heuristics are often used to provide solutions for flow shop scheduling problems.the performance of a heuristic is usually judged by comparing solutions and run times on test cases.this investigation proposes an analytical alternative ,called asymptotic convergence ,which tests the convergence of the heuristic to a lower bound as problem size grows. the test is a stronger variation of worst cas...

since the 1960s the age effects on learning both first and second language have been explored by many linguists and applied linguists (e.g lennerberg, 1967; schachter, 1996; long, 1990) and the existence of critical period for language acquisition was found to be a common ground of all these studies. in spite of some common findings, some issues about the impacts of age on acquiring a second or...

the purpose of this study was to examine the comparative effect of story retelling and role playing on efl learners’ vocabulary learning and reading comprehension. to carry out the purpose of the study 90 female learners of tabarestan language school located in noshahr were non-randomly selected. they took pet test and among these 90 participants 62 students were selected as homogenous learners...

this study investigated the impact of explicit instruction of morphemic analysis and synthesis on the vocabulary development of the students. the participants were 90 junior high school students divided into two experimental groups and one control group. morphological awareness techniques (analysis/synthesis) and conventional techniques were used to teach vocabulary in the experimental groups a...

the present study sought to examine whether a task-based approach could have an impact on raising awareness of collocations. moreover, it sought to investigate the facilitative role of consciousness-raising tasks of collocations in the communicative instances of use. to this end, 68 intermediate learners of english were selected via a placement test. the participants were taught with classroom ...

this study investigates the strategies native english and persian speakers employ for expressing gratitude in different situations. the strategies of persian efl learners are also compared with english strategies in order to find the differences that may exist between these two languages. social status and size of imposition of the favor are social variables which are investigated in detail for...

abstract the aim of the present study is to explore the impact of the cognitive reading strategy instruction on learners reading self-efficacy and their reading achievement. in order to fulfill this purpose, from 120 participants, 90 intermediate efl learners as an experimental group were chosen from three different educational settings namely, yazd university, yazd science and art un...

the present study investigated the effect of the two vocabulary teaching techniques in est, namely the use of translation and the use of visual aids as two separate vocabulary teaching techniques. to answer the question of the study, a pretest (michigan test) was administered to the 58 randomly selected est students at khajeh nasiredin tusi university, faculty of mechanics. after the homogeneit...

the present study is an attempt to investigate the potential impact of inspirational quotes on improving english abstract vocabulary recall. to achieve this goal, a multiple choice language proficiency test of 60 items including vocabulary and grammar component was administered to a sample of 63 second-semester male and female students whose age ranged between 17 to 22 and they were studying en...

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...