previous studies have aimed at testing a hypothesis but the present study is data-first research in which researcher tries to form a theory from data rather than the use of data to test a hypothesis. this study aims at exploring teachers perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of the current syllabus for college preparatory course. eight experienced teachers were selected to collect data du...

the present study sought to investigate the impact of using mind-mapping technique instruction on female elementary efl learners reading comprehension; it also investigated their attitudes towards using mind-mapping technique as a tool to improve their reading comprehension. this study followed a quasi-experimental design with two intact groups as experimental, and control groups. the participa...

this studyinvestigated therelations between examinees’ academic knowledge and theirperformanceonreading section of ielts and toefl (ibt) through using generalizabilitytheory. g-theory was utilized to investigate the effects of subtest, test items, participants and academic background on the reliability of ielts and toefl (ibt) score. tosamplethe subjectsofthissurvey,a placement testwasadministe...

the rationale behind the present study is that particular learning strategies produce more effective results when applied together. the present study tried to investigate the efficiency of the semantic-context strategy alone with a technique called, keyword method. to clarify the point, the current study seeked to find answer to the following question: are the keyword and semantic-context metho...

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...

?it is of utmost priority for an experienced teacher to train the mind of the students, and enable them to think critically and correctly. the most important question here is that how to develop such a crucial ability? this study examines a new way to the development of critical thinking utilizing critical discourse analytical tools. to attain this goal, two classes of senior english la...