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...

insurers have in the past few decades faced longevity risks - the risk that annuitants survive more than expected - and therefore need a new approach to manage this new risk. in this dissertation we survey methods that hedge longevity risks. these methods use securitization to manage risk, so using modern financial and insurance pricing models, especially wang transform and actuarial concepts, ...

this research study aimed to investigate the relationship between field-dependence/independence cognitive style and vocabulary learning strategies among iranian efl learners. ninety participants majoring in english translation at arak university were chosen. the participants were classified into two groups of field-dependent and independent based on the results of group embedded figure test (ge...

in this study reference as one of the five cohesive devices in the achievement of textuality in english and persian narrative/descripitive written texts is focused on and analysed . to do so , the theoretical framework elaborated by halliday and hasan (1976) and its version adapted by the writer to match the sub-types of reference in farsi are applied to the analysis of reference in english and...

this study sought to examine the effect of cooperative game on iranian students achievements in english alphabet learning. cooperative games are games, in which players or teams work together towards a common goal without defeating someone. the methodology used in this study was experimental. the population of the study was 60 female students from the grade one in secondary school in tabriz, ir...

this study was conducted to investigate the impact of podcasts as a learning and teaching tool on iranian efl learners’ motivation for listening as well as on their listening comprehension ability. the study also investigated the learners’ perception towards listening to podcasts and examined whether the learners were likely to accept podcasts. out of fifty-five intermediate learners studying e...

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...

the main purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between listening proficiency and metacognitive listening strategies awareness among low, mid, and highly self-regulated students. three hundred and seventy one efl students participated in this study (all grade 3 and 4 high-school students who were studying in khansar in academic year 1391-92). to gather the data, three ...

two groups of students were assigned as experimental and control ones, and were given instruction on directed reading-thinking activities and after some treatment, they were post-tested. although the initial pre-test did not show any significant differences, the final post-test result revealed that the cooperative reading comprehension helped the experimental group. the cooperative students’...

abstract: country’s fiber optic network, as one of the most important communication infrastructures, is of high importance; therefore, ensuring security of the network and its data is essential. no remarkable research has been done on assessing security of the country’s fiber optic network. besides, according to an official statistics released by ertebatat zirsakht company, unwanted disconnec...