The current study is concerned with investigating the difficulties that Iraqi EFL learners of English may face when translating English collective nouns. Such collective nouns as committee, government, , jury , Parliament , etc. are considered singular when the concept of the unity as a group is emphasized , but when the concept of the individuals or numbers is emphasized they are treated as plural. A sample of twenty undergraduate students have been selected randomly to translate certain English collective nouns in some selected political texts in order to find out the difficulties they might face in rendering them into Arabic. It is hypothesized that most of the testees have used the singular form rather than the plural ignoring the notion of meaning of these nouns. Theoretically speaking, the most important conclusions that the present paper has come up with are: Firstly, English collective nouns may co-occur in the singular with either a singular or a plural form of the verb; secondly, in terms of form, three types of collective nouns can be recognized : (a) invariable singular collectives, (b) invariable plural collectives, (c) variable ( singular and plural); thirdly, in terms of meaning there are two types of collective nouns , i.e. human and non- human collectives. Empirically speaking, the paper shows the following conclusions: English collective nouns are problematic and difficult to translate due to the disparity between form and meaning of both languages , the inadequate knowledge of the function of some structural clues in determining the emphasized idea (i.e., singular or plural), and formal equivalence and literal translation are used by most testees.
Reading strategies are of interest for what they reveal about the ways readers manage their interaction with written texts and how these strategies are related to text understanding, acquisition ,storage ,and retrieval of information .In EFL comprehension lessons, the students try to work out interpretations of the meaning related to the written word through the usage of different comprehension strategies. Yet, there are moments where the participants in the classroom fail to reach a successful understanding of the passage read despite the guidance of the teacher. The present research aims at investigating and identifying moments of comprehension failure and reasons behind them .It also aims at specifying the different strategies used in
... Show MoreThis study focuses on the writing skill which is a social act .Students need to express
themselves in writing, but students of History and Geography departments are poor in
writing. This study aims at identifying and classifying the errors committed by the
students, and then giving remedies.
Writing can be considered as a channel or as a goal of language learning.
Students learn to write in a foreign language. Writing as a goal basically focuses on
the development of writing skills to fulfill such purposes as note-taking, summarizing,
narrating, reporting and replying required for various real-life situation
(Mechalakelli,2007)
Students at Departments of Geography and History study English as a part of
their
Idioms are a very important part of the English language: you are told that if you want to go far (succeed) you should pull your socks up (make a serious effort to improve your behaviour, the quality of your work, etc.) and use your grey matter (brain).1 Learning and translating idioms have always been very difficult for foreign language learners. The present paper explores some of the reasons why English idiomatic expressions are difficult to learn and translate. It is not the aim of this paper to attempt a comprehensive survey of the vast amount of material that has appeared on idioms in Adams and Kuder (1984), Alexander (1984), Dixon (1983), Kirkpatrick (2001), Langlotz (2006), McCarthy and O'Dell (2002), and Wray (2002), among others
... Show MoreABSTRACT
Learning vocabulary is a challenging task for female English as a foreign language (EFL) students. Thus, improving students’ knowledge of vocabulary is critical if they are to make progress in learning a new language. The current study aimed at exploring the vocabulary learning strategies used by EFL students at Northern Border University (NBU). It also aimed to identify the mechanisms applied by EFL students at NBU University to learn vocabulary. It also aimed at evaluating the approaches adopted by EFL female students at Northern Border University (NBU) to learn a language. The study adopted the descriptive-analytical method. Two research instruments were developed to collect data namely, a survey qu
... Show MoreEnglish, like any other language, has a number of such discourse markers including well, yes, surely, on the contrary, so and nevertheless. They are lexical items or grammatical forms typically serve to relate one utterance to another in discourse.
Discourse markers are considered as cues or signals for the reader or the hearer that make cohesion and coherence, In fact, these markers are found in various grammatical forms such as interjections, linking adverbials, greetings and farewells….etc. Discourse markers. Play a very important role, not only in conversation, but in written text as well.
We used to think of grammar as the bones of the language and vocabulary as the flesh to be added given that language consisted largely of life generated chunks of lexis. This “skeleton image” has been proverbially used to refer to that central feature of lexis named collocation- an idea that for the first 15 years of language study and analysis gave a moment‟s thought to English classroom material and methodology.
The work of John Sinclair, Dave Willis, Ron Carter, Michael McCarthy, Michael Lewis, and many others have all contributed to the way teachers today approach the area of lexis and what it means in the teaching/learning process of the language. This also seems to have incorporated lexical ideas into the teaching mechanis
One of the main aims of Metrical Phonology Theory (MTT) is to provide the stress of poetry on the syllable, the foot, and the phonological word levels. Analyzing poetry embodies one of the most prominent and controversial metrical issues as the subsumed number and types of syllables, feet, and meters are balanced compared to other literary texts. The MTT saw the light during the late seventies (1975) and (1977) by Liberman and Prince, who produced it as part of non-linear phonology. Its roots originated in prosody, which studies poetic meter and versification. The basis of the metrical analysis is the prosodic analysis developed in London by Firth and his students in 1950. This study aims to identify the values of five metri
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This article discusses a discussion of trends and patterns of understanding and application of the concept of metaphor to various subjects that may interfere with the perspective of metaphors in translation theory, an attempt was made to use the principles and characteristics of metaphors and their fundamental tradition in translation theory, and to uncover the perspective of considering metaphor as a conceptual process. presenting its merits, since it is still considered an eccentric expression of linguistics.