the field of elt is constantly witnessing the introduction of new instructional approaches: one such perhaps recent initiative is critical discourse analysis (cda). accordingly, the present study was an attempt to investigate the impact of cda instruction on iranian efl learners’ descriptive and argumentative writing ability. to fulfill the aforementioned purpose, a sample toefl was primarily p...

background: malnutrition is an important factor in the survival of critically ill patients. the purpose of the present study was to assess the nutritional status of patients in the intensive care unit (icu) on the days of admission and discharge via a detailed nutritional assessment.  methods: totally, 125 patients were followed up from admission to discharge at 8icus in shiraz, iran. the patie...

second-language (l2) acquisition is generally thought to be constrained by maturational factors that circumscribe a critical period for native-like attainment. consistent with the maturational view are age effects among learners who begin l2 acquisition prior to, but not after, closure of the putative critical period. some studies indicate that native-like acquisition of a second language by le...

the global spread of english, co-occurring with globalization, has generated new views towards some issues in english language teaching, one of which being the place of home culture versus foreign language culture in english language classes. the following study aimed to compare the viewpoint of three groups, i.e. language teachers, language learners and parents regarding the role of home cultu...

Glenn Fulcher is the Professor of Applied Linguistics and Language Assessment in the English Department at the University of Leicester, UK. He got his PhD in Applied Linguistics and Language Testing from Lancaster University (1993) and his MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Birmingham (1987). Professor Fulcher has been the editor of Sage's Language Testing (2006-2015) and an influ...

self-assessment helps learners to acquire self-confidence and gives them insightfulfeedbacks. there is no valid self-assessment inventory for learners of english foracademic purposes (eap). this study aimed at developing an academicallyappropriate instrument to measure tertiary students’ english in academic situations.the study used both qualitative and quantitative methods in developing the se...

We test the hypothesis that critical point dynamics precedes strong earthquakes in a region surrounding the future hypocenter. Therefore, we search systematically for regions obeying critical point dynamics in terms of a growing spatial correlation length (GCL). The question of whether or not these spatial patterns are correlated with future seismicity is crucial for the problem of predictabili...

background: finding the right word is a necessity in communication, and its evaluation has always been a challenging clinical issue, suggesting the need for valid and reliable measurements. the homophone meaning generation test (hmgt) can measure the ability to switch between verbal concepts, which is required in word retrieval. the purpose of this study was to adapt and validate the persian ve...

The present paper deals with the national specifics of the assessment aspect in the meaning of the words. A modern scientific paradigm considers the language as a cognitive tool of understanding the world and keeping and representing people’s experience and values which reflect the people’s vision of the world (“the world picture). Usually linguistics understands the language ...

The current study aimed at examining the relationship between English language teachers’ assessment literacy and their teaching experience. In other words, it intended to inspect the relationship between native and non-native English language teachers’ assessment literacy and their teaching experience. To achieve such goals, 100 native and non-native English teachers from ESL and EFL contexts w...