a problem of computer vision applications is to detect regions of interest under dif- ferent imaging conditions. the state-of-the-art maximally stable extremal regions (mser) detects affine covariant regions by applying all possible thresholds on the input image, and through three main steps including: 1) making a component tree of extremal regions’ evolution (enumeration), 2) obtaining region ...

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...

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...

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...

the subjects of the study are only the tefl teachers and students at gilan university. to obtain the desired data, a questionnaire which was based on the theories and disecussions gathered, was used as the main data gathering instrument. to determine the degree of relationship between variables, covariance and pearson product moment correlation coefficient were the formulas applied. the data we...

abstract this mixed method study examines whether there is any relationship among the variables of the study (job satisfaction, social capital and motivation). the researcher considered job satisfaction and social capital as independent variables; motivation is the dependent variable of the study. the researcher applied a questionnaire to assess each variable. to measure efl teachers’ job sati...

abstract this quasi-experimental study was aimed at examining the impact of storyline complexity on the grammatical accuracy and complexity of advanced and intermediate efl learners. a total of 65 advanced and intermediate efl learners were selected from iran language institute (ili). an intact group including 35 intermediate participants and another intact group with 30 advanced participants ...

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...

thermal barrier coatings (tbcs) are used to provide thermal insulation to the hot section components of gas turbines in order to enhance the operating temperature and turbine efficiency. hot corrosion and thermal shocks are the main destructive factors in tbcs which comes as a result of oxygen and molten salt diffusion into the coating. in this thesis atmospheric plasma spraying was used to dep...

the purpose of the present study was to see which one of the two instruction-processing instruction (pi) and meaningful output based instruction (mobi) accompanied with prompt and recast- is more effective on efl learners’ writing accuracy. in order to homogenize the participants in term of language proficiency a preliminary english test (pet) was administrated between 74 intermediate students ...