the aim of the present study was to investigate the frequency and the type of discourse markers used in the argumentative and expository writings of iranian efl learners and the differences between these text features in the two essay genres. the study also aimed at examining the influence of the use of discourse markers on the participants’ writing quality. to this end the discourse markers us...

while performance-based language assessment has led to an increased authenticity and content validity in the practice of writing assessment, the reliability of ratings has become a major issue. research findings have shown different reactions by native english speaker (nes) and non-native english speaker (nns) teachers to students’ writings. the focus of this study is on investigating whether i...

the rationale behind the present study is that particular learning strategies produce more effective results when applied together. the present study tried to investigate the efficiency of the semantic-context strategy alone with a technique called, keyword method. to clarify the point, the current study seeked to find answer to the following question: are the keyword and semantic-context metho...

?it is of utmost priority for an experienced teacher to train the mind of the students, and enable them to think critically and correctly. the most important question here is that how to develop such a crucial ability? this study examines a new way to the development of critical thinking utilizing critical discourse analytical tools. to attain this goal, two classes of senior english la...

abstract the current study sets out 1) to investigate the strategic needs of iranian efl learners in reading literary and non-literary texts; 2) to shed some light on the differences between reading literary and non-literary texts; and 3) to specify the differences in the interaction of participants with texts while reading two literary subgenres ( i.e., short story and literary essays). to ...

just as motivation is important in sla research, demotivation constitutes an important factor, too. there are many studies done on demotivation and burnout of teachers. many of these studies have been conducted on one or two aspects of english instruction. consequently, there are few studies which have been done on more than two aspects of english teaching. the aim of this study is to find out ...

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...

an investigation into oral interaction in language classes: a conversation analytic point of view the aim of this thesis is to analyze the interaction between language teachers and students in english language institutes. this work is done in the context of yasuj city. learning another language, which is in most cases english, involves many variables. one of these variables is the linguistic...

the purpose of this thesis was to investigate how differently metacognitive, cognitive, and social/affective strategies affect l2 learners’ reading comprehension. to this end, the study employed a quasi-experimental design with a placement test as a proficiency test to find the homogeneity of groups. three classes were randomly selected as the experimental groups (n =90), and each class was tau...

the present study aimed to investigate representation of discourse markers and metadiscourse markers in conversations and readings of general elt coursebook series used in the language centers of iran. to this aim, four elt coursebooks popularly taught in language centers of this country were analyzed based on fung and carter’s (2007) framework regarding discourse markers and hyland’s (2005) fr...