this thesis attempts to investigate the effects of prelistening activities on enhancing iranian efl learners` listening comprehension. the present study investigated ways in which learners` background knowledge could be activated in order to enhance their l2 listening comprehension by limiting the number of possible text interpretations prior to listening. the experiments conducted in this stud...

it is not possible to understand developments of a country’s culture and civilization without knowing his believes and myths. whether it is north or south, east or west, planes or mountains, sahara or deserts, here in iran every corner includes valuable and precious treasures which are known all over the world, and cultural – historical objects which are found here adorn all well known museums...

the construct of self-efficacy has received increasing attention in research over the past two decades. many studies have been carried out 1.3 significance of the study this study has pedagogical implications since improving students’ self- efficacy and autonomy is important for promoting actual performance on classroom academic tasks. in academic settings, it has been shown that self-effi...

phatic communion is a cultural concept which differs across cultures. according to hofstede (2001), the u.s. tends to have individualistic culture; however, asian countries tend to have collectivistic cultures. these cultures view phatic communion differently. in individualistic cultures like u.s., phatic communion reflects speakers’ socio-cultural relationships in conversations. to see whether...

teachers’ beliefs greatly influence their performance in the classroom, their choice of instructional strategies, their way of controlling the class, their dealing with the students, and their general goals and objectives. one of these beliefs is teachers’ sense of efficacy which is viewed as an important construct and has shown to be positively correlated with students’ achievement (ross, 1992...

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...

since the 1960s the age effects on learning both first and second language have been explored by many linguists and applied linguists (e.g lennerberg, 1967; schachter, 1996; long, 1990) and the existence of critical period for language acquisition was found to be a common ground of all these studies. in spite of some common findings, some issues about the impacts of age on acquiring a second or...

monumental changes occurring on a daily basis have altered the world into a global village of expanding technology and shrinking geography in which preparing language learners for intercultural communication seems to be a sine qua non for modern language education. employing a cross-sectional design in its first phase, this study investigated the intercultural sensitivity and language proficien...

the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of task repetition on accuracy of iranian efl learners ’speaking ability. in order to achieve this purpose, a null hypothesis was developed: there is no statistically significant difference between accuracy speaking ability in iranian efl learners by use of task repetition. ; of course i should mention that, beside this null hypothesis, an...

1.0 overview it seems that grammar plays a crucial role in the area of second and foreign language learning and widely has been acknowledged in grammar research. in other words, teaching grammar is an issue which has attracted much attention to itself, and a lot of teachers argue about the existence of grammar in language teaching and learning. this issue will remind us a famous sentence f...