Discourse markers improve both the quality and comprehension of a written text. This study aimed at investigating the effect of explicit and implicit instruction of formal meta-discourse markers on writ- ing skills. The quantitative data were collected from 90 upper-intermediate students at Shiraz Univer- sity Language Center. Two experimental groups went through an instruction, while the contr...

the present study investigated comparatively the impact of two types of input enhancement (i.e. textual vs. compound enhancement) on developing grammar ability in iranian efl setting. sixty-five female secondary high school students were selected as a homogenous sample out of about a 100-member population based on nelson language proficiency test. then, their grammar ability was measured based ...

This study investigated the effectiveness of explicit pragmatic instruction on the acquisition of requests by college-level English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners in Taiwan. The goal was to determine first whether the use of explicit pragmatic instruction had a positive effect on EFL learners’ pragmatic competence. Second, the relative effectiveness of presenting pragmatics through two deli...

The authors adapted an experimental design to examine effects of instruction prior to entry into a children's museum exhibit on caregiver-child interactions and children's learning. One hundred twenty-one children (mean age = 6.6 years) and their caregivers were randomly assigned to 1 of 5 conditions that varied according to what, if any, preexhibit instruction the dyads received: (a) building ...

originating from vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, dynamic assessment (da) proposes a novel approach to second language acquisition (sla) research according to which a dialectical relationship is envisaged between instruction and assessment. although da has been applied to some areas of sla, there are areas, such as interlanguage pragmatics (ilp), that have been neglected.  to address the issue,...

The current study sought to explore the impact of SFL-oriented register instruction on Iranian EFL learner’ writing performance with a central focus on their English proficiency level. As its secondary aim, the study delved deeply into the learners’ perception of the register-based instruction. To these ends, 50 intermediate and 50 advanced Iranian EFL learners were selected randomly and assign...

The author presents a simple technique for teaching the Cournot model to first-year students. The approach involves demonstrating to the students that out of all rectangles with a common perimeter, the square has the greatest area. No use is made of derivatives. The same approach can be used to understand some other market forms.

The present study aimed to examine and compare the impact of teaching economic terms through etymological elaboration with three more conventional methods of vocabulary instruction in ESP courses in Iran, that is, teaching through contextual definitions, L1 translation, and implicit instruction on the learners' general comprehension of economic texts and their understanding of author's opinion....

A huge application domain, in particular, wireless and handheld devices strongly requires flexible and powerefficient hardware with high performance. This can only be achieved with Application Specific Instruction-Set Processors (ASIPs). A key problem is to determine the instruction encoding of the processors for achieving minimum power consumption in the instruction bus and in the instruction ...