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...

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...

on- the-job training on of the most effective tools for managers to cope with the changing organizational environment. it grantess suitable services to customers, particularly in public service enterprises. if such training os goal oriented, planned systematically, and tailored to the employees, job content, then not only it could increase employees and organizational performance, but also it c...

for any educational program to be successful, many factors work hand in hand. based on pervious efl studies, teachers and learners are the keys to gain achievement. granted the fact that explicit and implicit practice plays a key role in education, knowledge of it can help teachers facilitate students’ vocabulary learning. this study investigated to determine the contribution of explicit and i...

abstract recent studies suggest that prelistening activities play an important role in the development of listening comprehension (e.g. long 1990;chiang and dunkel 1992; schmidt-rinehart 1994; jensen and hansen 1995; robinson et al., 1995; buck, 1995; foster and skehan,1996; teng 1996; robinson, 2001; chang and read 2006). in line with previous studies and to shed light on a new aspect of sche...

abstract the primary purpose of this study was to explore the actual practices and cognitions of two groups of iranian eap teachers, i.e. language teachers and content teachers, with respect to teaching reading-comprehension and vocabulary. to this end, tehran university of medical sciences which authorizes both groups of teachers to teach eap courses was selected as the context of the study s...

abstract this study aimed at investigating the effect of bilingual teaching of cognate words (persian-english) on iranian upper intermediate efl learners’ knowledge of lexical development. for this purpose,100 subjects participated in this study out of which 40 learners were selected for this study and they were assigned into two groups, control and experimental. cross-language cognates (wor...

one very decisive factor in students’ academic destiny is the result they get at final term examinations. because of its importance, both students and teachers are curiously anxious about them. as normally it is the case, these final term tests are prepared hurriedly in short time by teachers which result in students’ dissatisfaction, complaining on how the test was different from their expecta...

this study sought to examine the effect of cooperative game on iranian students achievements in english alphabet learning. cooperative games are games, in which players or teams work together towards a common goal without defeating someone. the methodology used in this study was experimental. the population of the study was 60 female students from the grade one in secondary school in tabriz, ir...

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...