according to coates’s (2004, as cited in zhang, 2010) definition of "conversational dominance" (p.111), it refers to the phenomenon of a speaker dominating others in interaction. specifically, it means how a speaker makes use of certain strategies to get the floor and maintain the floor. thus, the amount of talk is the main measurement for the dominance of the conversation. whether a speaker do...

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...

abstract this study aimed at investigating the impact of etymology strategy instruction on the development of vocabulary of iranian intermediate efl learners. etymology, knowledge of origin of words, roots, and affixes, has proved to be a controversial issue and a question of long debate with regard to its impact on the process of vocabulary learning. this study employed etymology strategy in ...

this study investigated the effects of planning on second-language written production with regard to task type. the participants were 75 iranian learners of english as a foreign language attending a private foreign language institution. they were asked to complete two different types of writing tasks (expository writing task and argumentative writing task) in different planned conditions (indiv...

foreign policy takes root from complicated matters. however, this issue may be more truth about armenia. although the new government of armenia is less than 20 years, people of this territory are the first ones who officially accepted christianity. in very past times, these people were a part of great emperors like iran, rome, and byzantium.armenia is regarded as a nation with a privileged hist...

legal establishment of court is the birth of social life; each person should define him/herself against others offence or violation. when a society forms and the legal character appears, the thought of society refers to a person name prosecuting attorney who is the president of the court for defending his/her rights. prosecuting attorney remindterms such as court, crime and punishment. accordi...

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...

in the new age, in regard to human success in education in the globalizing world, one can consider english proficiency and individual differences as two important issues. in efl settings, reading skill plays an important role in education. it seems that using multiple intelligences theory in efl classes which values individual differences by tapping different intelligences, can be rewarding. as...

reinsurance is widely recognized as an important instrument in the capital management of an insurance company as well as its risk management tool. this thesis is intended to determine premium rates for different types of reinsurance policies. also, given the fact that the reinsurance coverage of every company depends upon its reserves, so different types of reserves and the method of their calc...

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...