according to coates’s (2004, as cited in zhang, 2010) definition of "conversational dominance" (p.111), it refers to the phenomenon of a speaker dominating others in interaction. specifically, it means how a speaker makes use of certain strategies to get the floor and maintain the floor. thus, the amount of talk is the main measurement for the dominance of the conversation. whether a speaker do...

the present study reports an analysis of response articles in four different disciplines in the social sciences, i.e., linguistics, english for specific purposes (esp), accounting, and psychology. the study has three phases: micro analysis, macro analysis, and e-mail interview. the results of the micro analysis indicate that a three-level linguistic pattern is used by the writers in order to cr...

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...

the present paper investigates how far ideologies can be tease out in discourse by examining the employed schemata by two ideologically opposed news media, the bbc and press tv, to report syria crisis during a period of nine months in 2011. by assuming that news is not a valuefree construction of facts and drawing on micro structural approach of schema theory, for the first time in discours...

wireless sensor networks (wsns) are one of the most interesting consequences of innovations in different areas of technology including wireless and mobile communications, networking, and sensor design. these networks are considered as a class of wireless networks which are constructed by a set of sensors. a large number of applications have been proposed for wsns. besides having numerous applic...

seismic retrofit strategies have been developed in the past few decades following the introduction of new seismic provisions and the availability of advanced materials and methods. it can be observed that new approaches to deal with more lateral forces are more innovative and more energy absorbent. in line with this, there is a growing trend toward the use of steel shear walls as a system with ...

deployable scissor type structures are composed of the so-called scissor-like elements (sles), which are connected to each other at an intermediate point through a pivotal connection and allow them to be folded into a compact bundle for storage or transport. several sles are connected to each other in order to form units with regular polygonal plan views. the sides and radii of the polygons are...

iv abstract this study examined the linguistic behaviors of two iranian efl teachers each of them teaching learners of two similar proficiency levels, a beginner level and an intermediate level, to investigate the relationship between the learners proficiency levels and the amounts and purposes for l1 use by the two teachers. the study was carried out to investigate whether there were differe...

this study attempts to investigate the effect of peers’ revision in comparison to that of the teacher, and whether peers’ comments and teachers’ comments facilitate students’ revision? if yes, which one is more effective? also attempts have been made to see which aspects of language are more highlighted by peers versus teachers when commenting. besides, it is investigating the student’s attitud...

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...