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...

vocabulary as a major component of language learning has been the object of numerous studies each of which has its own contribution to the field. finding the best way of learning the words deeply and extensively is the common objective of most of those studies. however, one effective way for achieving this goal is somehow neglected in the field. using a variety of activities such as games can r...

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...

abstract this study is an attempt to determine the effect of nano- technology education on science lesson for fifth grade in primary school in the city of kermanshah. this research is experimental and is conducted in the from of pre-test and post- test for the control group. an achievement test was administered to determine the rate of learning in the students. the research is an applied one. ...

abstract pragmatics is the study of communicative action in its sociocultural context. communicative action includes not only using speech acts (such as apologizing, complaining, complimenting, and requesting), but also engaging in different types of discourse and participating in speech events of varying length and complexity. the present study aimed to investigate the assessment of pragm...

abstract the present study deals with a comparison between reactive and pre-emptive focus-on-form in terms of application and efficiency. it was conducted in an intermediate english class in shahroud. 15 male learners participated in this research and their age ranged from 18 to 25. a course book, new interchange 3, and a complementary book were used. every session the learners gave lectures o...

in this study, the relationship between teachers’ creative and critical thinking skills and their reflectivity in teaching was investigated. to this end, three questions were raised. these questions were intended to determine whether there was a significant relationship between teachers’ creative thinking skills and their reflectivity in teaching; whether there was a significant relationship be...

this study was conducted to investigate the impact of podcasts as a learning and teaching tool on iranian efl learners’ motivation for listening as well as on their listening comprehension ability. the study also investigated the learners’ perception towards listening to podcasts and examined whether the learners were likely to accept podcasts. out of fifty-five intermediate learners studying e...

phatic communion is a cultural concept which differs across cultures. according to hofstede (2001), the u.s. tends to have individualistic culture; however, asian countries tend to have collectivistic cultures. these cultures view phatic communion differently. in individualistic cultures like u.s., phatic communion reflects speakers’ socio-cultural relationships in conversations. to see whether...

introduction acetic acid bacteria are large group of obligate aerobic gram negative bacteria with the ability to oxidize ethanol to acetic acid (1). they are widely distributed in natural habitats and classified in family acetobacteraceae. members of this family are useful in industrial production of vinegar(2). acetic acid bacteria (aab) can use substrates as glucose, ethanol, lactate or glyc...