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 study targets exploring the similarities and differences between Iraqi and Malaysian learners of English in refusing marriage proposals. Also, it examines the favored politeness strategies that learners use to protect their interlocutors’ face, heeding both their social distance and status. Data were gathered by a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) which contained six marriage situations. Responses were analyzed based on Beebe et al.’s (1990) refusal taxonomy and Scollon et al.’s (2012) politeness system. The findings indicated that both the Iraqi and Malaysian learners preferred the indirect refusal strategies in marriage proposals, as well as the hierarchical politeness in the form of independence strategies regardless of t
... Show MoreThe study targets exploring the similarities and differences between Iraqi and Malaysian learners of English in refusing marriage proposals. Also, it examines the favored politeness strategies that learners use to protect their interlocutors’ face, heeding both their social distance and status. Data were gathered by a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) which contained six marriage situations. Responses were analyzed based on Beebe et al.’s (1990) refusal taxonomy and Scollon et al.’s (2012) politeness system. The findings indicated that both the Iraqi and Malaysian learners preferred the indirect refusal strategies in marriage proposals, as well as the hierarchical politeness in the form of independence strategies regardless of t
... Show MoreAbstract The study aimed at reviewing translation theories proposed to address problems in translation studies. To the end, translation theories and their applications were reviewed in different studies with a focus on issues such as critical discourse analysis, cultural specific items and collocation translation.
This research examines the phonological adaptation of pure vowels in English loanwords in Iraqi Arabic (IA). Unlike previous small-scale studies, the present study collected 346 loanwords through document review and self-observation, and then analyzed them using quantitative content analysis to identify the patterns of pure vowel adaptation involved in incorporating English loanwords into IA. The content analysis findings showed that most pure vowel adaptations in English loanwords in IA follow systematic patterns and may thus be attributed to specific characteristics of both L1 and L2 phonological systems. Specifically, the findings suggest that the IA output forms typically preserve the features of the input pure vowel to the maxi
... Show MoreThe research aims to explore the difficulties that encounter teaching geography of cities as perceived by female students. A total of (113) third stage female students / Geography Dept / college of education for women were chosen as a sample for the study. To collect the required data, a questionnaire was used as an instrument; it consisted of six parts represent teaching difficulties. It was a three-point Likert scale instrument with 1 signifying ‘main difficulty, 2 ‘sub-difficulty, and 3 ‘no difficult'. The difficulties organized in descend order, to analyze data, SPSS tool was used. The results revealed that the difficulties of content ranged (2.15-1.18), difficulties of education techniques ranged (2.47-2.04), difficulties of t
... Show MoreAll over the world and in different societies and cultures , people are always looking for different ways of favourable , gentle smooth and soft communication .The 'powerful linguistic devices ' that are embedded in the daily English language is called "euphemism". It plays an important and vital role in daily communication. It represents a significant part of English . It is used to express any aspect of everyday realities such as the business world , mass media , etc. The comprehension of such realities can not be verified unless a reasonable command of euphemism is achieved.
Euphemism is defined according to various perspectives and views. It is " that figure of speech which consists in the substitution of a word or expression of c
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Criticism, as an evaluative criterion, is a significant speech act for English language learners to improve their speech and actions in their academic life. Yet, it is realized differently across diverse cultures. Few studies have shown that the linguistics forms of one language are different from those available in another language. Hence, this study aims to investigate the cross-cultural similarities and differences between 60 Iraqi and Malay university learners in the use of criticism strategies. The data are collected using a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) and a Focus Group Interview (FGI). The data are coded based on Nguyen’s (2005) coding scheme of criticism in terms of the realization strategies. Qualitative
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