‏‎‏‎utopia has, for four centuries, accompanied that hope of progress and that striving for betterment. it now straggles against a widespread sense that this has been an illusion, or an impossible dream. the utopian idea can never entirely disappear, but utopia as a form of the social imagination has clearly weakened. if it cannot instill its vision in the public consciousness, the consequences...

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 experimental study has been conducted to test the effect of oral presentation on the development of l2 learners grammar. but this oral presentation is not merely a deductive instruction of grammatical points, in this presentation two hypotheses of krashen (input and low filter hypotheses), stevicks viewpoints on grammar explanation and correction and widdowsons opinion on limited use of l1...

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...

the quest for power has formed much of the world history especially in 20th and 21st centuries. oil (energy) particularly after industrial revolution has been a tool for conquest and power and has been transformed to a geopolitical issue. from a geopolitical point of view this has been the case for the last two centuries in central asia and caucasus. central asia and caucasus has always been...

the present study was an attempt to conduct a contrastive analysis between general english (ge) and english for specific purposes (esp) texts in terms of cohesion and cohesive devices. to this end, thirty texts from different esp and ge textbooks were randomly selected. then they were analyzed manually to find the frequency of cohesive devices. cohesive devices include reference, substitution, ...

abstract the present study was conducted to examine the effect of proficiency on students interaction while carrying out the grammar-based task(s) in collaboration. in particular, the study examines whether the level of proficiency affects the learners’ focus of attention to grammatical and lexical features. the study takes a further step and examines whether there is any difference in the use...

abstract this study aimed at investigating the possible relationship between self-assessment in writing and self-regulation of iranian efl learners. the main purpose of the study was not only to report and inform about this relationship, but also to investigate and find practical outcomes of the incorporation of self-assessment in writing, such as improving writing skill. the research was carr...