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...

this study investigates the strategies native english and persian speakers employ for expressing gratitude in different situations. the strategies of persian efl learners are also compared with english strategies in order to find the differences that may exist between these two languages. social status and size of imposition of the favor are social variables which are investigated in detail for...

this study was designed and conducted to find out if there is any significant relationship between iranian efl learners preferance for one of the three degrees of obtrusiveness in foreign language instruction (focus on form, forms and meaning) and their preferred experiential learing style. to collect the data two questionnaires were used. the first one on the degree of obtrusiveness and the se...

this study investigated the effects of manipulating the cognitive complexity of tasks along +/- few elements and the time limits on l2 learners writing performance. to conduct the study, 60 iranian efl learners with two levels of proficiency, low and high intermediate, were selected and assigned to three groups based on the time devoted to task completion. the participants performed both a simp...

in this study, the relationship between teachers’ creative and critical thinking skills and their reflectivity in teaching was investigated. to this end, three questions were raised. these questions were intended to determine whether there was a significant relationship between teachers’ creative thinking skills and their reflectivity in teaching; whether there was a significant relationship be...

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...

the present paper deals with criminal issues. for example, legal injunction on the necessity of returning a deposit has a legal nature and legal injunction on the punishment of those who breach the trust has a criminal nature. existing social issues are the basis of classification of some instances into the issue, some of which are based on variation and others on quality. therefore, the motiva...

this study was an attempt to investigate and compare the effect of lexical inferencing and concept mapping on developing vocabulary retention of iranian language learners. sixty homogeneous students from different intact classes who were being taught as intermediate learners in sokhan english institute participated in this study. they were in different classes. a teacher made test as a pre-test...

the current study aimed at investigating the relationship between motivation and test preparation strategies (tpss) used by iranian pre-university students in their preparation period for the university entrance exam (uee). due to the importance of uee in iran, this study also attempted to show its impact on these two important variables. to this end, 100 pre-university students in an iranian p...

while performance-based language assessment has led to an increased authenticity and content validity in the practice of writing assessment, the reliability of ratings has become a major issue. research findings have shown different reactions by native english speaker (nes) and non-native english speaker (nns) teachers to students’ writings. the focus of this study is on investigating whether i...