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.
The present study aims at scrutinizing the impoliteness types, causes, and purposes utilized by Iraqi English language learners when refusing marriage proposals. Thus, it attempts to answer the questions: (1) what are the impoliteness formulas used by the Iraqi learners of English in refusing marriage proposals?, and (2) What are their impoliteness triggers/causes and the purposes? The study is significant in bridging the gap that few linguistic types of research concentrate on studying intentionality and emotions allied with impoliteness. Data were collected from 35 Iraqi learners of English responding to 6 situations of marriage. The data were analyzed using Culpeper’s (2011) formulas of impoliteness and Bousfield’s (2007) imp
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The present study aims at scrutinizing the impoliteness types, causes, and purposes utilized by Iraqi English language learners when refusing marriage proposals. Thus, it attempts to answer the questions: (1) what are the impoliteness formulas used by the Iraqi learners of English in refusing marriage proposals?, and (2) What are their impoliteness triggers/causes and the purposes? The study is significant in bridging the gap that few linguistic types of research concentrate on studying intentionality and emotions allied with impoliteness. Data were collected from 35 Iraqi learners of English responding to 6 situations of marriage. The data were analyzed using Culpeper’s (2011) formulas of impoliteness and Bousfield’s (2007) impolite
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Improving speaking skills of Iraqi EFL students was the main purpose of the current research. Thirty EFL students were selected as the research participants for achieving this aim. All students completed the pretest and then spent the next 25 weeks meeting for 90 minutes each to present their nine lectures, answer difficult questions, and get feedback on their use of language in context. Progressive-tests, posttests and delayed post-tests followed every three courses. The researcher utilized SPSS 22 to anal Analyze the data descriptively and inferentially after doing an ANOVA on repeated measurements. It has been shown that using the ideas of sociocultural theory in the classroom has an important and positive impact on students of
... Show MoreThe knowledge related with lexical items can be realized as including relations of meaning a cross words. Words that share a similarity of meaning are called to be synonymous, and words that share a contrary of meaning are called to be antonymous. Both of them are universal linguistic phenomenon that exist in terms of linguistic system of every language. The present study aims at finding out areas of difficulty that Iraqi EFL learners encounter in the use of synonymy and antonymy, both on the recognition and production levels. Also tries to detect the main reasons behind such difficulties. A diagnostic test of two parts, namely, recognition and production, is designed. The test is built to include two linguistic phenomenon which are: synony
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The present study investigates the realization and significance of textual themes in the organizational structure of M.A theses and Ph.D. dissertations, namely: the abstracts, introductions and conclusions, since in such parts the students depend on their own expressions, styles and constructions to express different viewpoints, plans, inferences, etc. The study also investigates the similarities and differences between M.A theses and Ph.D. dissertations concerning the use of textual themes;it sets out to conduct a detailed analysis of textual themes used in such texts. In conducting such an analysis, the study adopts Halliday's (1994) approach of textual themes. The results of such an analysis have clearly shown that, in spite of the di
... Show MoreLearning a foreign language is a highly interactive process, and a belief that communicative activities foster a great amount of linguistic production provides language practice and opportunities for negotiation of meaning during communicative exchanges. Thus, this study examines what benefits learner-centered classroom setting offers compared with that of teacher–centered classroom, and how less proficient learners accomplish their tasks and activities with scaffolded help during interaction with the help of proficient classmates and under the guidance of a skilful person, i.e., the teacher. The subjects participating in this study are 30 Iraqi 4th year college students in the Department of English, College of Arts , Univer
... Show MoreThis study sought to understand how critical cultural awareness was in translating English idioms into Arabic, particularly in political news where clarity and precision are paramount. The challenges that arise from the linguistic and cultural disparities between the two languages include differences in metaphor, image, and cultural reference. The study demonstrates, through the lens of Skopos Theory, how efficient translation relies on the function and intent of the text taking precedence over word-for-word equivalence and cultural context. Overall, the study establishes the need to transform idioms so that they better align with what is appropriate given the expectations of the audience. The results highlight the importance of inn
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In the framework of this study, the phenomenon of transfer is probed pragma-linguistically and socio-linguistically concerning marriage situations among Iraqi EFL learners. The study also strives to look at the refusal strategies most commonly employed by Iraqi female English as a foreign Language (EFL) learners compared to their counterparts, American native speakers of English. The study involved 70 female participants who answered a Discourse Completion Task (DCT), which contained ten marriage proposals to be refused. Each situation entailed refusal of a person from a higher, an equal, and lower status. The researchers adapted Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss Weltz’s (1990) taxonomy of refusal for analyzing the data comprehensively. The
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In the framework of this study, the phenomenon of transfer is probed pragma-linguistically and socio-linguistically concerning marriage situations among Iraqi EFL learners. The study also strives to look at the refusal strategies most commonly employed by Iraqi female English as a foreign Language (EFL) learners compared to their counterparts, American native speakers of English. The study involved 70 female participants who answered a Discourse Completion Task (DCT), which contained ten marriage proposals to be refused. Each situation entailed refusal of a person from a higher, an equal, and lower status. The researchers adapted Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss Weltz’s (1990) taxonomy of refusal for analyzing the data comprehensively.
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Iraqi EFL teachers face problems in teaching “English for Iraq Series” for primary public school pupils. In this paper, the researchers are going to identify the main problems faced by our teachers and try to find solutions to these problems. To achieve the aim of the study, list of questions asked and from teachers’ responses, the researchers have got an idea about the main problems which are related to textbook material, parents, learners, environment and technology. Therefore, the researchers adapted a questionnaire to achieve the purpose of the study with some changes and modifications. This questionnaire with five point scale (strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree, strongly disagree). To achieve face validity, the
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