the importance of writing as a complex skill in applied linguistics has drawn the attention of many researchers to evaluate textbooks in order to help learners gain self-sufficiency and autonomy in the field of language use and communication. investigations have shown that developments in textbooks evaluation can promote the quality of pedagogies and consequently the learning. this study attemp...

according to coates’s (2004, as cited in zhang, 2010) definition of "conversational dominance" (p.111), it refers to the phenomenon of a speaker dominating others in interaction. specifically, it means how a speaker makes use of certain strategies to get the floor and maintain the floor. thus, the amount of talk is the main measurement for the dominance of the conversation. whether a speaker do...

the primary goal of the current project was to examine the effect of three different treatments, namely, models with explicit instruction, models with implicit instruction, and models alone on differences between the three groups of subjects in the use of the elements of argument structures in terms of toulmins (2003) model (i.e., claim, data, counterargument claim, counterargument data, rebutt...

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...

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...

rivers and runoff have always been of interest to human beings. in order to make use of the proper water resources, human societies, industrial and agricultural centers, etc. have usually been established near rivers. as the time goes on, these societies developed, and therefore water resources were extracted more and more. consequently, conditions of water quality of the rivers experienced rap...

a major concern in the last few years has been the fact that the cultural centers are keeping distance with what they have been established for and instead of reproducing the hegemony, they have turned into a place for resistance and reproduction of resistance against hegemony. because the cultural centers, as urban public spaces in the last two decades, have been the subject of ideological dis...

supervisors play an undeniable role in training teachers, before starting their professional experience by preparing them, at the initial years of their teaching by checking their work within the proper framework, and later on during their teaching by assessing their progress. but surprisingly, exploring their attributes, professional demands, and qualifications has remained a neglected theme i...

this study investigated the effects of manipulating the cognitive complexity of tasks along +/- few elements and the time limits on l2 learners writing performance. to conduct the study, 60 iranian efl learners with two levels of proficiency, low and high intermediate, were selected and assigned to three groups based on the time devoted to task completion. the participants performed both a simp...

testing plays a vital role in any language teaching program. it allows teachers and stakeholders, including program administrators, parents, admissions officers and prospective employers to be assured that the learners are progressing according to an accepted standard (douglas, 2010). the problems currently facing language testers have both practical and theoretical implications but the first i...