this thesis attempts to investigate the effects of prelistening activities on enhancing iranian efl learners` listening comprehension. the present study investigated ways in which learners` background knowledge could be activated in order to enhance their l2 listening comprehension by limiting the number of possible text interpretations prior to listening. the experiments conducted in this stud...

growing demands and requires of high data rate systems cause significant increase of high frequency systems for wideband communication applications. as mixers are one of the main blocks of each receivers and its performance has great impact on receiver’s performance; in this thesis, a new solution for ku-band (12-18 ghz) mixer design in tsmc 0.18 µm is presented. this mixer has high linearity a...

this thesis is a study on insurance fraud in iran automobile insurance industry and explores the usage of expert linkage between un-supervised clustering and analytical hierarchy process(ahp), and renders the findings from applying these algorithms for automobile insurance claim fraud detection. the expert linkage determination objective function plan provides us with a way to determine whi...

from 1950s onward, new theories and critical approaches burgeoned across humanities. these theories were context-oriented; as a result, the analysis of discursive practices gained significance. thus, social, political, historical and cultural discourses that have been hitherto marginalized and considered inferior to literary texts, were introduced as important texts to be analyzed by critics. o...

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...

abstract the present study tried to investigate the effect of visual aids (films) on the development of the speech act of disagreement among iranian efl intermediate learners. to this end, the researcher selected 40 homogeneous intermediate learners based on their scores on oxford placement test. .the subjects then divided into control group and experimental group. both classes were tested by ...

the purpose of this study was to investigate how english language teachers in mashhad who teach students in the pre-university cycle perceived the impact of the efltee on their teaching. the target population was nearly all pre-university english language teachers in seven districts of mashhad in the scholastic year 2008/2009. a survey questionnaire which consisted of (36) likert type items, wa...

august wilson is undoubtedly one of the rare black playwrights whose works have attracted streams of attention and worldwide audience. the present study aims at analyzing fences and piano lesson which are two of the most successful plays in his pittsburgh cycle from the perspective of michel foucault’s theories and ideas. studying these two plays from foucault’s perspective opens new windows in...

armenias geopolitics and its historical experience have had a determining impact on the character of its foreign policy .present-day armenia is a small, landlocked country with _11,620 square miles area armenias landlocked nature makes it dependent on the benevolence of its neighbors for access to the outside world a fact that gives it a sense of isolation and vulnerability. as it was indic...

the current study aimed at investigating the relationship between motivation and test preparation strategies (tpss) used by iranian pre-university students in their preparation period for the university entrance exam (uee). due to the importance of uee in iran, this study also attempted to show its impact on these two important variables. to this end, 100 pre-university students in an iranian p...