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...

monumental changes occurring on a daily basis have altered the world into a global village of expanding technology and shrinking geography in which preparing language learners for intercultural communication seems to be a sine qua non for modern language education. employing a cross-sectional design in its first phase, this study investigated the intercultural sensitivity and language proficien...

this is an original study on the effect of a polyisobutylene – polydimethylsiloxane (pibpdms) block copolymer modifier used as an interfacial active agent on the dynamics behaviour of single newtonian drops suspended in a polyisobutylene (pib) newtonian matrix. the results were divided in two sections. the first part included the experiments carried out on the non-modified and 2% block cop...

charles dickens was a voracious reader even in his childhood. his early reading of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century picaresque fiction greatly influenced his writing style. his first novel, the pickwick papers, is a tale of rogues and swindlers, adventures and quests, satire and comedy, and innocence and experience. oliver twist, dickens’ second novel, is a young boy’s progress through a cor...

critical thinking ability has an important role in education. accordingly, scholars around the world are searching for new ways for teaching and improving students critical thinking ability. in line with the studies in efl contexts supporting the positive relationship between critical thinking and writing performances, this study investigated the differential effects of halverson’s critical thi...

the aim of the present study was to investigate the frequency and the type of discourse markers used in the argumentative and expository writings of iranian efl learners and the differences between these text features in the two essay genres. the study also aimed at examining the influence of the use of discourse markers on the participants’ writing quality. to this end the discourse markers us...

this study was conducted to investigate the impact of portfolio assessment as a process-oriented assessment mechanism on iranian efl students’ english writing and its subskills of focus, elaboration, organization, conventions, and vocabulary. out of ninety juniors majoring in english literature and translation at the university of isfahan, sixty one of them who were at the same level of writing...

to explore the idea the investingation proposed, aimed at finding whether the performances of the population of iranians students studying english in an efl context are consistent in l1 and l2 writing taks and whether there is a cross-linguistic transfer in this respect. in this regard the subjects were instructed to write four compositions-two in english and two in farsi-which consisted of an ...

in the area of vocabulary teaching and learning although much research has been done, only some of it has led to effective techniques of vocabulary teaching and many language learners still have problem learning vocabulary. the urge behind this study was to investigate three methods of teaching words. the first one was teaching words in context based on a traditional method of teaching that is,...

abstract this study evaluates the iranian pre-university english textbook in terms of needs, objectives, content, and methodology. the study was designed on the qualitative- quantitative survey basis using interviews and questionnaires, a researcher-made textbook evaluation checklist and a needs analysis questionnaire. the textbook evaluation questionnaire was used in this study to elicit the ...