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...

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...

the quest for power has formed much of the world history especially in 20th and 21st centuries. oil (energy) particularly after industrial revolution has been a tool for conquest and power and has been transformed to a geopolitical issue. from a geopolitical point of view this has been the case for the last two centuries in central asia and caucasus. central asia and caucasus has always been...

supervisors play an undeniable role in training teachers, before starting their professional experience by preparing them, at the initial years of their teaching by checking their work within the proper framework, and later on during their teaching by assessing their progress. but surprisingly, exploring their attributes, professional demands, and qualifications has remained a neglected theme i...

abstract this study tried to investigate whether there was any significant relationship between technical translation quality of the senior english translation students and their levels of verbal-linguistic, visual-spatial and interpersonal intelligences. in order to investigate the research questions, the researcher selected a hundred senior english translation students from three universitie...

abstract the main purpose of this study was to investigate whether there was any significant difference between the speaking achievement of learners who were trained by means of consciousness raising of sociolinguistic skills and that of learners who were trained without the above mentioned task. the participants of this study consist of 60 intermediate level students participating languag...

due to the limiting workspace of parallel manipulator and regarding to finding the trajectory planning of singularity free at workspace is difficult, so finding a best solution that can develop a technique to determine the singularity-free zones in the workspace of parallel manipulators is highly important. in this thesis a simple and new technique are presented to determine the maximal singula...

the methods which are used to analyze microstrip antennas, are divited into three categories: empirical methods, semi-empirical methods and full-wave analysis. empirical and semi-empirical methods are generally based on some fundamental simplifying assumptions about quality of surface current distribution and substrate thickness. thses simplificatioms cause low accuracy in field evaluation. ful...

the debate whether esp teachers need to have knowledge of the specialized field they are teaching has been an issue in the literature over the last two decades. the aim of conducting this study was to explore iranian learners’ and instructors’ beliefs and attitudes concerning the role of specialized knowledge in teaching esp classes. a seventeen item questionnaire was administered to 400 esp le...

adolescents and young adults and their problems is an issue whose importance is obvious to anyone because youth are the founders of our countrys future and requires proper planning to be on leisure. given the importance of leisure,this study to investigate needs assessment and planning how adolescents and young adults spend their leisure time in urban of case study of high school girls and boys...