phatic communion is a cultural concept which differs across cultures. according to hofstede (2001), the u.s. tends to have individualistic culture; however, asian countries tend to have collectivistic cultures. these cultures view phatic communion differently. in individualistic cultures like u.s., phatic communion reflects speakers’ socio-cultural relationships in conversations. to see whether...

some new water-soluble schiff base complexes of na2[m(5-so3-1,2-salophen)].nh2o; (5-so3-1,2-salophen = n,n’-bis(5-sulphosalicyliden)-1,2-phenylendiamine); na2[m(5-so3-2,3-salpyr)(h2o)n].2h2o; (5-so3-2,3-salpyr = n,n’-bis(5-sulphosalicyliden)-2,3-diaminopyridine); and na2[m(5-so3-3,4-salbenz)(h2o)n].nh2o; (5-so3-3,4-salbenz = n,n’-bis(5-sulphosalicyliden)-3,4-diaminobenzophenon); where m = cu, n...

the present study sought to examine whether a task-based approach could have an impact on raising awareness of collocations. moreover, it sought to investigate the facilitative role of consciousness-raising tasks of collocations in the communicative instances of use. to this end, 68 intermediate learners of english were selected via a placement test. the participants were taught with classroom ...

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...

this study compared the different effects of form-focused guided planning vs. meaning-focused guided planning on iranian pre-intermediate students’ task performance. the study lasted for three weeks and concentrated on eight english structures. forty five pre-intermediate iranian students were randomly assigned to three groups of guided planning focus-on-form group (gpfg), guided planning focus...

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...

the purpose of this study was to find the relationship between critical thinking and self-regulation with reading comprehension of iranian female elementary language learners. the present study is a correlational one having a descriptive design. two questionnaires, critical thinking questionnaire and self-regulation questionnaire which were valid and reliable questionnaires and four reading com...

the purpose of the present study is to find out whether bilinguals of khuzestan-arab origin or monolinguals of iranian origin code-switch during learning or speaking english and which group is more susceptible to code-switch. to this end, the students of 24 classes from high schools and pre- university centers were screened out, and interviewed and their voices and code-switchings were recorded...

acknowledgements i wish to express my gratitude to all those who have helped me in preparing this thesis. i would like to express my deep gratitude to my respected advisor dr. kourosh akef, whose advice and comments helped me in the early stages of the research and throughout the writing process. i would also like to express my gratitude to dr. hajar khanmohammad whose invaluable guidance he...

although there are studies on pragmatic assessment, to date, literature has been almost silent about native and non-native english raters’ criteria for the assessment of efl learners’ pragmatic performance. focusing on this topic, this study pursued four purposes. the first one was to find criteria for rating the speech acts of apology and refusal in l2 by native and non-native english teachers...