while performance-based language assessment has led to an increased authenticity and content validity in the practice of writing assessment, the reliability of ratings has become a major issue. research findings have shown different reactions by native english speaker (nes) and non-native english speaker (nns) teachers to students’ writings. the focus of this study is on investigating whether i...

this study examined the effects of collaborative strategic reading and direct instruction in persuasion on iranian high school students persuasive writing and attitudes. students in three intact classes were assigned to one of three treatment conditions: collaborative strategic reading and direct instruction in persuasion or direct instruction in persuasion or a control group. treatment effects...

data envelopment analysis (dea) is a powerful tool for measuring relative efficiency of organizational units referred to as decision making units (dmus). in most cases dmus have network structures with internal linking activities. traditional dea models, however, consider dmus as black boxes with no regard to their linking activities and therefore do not provide decision makers with the reasons...

plagiarism in esl/efl learning contexts has been established as a dynamic and multi-layered phenomenon and has become a topic engaging many researchers in a heated debate in recent years. comparisons of student-generated texts with their source texts have shown that students rely on source texts in their writings and copying is a major strategy used by both l1 and l2 writers. in our country a...

the purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of blended learning and multimedia softwares on iranian efl students vocabulary learning. in addition, the present study tried to examine the extent to which multimedia softwares can be applied into efl classes in iran. it also attempted to find out students attitudes toward using these softwares. to this end, 87 iranian efl learners at el...

acknowledgements i wish to express my gratitude to all those who have helped me in preparing this thesis. i would like to express my deep gratitude to my respected advisor dr. kourosh akef, whose advice and comments helped me in the early stages of the research and throughout the writing process. i would also like to express my gratitude to dr. hajar khanmohammad whose invaluable guidance he...

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...

in fact, this study focused on the following questions: 1. is there any difference between the effect of functional/notional approach and the structural approaches to language teaching on the proficiency test of efl learners? 2. can a rather innovative language test referred to as "functional test" ge devised so so to measure the proficiency test of efl learners, and thus be as much reliable an...

run-out-table (rot) is located between last finishing stand and down coiler in a hot strip mill. as the hot steel strip passes from rot, water jets impact on it from top and bottom and strip temperature decreases approximately from 800-950 °c to 500-750°c. the temperature history that strip experience while passing through rot affects significantly the metallurgical and mechanical properties, s...

this study investigated how group formation method, namely student-selected vs. teacher-assigned, influences the results of the community model of teaching creative writing; i.e., group dynamics and group outcome (the quality of performance). the study adopted an experimental comparison group and microgenetic research design to observe the change process over a relatively short period of time. ...