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 mechanism and highlighted that the present knowledge of the nature of English lexis and collocation in particular raises a set of important issues for teachers in the first place. Such issues are:
1. Given that grammar still rules the sentence, lexis should be one of the principle organizing parts of the syllabus;
2. The need for different strategies for vocabulary learning at different stages of learning, both in and outside the classroom;
3. The need for more developed techniques that would help the students record and store lexis in ways that could enable them to retrieve and revise the proper words for examinations, i.e., lead them to become „lexis collectors‟.
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4. The need for a fresh look at bilingual dictionaries every now and then given that conventional dictionaries cannot give all the information necessary about collocation.
5. Lexis is an area where literal translation is often impossible; a collocation in English may be totally different in Spanish or German and thus the implication of translation should not be discarded as it is essential in English. (The translation skills of the non-native speaking teachers must be recognized in this area.)
6. The two main components of language (grammar and vocabulary) merge into one another and the dividing line is much less clear cut than teachers and textbooks often operate; yet accuracy must be treated as a late-acquired skill.
Modal verbs are also called auxiliary verbs, helping verbs and modal auxiliaries. They are special auxiliary verbs that express the degree /of certainty of the action in the sentence, attitude or opinion of the writer concerning the action. These auxiliary verbs are can, could ,may, might, must, ought to, shall, should, will, would and had better. Modality is one of the most difficult aspects of learning English, because the form of modals does not follow the conventional rules of grammar, and there are so many meanings of modals that students often get confused about which modal to use. Also, many EFL learners face difficulty in choosing the proper modal verb that fit certain situations because each modal verb has many functions. The pr
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Reading is one of the essential components of the English language. Countries that use English as a second language (ESL) sometimes have difficulties in reading and comprehension. According to many researches, mother tongue has proved some interferences with learning a second language. This study investigated the results of reading difficulties of young second language learners in terms of accuracy, comprehension, and rate using the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability test. The study was carried out in one of the High Schools for Boys in Hyderabad, India and included Grade five, aged 10-12 years. In order to understand the reading difficulties of English as a second language, a qualitative approach was employed. Interview, reading tes
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This paper investigates the collocational use of irreversible food binomials in the lexicons of English (UK) and Arabic (Iraq), their word-order motivations, cultural background, and how they compare. Data consisted in sixteen pairs in English, versus fifteen in Arabic. Data analysis has shown their word order is largely motivated by logical sequencing of precedence; the semantically bigger or better item comes first and the phonologically longer word goes last. These apply in a cline of decreasing functionality: logical form first, semantic importance second, phonological form last. In competition, the member higher in this cline wins first membership. While the entries in each list clearly reflect culturally preferred food meals in the UK
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The present study examines the main points of differences in the subject of greetings between the English language and the Arabic language. From the review of the related literature on greetings in both languages, it is found that Arabic greeting formulas are more elaborate than the English greetings, because of the differences in the social customs and the Arabic traditions and the Arabic culture. It is also found that Arabic greetings carry a religious meaning basing on the Islamic principle of “the same or more so”, which might lead to untranslatable loopholes when rendered in English.
QJ Rashid, IH Abdul-Abbas, MR Younus, PalArch's Journal of Archaeology of Egypt/Egyptology, 2021 - Cited by 4
Nominal ellipsis is a linguistic phenomenon found in English and Arabic .It is
based on leaving out a part of a nominal construction or more for the sake of good
style , compactness and connectedness .This phenomenon is found in the language of
the Glorious Qur’an .The study in hand is concerned with how translators handle
translating Qur’anic verses which contain ellipted nouns , i ,e. , to what extent the
translated Qur’anic verses are close to the original ones , and to what extent their
translations serve understanding the meanings of the glorious verses while at the
same time maintaining their beauty in style. The study aims at shedding light on
nominal ellipsis in English and Arabic .The study undertak
This paper presents the syntactic dimension of ditransitive verbs in terms of the universal theory of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG). This theory is syntactic in nature, but it also covers the semantic as well as the pragmatic aspects of any linguistic phenomenon. It assumes a universal framework through which syntactic constructions can be analyzed. However, the morphological structure that each language enjoys renders the universal treatment more complicated and can question the universal nature of such a theory. In this paper, an attempt is made to check if the universal tenet of the theory is maintained over two typologically different languages: English and Arabic in respect of the way that double-object constructions (DOCs)
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Linking adverbials are used to organize and bridge together extended stretches of discourse to make the text coherent. They are explicit indicators of the communicative function of the sentence and writers use them to let their readers follow what has already been said and to help them anticipate what is about to follow.
Linking adverbials include those relations of addition, enumeration, summation, apposition and so on. Through the use of these adverbials, the writer is able to organize and develop his ideas and help the reader follow him from one sentence to another. Thus, a linking adverbial is a semantic relation used to show the way in which what is to follow is systematically connected to what has gone before. So, they have anap
This study investigates the phonological adaptation of diphthongs within English loanwords in Iraqi Arabic (IA). In contrast to earlier small-scale descriptive studies, this study used quantitative content analysis to analyse 346 established loanwords collected through document review and direct observation to determine the diphthong adaptation patterns involved in the nativisation of English loanwords by native speakers of IA. Content analysis results revealed that most GB diphthong adaptations in English loanwords in IA occur in systematic patterns and thus may be ascribed to particular aspects in both L1 and L2 phonological systems. More specifically, the results indicate that the IA output forms tend to maintain the features of the GB i
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