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...

this study aimed to investigate the effects of listening strategy training on iranian efl learners listening comprehension and use of such strategies. this work, employing an experimental methodology, was conducted among 60 adult efl learners from a language institute in isfahan, iran, as participants. the participants, who were selected based on the results of a placement test, were assigned t...

with the introduction of communicative language teaching, a large number of studies have concerned with students’ oral participation in language classrooms. although the importance of classroom participation is evident, some language learners are unwilling to engage in oral activities. this passivity and unwillingness to participate in language classroom discussions is known as “reticence”. rev...

a problem of computer vision applications is to detect regions of interest under dif- ferent imaging conditions. the state-of-the-art maximally stable extremal regions (mser) detects affine covariant regions by applying all possible thresholds on the input image, and through three main steps including: 1) making a component tree of extremal regions’ evolution (enumeration), 2) obtaining region ...

the speech act of disagreement has been one of the speech acts that has received the least attention in the field of pragmatics. this study investigates the ways power relations, social distance, formality of the context, gender, and language proficiency (for efl learners) influence disagreement and politeness strategies. the participants of the study were 200 male and female native persian 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...

‏‎the purpose of the present study was to investigate the latent pattern underlying reading ability . some 272 male and female participants. english majors at the ba level , participated in the study. two valid tests were used in this study, the reading test developed exclusively for the purpose of this project and academic reading section of ielts. to investigate the possible latent underlying...

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...

over the past decades a number of approaches have been applied for forecasting mortality. in 1992, a new method for long-run forecast of the level and age pattern of mortality was published by lee and carter. this method was welcomed by many authors so it was extended through a wider class of generalized, parametric and nonlinear model. this model represents one of the most influential recent d...

now-a-days graphic design plays a major role in influencing culture, society, business, and customers, in such a way that one could look upon every individual as a potential customer. graphic designers seek to identify customers needs and find an intelligent solution for them. correct identification and understanding of those needs is the first step towards achieving ones goals. marketing knowh...