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.
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
The legal basis for the obligation of the innkeeper to ensure the safety of things does not pose any problem, because the comparative legislation was organized by explicit legal texts, but the problem arises with regard to the legal basis of the innkeeper's obligation to ensure the physical safety of the guest, as these legislation lacked explicit provisions about it, and left the organization of the general rules, which Open the door to jurisprudence, where the foundations laid by the jurists, within the scope of civil law, unlike the English legislator, which organized it as a general duty in the landlord law of 1957, and some consumer protection laws implicitly referred to the obligation of the innkeeper To ensure the safety of the bo
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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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Shifting Sand of English in Iraq language Policy and Planning
The paper is concerned with a linguistic analysis of the blurbs, used in advertising English and Arabic novels. A blurb is an advertising persuasive text, written on the back cover of a book. Blurbs of selected novels are chosen as representative examples. The selected blurbs belong to two languages, Arabic and English. The paper aims at studying the linguistic features that are characteristic of blurbs as advertising texts and making a sort of comparison between English blurbs and Arabic ones. A linguistic analysis on four levels is presented. Blurbs are tackled from the point of view of four linguistic disciplines that are phonology, syntax, semantics and discourse analysis. A reference is made to the linguistic featu
... Show MoreThe present study analyzes the violation of the strategies of conversation in two English plays namely Richard II and King Lear. The present study tries to achieve the following goals: 1. showing how the strategies of real conversation can be applied to conversation in plays. 2. analyzing how the characters communicate with each other to discover how Shakespeare violates the strategies of conversation in depicting his characters. The study has been conducted on the bases of the following hypotheses:
- The strategies of conversation which are derived from the study of natural conversation can be applied to conversation in drama with some modification for dramatic purposes.
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
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Learning 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 MoreWith the advancement of technology ,the study of cross-cultural communication via on line has become an important and researchable topic in linguistic theory and its applications.The aims of this study are two- fold (a) exploring the influence of cultural diversity on on-line interaction between American native speakers (NSs) and Iraqi non-native speakers (NNSs) of English which, together with other factors might potentially lead to what Thomas(1983) calls "pragmatic failure" (PF), a main cause of communication breakdowns and (b) specifying which type of PF occurs more frequently between the two groups along with the reasons behind such failures. To achie
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