abstract the main purpose of this study was to investigate whether there was any significant difference between the speaking achievement of learners who were trained by means of consciousness raising of sociolinguistic skills and that of learners who were trained without the above mentioned task. the participants of this study consist of 60 intermediate level students participating languag...

learning-oriented assessment seeks to emphasise that a fundamental purpose of assessment should be to promote learning. it mirrors formative assessment and assessment for learning processes. it can be defined as actions undertaken by teachers and / or students, which provide feedback for the improvement of teaching and learning. it also contrasts with equally important measurement-focused appro...

the importance of writing as a complex skill in applied linguistics has drawn the attention of many researchers to evaluate textbooks in order to help learners gain self-sufficiency and autonomy in the field of language use and communication. investigations have shown that developments in textbooks evaluation can promote the quality of pedagogies and consequently the learning. this study attemp...

abstract target-oriented approaches to translation studies are regarded as recent theories of translation. one of the most famous theories among these approaches is descriptive translation studies presented by toury (1995). this theory gives a new dimension to translation studies and gives importance to the descriptive rather than prescriptive studies. it also identifies three sets of transla...

the present dissertation aims to investigate four-word lexical bundles in applied linguistics research articles by iranian and internationally-published writers. the aims of this study are two-fold: first of all, attempts have been made to create a comprehensive list of the most commonly used four-word lexical bundles categorized by their type and token frequency, their structural characteristi...

the present study aimed at exploring cognitions of iranian english teachers within the context of english for academic purposes (eap). to this end, the cognitions of two groups of eap teachers with respect to their pedagogical content knowledge (pck) and their sense of professional identity (pi) were probed. two language teachers and two content instructors who had at least five years of eap te...

abstract since heubners (1985) pioneering study, there have been many studies on (mis) use/ non-use of articles by l2 learners from article-less and article languages. the present study investigated how persian l2 learners of english produce and interpret english definite descriptions and demonstrative descriptions. it was assumed that definite and demonstrative descriptions share the same cen...

this study aimed at examining the effects of iranian efl learners’ anxiety, ambiguity tolerance, and gender on their preferences for corrective feedback (cf, henceforth). the effects were sought with regard to the necessity, frequency, and timing of cf, types of errors that need to be treated, types of cf, and choice of correctors. seventy-five iranian efl students, twenty-eight males and forty...

there are two major theories of measurement in psychometrics: classical test theory (ctt) and item-response theory (irt). despite its widespread and long use, ctt has a number of shortcomings, which make it problematic to be used for practical and theoretical purposes. irt tries to solve these shortcomings, and provide better and more dependable answers. one of the applications of irt is the as...

teachers beliefs have usually been left unattended in the realm of educational research in iranian context. one of those beliefs which seems to impact teachers performance in the classroom is their sense of self-efficacy, which refers to teachers belief in their ability to enhance student achievement and in bringing about positive learning outcomes. the present study aimed to investigate the pr...