagner (1997) have questioned the principles of the cognitive view which gives importance to mental constructs in favor of sociocultural view which highlights social and contextual constructs. but if soci...

methodology non-native participants in this study were sixty ba students majoring in english literature and teaching english as a foreign language at khayyam university of mashhad. they were senior students, between 21 to 24 years old, who had studied english for at least three and a half years and had passed several courses including grammar, reading, conversation, and writing. this was assum...

data envelopment analysis (dea) is a powerful tool for measuring relative efficiency of organizational units referred to as decision making units (dmus). in most cases dmus have network structures with internal linking activities. traditional dea models, however, consider dmus as black boxes with no regard to their linking activities and therefore do not provide decision makers with the reasons...

the purpose of this study was to examine the status of supervision on departments’ heads at ferdowsi university of mashhad (fum) and realize some applied themes to provide a fit model for supervising departments’ heads in fum. the method was case study under a research category aimed for applied one. using purposive sampling, interviews were conducted with top fum managers, head departments, an...

the purpose of this study was to examine the comparative effect of story retelling and role playing on efl learners’ vocabulary learning and reading comprehension. to carry out the purpose of the study 90 female learners of tabarestan language school located in noshahr were non-randomly selected. they took pet test and among these 90 participants 62 students were selected as homogenous learners...

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. ...

abstract in first part of this project, the use of a new and biguanid-like catalyst supported on silica as a recyclable catalyst provides a new route for the synthesis of a variety of arylalkylidene rhodanine derivatives through knoevenagle reaction in at present of solvent at room temperature. rhodanine derivatives and especially arylalkylidene rhodanines have proven to be attractive compound...

among the low–dimensional allotropes of carbon, nanotubes and graphene have attracted very much attention from nano–science and nanotechnology specialists. they have been proposed as building blocks in nanometer device engineering. however, these structures are not defect–free. in this thesis, we focused on defective carbon nanotubes and graphene, and studied the effect of couple of very common...