most specialists in the field of foreign language teachingconsiderreading skill as an interactive process between the reader’s prior knowledge and the text.accordingly, the activation of prior knowledge for an effective comprehension is very important. it is generally agreed that the pre-reading phase is the stage where this type of interaction and activation may be enhanced throughcertain stra...

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...

according to cheng (1999), in recent esl/efl literature, asian (especially east asian) learners of english as a foreign/second language have been arguably reported as reticent and passive learners. the most common allegations are that these students are reluctant to participate in classroom discourse; they are unwilling to give responses; they do not ask questions; and they are passive and over...

the present study was conducted to investigate the effect of implicit focus on form through input flooding and the effect of noticing, explicit focus on form on linguistic accuracy. to fulfill the purpose of the study, 86 iranian pre-intermediate efl learners of one of the language institutes were chosen by means of administering ket as the homogeneity test. these learners were pretested throug...

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...

‘romanticism’ and ‘romantic’ are among the most controversial terms in literature. most readers, when encountering these words, would think of the well-known period of romanticism of the first three decades of the nineteenth century and the great six english poets known as ‘the big six’ of this period. however, romanticism does not belong to certain artists in a special period; one may seek ele...

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...

since the 1960s the age effects on learning both first and second language have been explored by many linguists and applied linguists (e.g lennerberg, 1967; schachter, 1996; long, 1990) and the existence of critical period for language acquisition was found to be a common ground of all these studies. in spite of some common findings, some issues about the impacts of age on acquiring a second or...

the ability of composing a coherent and extended piece of writing in second language is considered as a fundamental factor to convey information and ideas of learners through the academic issues. although learners may achieve a perfect academic writing skill through assigning the l2 tasks in content based instruction, but demonstration of their abilities may be related to their ability in l1 es...

with the introduction of communicative language teaching, a large number of studies have concerned with students’ oral participation in language classrooms. although the importance of classroom participation is evident, some language learners are unwilling to engage in oral activities. this passivity and unwillingness to participate in language classroom discussions is known as “reticence”. rev...