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...

hedging is a multi-purpose rhetorical strategy which is usually used in scientific arguments to secure ratification of claims, reduce the risk of negation, avoid conflict, manage disagreement and leave room for the audience to assess presented information. hedges are frequently used in research articles to mitigate the findings of research endeavors. the present research aims to investigate the...

abstract pragmatics is the study of communicative action in its sociocultural context. communicative action includes not only using speech acts (such as apologizing, complaining, complimenting, and requesting), but also engaging in different types of discourse and participating in speech events of varying length and complexity. the present study aimed to investigate the assessment of pragm...

the present study was an attempt to conduct a contrastive analysis between general english (ge) and english for specific purposes (esp) texts in terms of cohesion and cohesive devices. to this end, thirty texts from different esp and ge textbooks were randomly selected. then they were analyzed manually to find the frequency of cohesive devices. cohesive devices include reference, substitution, ...

the present study investigated construct equivalence of multiple choice (mc) and constructed response (cr) item types across stem and content equivalent mc and cr items (item type ‘a’), non-stem-equivalent but content equivalent mc and cr items (item type ‘b’), and non-stem and non-content equivalent mc and cr items (item type ‘c’). one hundred seventy english-major undergraduates completed mc ...

the purpose of this study was to examine the english language needs of medical students at tehran university of medical sciences . analysis of the needs took place for three groups: 320 undergraduate students, 30 postgraduate students and 20 university instructors. a triangulation approach to collect data was used in which a combination of the quantitative (using the questionnaires) and qualita...

objective: the objective of this study was to investigate the invitro fluoride release of four new self-adhesive resin cements; set (sdi, australia), breeze (pentron, usa), embrace wetbond (pulpdent, usa), g-cem (gc, japan) and to assess the bonding performance of these self-adhesive resin cements for bonding of orthodontic brackets. materials and methods: for fluoride release experiment, six ...

abstract the purpose of this study is twofold: on the one hand, it is intended to see what kind of noticing-the –gap activity (teacher generated vs. learner generated) is more efficient in teaching l2 grammar in classroom language learning. on the other hand, it is an attempt to determine which approach of the noticing-the-gap- activity is more effective in the long- term retention of grammar...

monumental changes occurring on a daily basis have altered the world into a global village of expanding technology and shrinking geography in which preparing language learners for intercultural communication seems to be a sine qua non for modern language education. employing a cross-sectional design in its first phase, this study investigated the intercultural sensitivity and language proficien...

as polysemy is encountered frequently in english as foreign language. fl learners’ ability to disambiguate polysemous verbs becomes critical to their comprehension in the target language. this thesis, accordingly, investigated how iranian efl learners achieved comprehension of english polysemous verbs by using three different types of cues: (1) elaborated context, (2) semantic frames, and (...