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...

this ethnographic case study research was carried out in a private school setting in the context of iran. the research tried to explore the analysis and identity construction of a group of learners and teachers along with the content analysis of books on the basis of four types of commodified, political, national and narrative identities. how english language learners and teachers in an informa...

this study focuses on tracing the clearly defined elements of magic realism in toni morrison’s song of solomon as an illustrious african american example of the mode. magic realism is a fictional technique that combines fantasy with raw physical reality in a search for truth beyond that available from the surface of everyday life. toni morrison, as a distinguished african-american practitioner ...

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...

the current study examined iranian undergraduate efl students’ willingness to communicate with regard to their vocabulary knowledge. in general, participants were somewhat willing to communicate in english. the total mean score of 730 university students’ perception of willing to communicate was 83.53 out of 135. results, regarding four parts of willingness to communicate, revealed that part...

efl/esl textbooks have been regarded as essential language teaching materials with which the learners spend about 70 up to 90 percent of their class time. the important role they play and their vast use make them not only influential in learning the language but also in shaping values and attitudes. put it another way, textbooks socialize learners using their contents (i.e. texts, illustrations...

abstract the present study was conducted to examine the effect of proficiency on students interaction while carrying out the grammar-based task(s) in collaboration. in particular, the study examines whether the level of proficiency affects the learners’ focus of attention to grammatical and lexical features. the study takes a further step and examines whether there is any difference in the use...

the present research study attempted to find out the extent to which two pre-task activities of “glossary of unknown vocabulary items” and “content related support” assisted efl language learners with their performance on listening comprehension questions across two different proficiency levels (low and high). data for this study were obtained from a total of 120 language learners, female and m...

this is an original study on the effect of a polyisobutylene – polydimethylsiloxane (pibpdms) block copolymer modifier used as an interfacial active agent on the dynamics behaviour of single newtonian drops suspended in a polyisobutylene (pib) newtonian matrix. the results were divided in two sections. the first part included the experiments carried out on the non-modified and 2% block cop...

the present study aimed at exploring cognitions of iranian english teachers within the context of english for academic purposes (eap). to this end, the cognitions of two groups of eap teachers with respect to their pedagogical content knowledge (pck) and their sense of professional identity (pi) were probed. two language teachers and two content instructors who had at least five years of eap te...