this study focused on investigating the impact of keeping oral dialogue journals on efl learners’ oral fluency. sixty participants were ed out of 80 undergraduate freshmen who were studying english translation at sanandaj islamic azad university and pre-intermediate students at passargadeh jam language school based on their scores on a piloted proficiency test. they were then randomly divided i...

From a plausible cognitive hypothesis explaining how little children develop complex meaning structures, we come to the conclusion that linguistic meanings are planned. The plans, we call them discourse plans, are tree-like structures composed of primitive situations and establishing referential links between the situations and the context. Linguistic meanings are second order Lambda-terms deri...

This paper describes EXMARaLDA, a system for computer transcription of spoken discourse developed and used by the SFB "Mehrsprachigkeit" at the university of Hamburg. EXMARaLDA consists of several DTDs for XML coding of transcription data and some input and output tools for these formats. Apart from being a transcription system in its own right, EXMARaLDA also plays the role of a mediator betwe...

The paper at first, analyzes three equations of state--MH equation, RKS equation, SHBWR equation for their adaptation in liquid state. The equations are solved with special mixing regulation on the condition of vapor-liquid equilibrium (VLE) for NARMs and then the paper evaluates thermodynamic properties of this mixture for four conditions by method of the complementary funcation. This paper co...

A discourse context provides a reader with a great deal of information that can provide constraints for further language processing, at several different levels. In this experiment we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore whether discourse-generated contextual constraints are based on the precise message of the discourse or, more 'loosely', on the scenario suggested by one or more con...

With the approach of critical linguistics, the study compares and contrasts the personage description in Hong Kong and Mainland China entertainment news discourse. Examining the texts of the news reports against the different social contexts they were produced, the study establishes three contrastive parameters that characterize the personage reporting across the two regions: contrast in narrat...

For the past 10 years, research on the effects of observer presence on test performance has expanded in the neuropsychological literature. Previous studies have shown that the presence of a third party observer is associated with poorer performance on tests of effort, attention, concentration, learning, and memory. The present study was designed to investigate whether performance on tests of ex...

This paper presents an implemented computational model for interpreting and generating indirect answers to yes-no questions in English. Interpretation and generation are treated, respectively, as recognition of and construction of a responder's discourse plan for a full answer. An indirect answer is the result of the responder providing only part of the planned response, but intending for his d...