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...

recent studies in scientific education as well as foreign and second language instruction suggest that thinking has rarely been an integral part of education and training in classroom. some scholars decried the lack of emphasis on thinking in the institutes and schools. they noted that memorization and drills were rewarded,while inquiry, reflection, and consideration of alternatives were frowne...

these days, all department stores make an effort to provide their clients with valuable products in order to project the best image for them. as a result, clients’ comprehension risk will decrease and they will be more willing to repurchase. having a good image is really important for the department stores because it makes an impression on clients’ comprehension of both quality and risk. consid...

the effect of learning strategies on the speaking ability of iranian students in the context of language institutes abstract language learning strategies are of the most important factors that help language learners to learn a foreign language and how they can deal with the four language skills specifically speaking skill effectively. acknowledging the great impact of learning strategies...

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...

a one dimensional dynamic model for a riser reactor in a fluidized bed catalytic cracking unit (fccu) for gasoil feed has been developed in two distinct conditions, one for industrial fccu and another for fccu using various frequencies of microwave energy spaced at the height of the riser reactor (fccu-mw). in addition, in order to increase the accuracy of component and bulk diffusion, instanta...

in the past couple of decades sociocultural theory of sla and its implications in efl contexts have attracted attentions of research circles worldwide and aroused some controversies. firth and wagner (1997) have questioned the principles of the cognitive view which gives importance to mental constructs in favor of sociocultural view which highlights social and contextual constructs. but if soci...

this exploratory study aimed to investigate a possible relationship between learners’ beliefs about language learning and one of their personality traits; that is,locus of control (loc). both variables, beliefs and locus of control, are assumed to influence the language learning process. the internal control index (ici) and the beliefs about language learning inventory (balli) were administered...

the main purpose of this study was to investigate any relationship between high school efl teachers metaphorical understandings of their role in class and their self-efficacy beliefs. teachers metaphors were elicited through two different prompts: one picturing what they believed a language teacher should be like in class, and the other demonstrating what they are actually like in class; such...

the purpose of this study was to investigate iranian efl learners’ beliefs about the role of rote learning (rl) in vocabulary learning strategies; besides, the study examined if english proficiency would influence learners’ vocabulary learning strategy use. this study addresses the need for a clear understanding of the role of rl in efl vocabulary learning by looking at iranian efl learners’ ow...