Fals-Stewart, Birchler, and O'Farrell (1996) found that married or cohabiting substance-abusing men (n = 40) who participated in behavioral couples therapy (BCT) in addition to individual-based treatment (IBT) for substance abuse had fewer days of substance use and, along with their partners, reported higher levels of dyadic adjustment during and 1-year after treatment than husbands who receive...

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a risk factor for chronic kidney disease (CKD). However, it remains unclear whether interferon-based therapy (IBT) for HCV was associated with reduced risk of CKD.From the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database, we identified 919 patients who received 3 months or more of IBT as our treated cohort. This cohort was propensity score-matched 1:4 with...

BACKGROUND The anti-IgE monoclonal antibody, omalizumab, is approved in the US as add-on therapy for patients ≥12 years of age with moderate-to-severe persistent allergic asthma. Omalizumab is administered according to the US Food and Drug Administration approved dosing table included in the prescribing information. The dosing table was developed using Genentech's free IgE assay and is designed...

Giving corrective feedback (CF) is an essential part of the teaching and learning process, and the way it should beneficially be done has been the focus of attention for numerous researchers especially when traditional ways of CF provision are not possible, particularly in rare situations such as outbreaks of diseases. This study investigated how different ways of giving feedback; namely, throu...

Computer technology has provided language testing experts with opportunity to develop computerized versions of traditional paper-based language tests. New generations of TOEFL and Cambridge IELTS, BULATS, KET, PET are good examples of computer-based language tests. Since this new method of testing introduces new factors into the realm of language assessment ( e.g. modes of test delivery, famili...

Background: The National Center Test is a test that high school graduates take in order to be matriculated into the majority of universities in Japan. Its English section (NCT), though, is scheduled to be replaced by commercially available private English tests of four skills (reading, listening, speaking, writing) due to the fact that NCT currently measures only the receptive skills of reading...

After Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory (MIT), some language teaching practitioners set out to teach students in a way to help their dominant intelligence(s) blossom. In an EFL context, usually teachers’ main focus is to develop communication skills. Nowadays, writing is one of the main ways by which people communicate. Thus, this study aimed at investigating possible relationship between...

recent versions of international high-stakes tests like toefl and ielts have made use of integrated tasks in addition to the traditional independent tasks in a claim to provide a more realistic estimation of the test takers’ language abilities. the present study aimed to investigate how test takers’ performance may differ on such tasks. as such, the test takers’ performance was compared on ielt...

This paper introduces a method for the semi-automatic generation of grammar test items by applying Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. Based on manually-designed patterns, sentences gathered from the Web are transformed into tests on grammaticality. The method involves representing test writing knowledge as test patterns, acquiring authentic sentences on the Web, and applying generati...

in iranian language learning contexts, writing in english is an important challenge for learners, since it is usually treated as a secondary skill and is led to the periphery of language classes, due to its time-consuming nature. computer technology and namely the free online environments available in the world wide web (www) offer possibilities for moving beyond such confinements. asynchronous...