Sharif Digital Repository

Willingness to communicate (WTC) has recently received great attention in the area of second language learning. Thus, the concept of willingness to communicate and what would influence the students' willingness to communicate gain importance. The current study employed a hybrid design to probe Iranian students' willingness to communicate. First, self-report questionnaires were administered to 431 language learners to collect quantitative data. Then, interviews were conducted with 41 randomly selected learners who had already completed the questionnaires. Pearson correlation coefficient, one-way ANOVA, independent t-test through SPSS .16 and the Structural Equation Model (SEM) analyses... 

Understanding others has long been a goal of language teaching yet remaining in the background of educational practices (Liddicoat, 2012). However, the recognition of importance of intercultural competence and its integration into language teaching and learning has grown due to globalization, increased mobility, and technological development. The existing challenge in the language-teaching domain is the integration of culture and language. The benefits and significance of developing interculturally competent learners are not covert to anybody; however, the important consideration of teaching culture is the necessity of amalgamating language and culture in an interculturally oriented language... 

The gaps in the existing studies on L2 listening comprehension have been highlighted in the literature of second language learning. Accordingly, the necessity of the qualitative investigations in this field has been frequently addressed by the scholars (e.g., Vandergrift, 2007). The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the use of dynamic assessment (DA) in L2 listening comprehension within a group of six advanced EFL learners to extract the patterns of teacher mediation and learner reciprocity moves through a dyadic examination of their interactions. The examination of listening self-regulation was another incentive behind this study. This research also investigated learners’... 

Understanding teachers’ conceptualization of different aspects of their professional life is of great importance in the field of teacher education. Besides, given the significance of intercultural dimension of language education, characterization of teachers’ lay theories and self-perceptions in this regard could be of much help to teachers and teacher educators as one of the elements affecting professional development. Therefore, the present study was aimed at scrutinizing various facets of Iranian EFL teachers’ intercultural and professional identities in order to provide a clear image of (1) teachers’ evaluation of their cultural knowledge, skills, and attitudes, (2) the role of teachers’... 

Since speaking seems to be the foremost skill in language learning, the evaluation of speaking ability has become increasingly important in recent years. Moreover, research on rater effect in speaking performance assessment has provided evidence for a considerable degree of variability among raters. This study investigated the use of holistic vs. nalytic rating scales in rating Iranian EFL learners‟ speaking performance. Moreover, the current study explored the effects of gender and experience on raters‟ rating in rating Iranian EFL learners‟ speaking performance applying holistic vs. analytic rating scales. The effects of ater variables (gender and experience) on weighing components of... 

Critical thinking has been the center of attention in education and academia over the last several decades. It can be fostered at different rates and extents in different academic disciplines given the diverse cognitive processes that students need to go through. Hence, an understanding over the extent to which a specific field of study in higher education aids the development of critical thinking might help educators and educational system to see what should be revised, substituted, and/or added in a curriculum. Accordingly, the major thrust of the current study was to compare the critical thinking ability of 296 humanities and engineering undergraduate students at four Iranian... 

Scholars in the field of pragmatics consistently argue about the inadequacy of research on the concept of impoliteness. Compared to politeness, which was the focus of most investigations, the phenomenon of impoliteness has been greatly neglected. It is a truism that learning a language involves both politeness and impoliteness concepts of that language. Regarding this fact, researchers must pay greater attention to alleviate the imbalance between politeness and impoliteness studies. The current study is an attempt to investigate the criteria of (im)politeness as they were specified by two groups of English native speakers and Iranian EFL learners. Seventy-five native English speakers and 177... 

Chemotherapy is a proven and effective systematic approach to treat various types of cancers. Despite its advantages, chemotherapy would kill healthy as well as cancer cells. To overcome this problem, different controlling strategies are implemented. This study aims to provide a medicine drug delivery schedule for chemotherapy (by designing a proper controlling system) based on the verifiable mathematical models. First, the dynamic model is analysed and stability points are reviewed. The selected model has five state variables and two inputs. In this study, the focus is on dynamic model analysis and obtaining an effective and appropriate treatment pattern by designing a proper controller. To... 

Environmental issues and energy crisis have led the world attention to the renewable energies; especially wind power, since they have low cost and high reliability. One of the most challenging areas of studying for wind power is to increase the capacity of wind turbines. As a result, over the years, wind turbines have got progressively larger. Vibration is one of the problems that reduces the life and efficiency of wind turbines; and the growing size of the blades has worsen this problem due to the importance of nonlinear effects in large scale wind turbines. Researchers have been constantly working on this issue in order to make the wind turbines more efficient. In this research, a... 

Wind turbines have been the subject of many researches in recent decades. Optimization and continuous improvement of these systems play a decisive role in the development and exploitation of wind farms. Wind turbines can be studied from several aspects such as structure, dynamics, aerodynamics, electricity and control. In this research, robust power control of the wind turbine has been studied with emphasis on accurate 2 DOF mechanical and aerodynamic modeling. Aerodynamic coefficients of the turbine have been calculated using the numerical methods and the effect of this numerical modeling has been studied in comparison with the analytical methods on the turbine power control. Several new... 

Best cancer treatment is the one which reduces the tumor density in minimum time and side effects, considering the input limitations. In this paper, tracking controller and robust controllers are designed to achieve the mentioned objectives, simultaneously. An ODE-based mathematical model of the human body under chemovirotherapy is selected, which includes the uninfected and infected tumor cells, free viruses, immune cells, and a chemotherapeutic drug. For tracking purposes, a servo controller based on the entire eigenstructure assignment (EESA) approach is applied to the model, continuously and discretely. For robust purposes H-infinity and D-K iteration approaches are implemented and... 

Occurrence of natural disasters such as earthquake could seriously damage most buildings especially those with insufficient resistance located in urban worn-out textures. In order to reduce unpleasant consequences of an earthquake, appropriate policies need to be considered to persuade the beneficiaries to follow retrofitting standards in the process of planning, designing, and construction of buildings. These policies shall be implemented through institutions in arbitrary or obligatory forms, by encouragement or penalty mechanisms. In order to consider these policies, first of all we need to identify the beneficiaries and their particulars. By studying and considering subjects discussed in... 

In this research, the main purpose of the controller design is in the second region of operation of a wind turbine, which involves absorbing the maximum energy from the wind. WindPACT 1.5MW turbine has been investigated and the power coefficient of this turbine has been obtained using WT-PERF and FAST softwares. Simulations show that the results of both methods are well matched. Then, using ANFIS, a method for estimating the wind speed is derived from the data obtained by FAST. Inputs to the ANFIS system are the turbine aerodynamic power, rotor speed and blade pitch angle while the output of ANFIS system is the estimated wind speed. The maximum power coefficient of the wind turbine occurs... 

Laboratory studies to investigate the effects of different saline concentrations (such as sodium chloride or calcium chloride) on the soil water retention behavior of clayey soils and their volumetric changes have received much attention recently. However, many previous studies have investigated these effects in only one path of the SWRC (wetting or drying path) and the effects of saline concentration on hydraulic hysteresis have not been considered. In addition, researchers have frequently studied these effects on SWRC on clay samples, and little research has been done on collapsible soils. Therefore, the most important purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of increasing...