Criticism is inherently impolite and a face-threatening act generally leading to conflicts among interlocutors. It is equally challenging for both native and non-native speakers, and needs pre-planning before performing it. The current research examines the production of non-institutional criticism by Iraqi EFL university learners and American native speakers. More specifically, it explores to what extent Iraqi EFL learners and American native speakers vary in (i) performing criticism, (ii) mitigating criticism, and (iii) their pragmatic choices according to the contextual variables of power and distance. To collect data, a discourse-completion task was used to elicit written data from 20 Iraqi EFL learners and 20 American native speakers. Findings revealed that though both groups regularly used all strategy types, Iraqi EFL learners criticized differently from American speakers. When expressing criticism, Iraqi learners tended to be indirect whereas American speakers tended to be direct. In mitigating their criticism, Iraqi learners were significantly different from American speakers in their use of internal and external modifiers. Furthermore, both groups substantially varied their pragmatic choices according to context. The differences in their pragmatic performance could be attributed to a number of interplaying factors such as EFL learners’ limited linguistic and pragmatic knowledge, the context of learning and L1 pragmatic transfer. Finally, a number of conclusions and pedagogical implications are presented.
Fibroblast growth factors-23 (FGF-23) are a class of cell signaling proteins produced by macrophages. They have a range of roles, but they play a particularly important role in the development of animal cells, where they are essential for appropriate growth. Phosphate, which is found in the body as both organic and mineral phosphate, plays crucial roles in cell structure, communication, and metabolism. Most phosphate in the body resides in bone, teeth, and inside cells, with less than 1% circulating in serum. The aim of the study is to evaluate the levels of the Fibroblast Growth Factors-23 and phosphate and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) in acromegaly patients against healthy control. A case control study Fibroblast Growth Fact
... Show Morethe research goal is preparing a list of standard criteria and quality controls for information technology applications to serve the Holy Quran.
To achieve this goal, the researcher has built a list of criteria according to the following steps:
First - identify the key areas covered by the whole list which are:
1 – Standards of system building and implementing with the operating screens.
2 – Standards of display forms including audio and video presentation.
3 – Standards which are related to the program philosophy.
4 - Standards which are related to the program objectives.
... Show MoreMethotrxate (MTX) has become the standard of care and first-line therapy for patients who have RA and consider as a gold standard of treatment for RA. The role of MTX in the treatment of RA has now been well established. The use of MTX treatment of RA inhibits proliferation of the lymphocytes, reduces signs and symptoms this disease, reduces progression damage of the joints and improves quality of life outcome. Progranulin (PGRN) acts a role in autoimmune inflammatory, has important function in several processes including immune response. Present study has conducted to find the effect of MTX drugs as a therapeutic target for RA patients because of its ability to bind with tumor necrosis factor receptor (TNFR), with progranulin, obestatin an
... Show MoreThis research aims to understand how Middle Eastern issues are addressed in talk shows on foreign Arabic-speaking channels, taking “France 24 Arabic” as a model. It seeks to determine the channel’s level of attention to Middle Eastern issues in talk shows, the nature of the guests invited, the methods used to address the issues, and the professional characteristics of the program host. The study is descriptive-analytical in nature and relies on content analysis of episodes of the weekly talk show “A Week in the World” on France 24 during the period from August 1, 2017, to July 31, 2018. The main findings indicate that foreign Arabic-speaking channels pay attention to covering Middle Eastern issues, especially political and milita
... Show MoreThe actual observations for Jupiter radio storm were taken for Hawaii station within multi years from 2001 to 2012. The Central Meridian Longitude (CMLІІІ) and Io's phase (γIo) were calculated for each year from Radio Jove program, the results of CMLІІІ for year 2006 was A=(180-300)º,B=(15-239)º, C=(60-280)º, phase was A=(182-260)º,B=(40-109)º, C=(200-260)º, which were close to the theoretical values, longitude was A=(180-300)º, B=(15-240)º, C=(60-280)º and phase was A=(180-260)º,B=(40-110)º and C=(200-260)º.
The study aims at identifying the sources of information and explaining their role in e-learning from the viewpoint of the Iraqi college students. The researchers relied on the descriptive method of the survey method to collect data and know the point of view of undergraduate students from the Department of Information in the College of Arts / Tikrit University and the Department of Quranic Studies at the College of Arts / University of Baghdad. The questionnaire was used as an instrument of the study, the research sample is (120) students; each section has (60) male and female students. The study concluded that there are many types and forms of information sources that students receive through electronic educational platforms from text con
... Show MoreBackground: Poly cystic ovary syndrome is a common disorder in women of reproductive age, it is associated with disturbance of reproductive, endocrine and metabolic functions. The pathophysiology of PCOS appears to be multifactorial and polygenic. Leptin seems to play an important role in pathophysiology of PCOS especially in women with BMI ≥25kg/m2. Objectives: To assess leptin level in both PCOS and healthy women and explore the relation to their body weight and body mass index. Patient and Methods: A total of 120 women were enrolled in this study, 60 women (50%) had PCOS (study group) and the reminder 60 women (50%) were healthy women and considered as control group. BMI was calculated first. Both groups were further sub
... Show MoreThe automatic estimation of speaker characteristics, such as height, age, and gender, has various applications in forensics, surveillance, customer service, and many human-robot interaction applications. These applications are often required to produce a response promptly. This work proposes a novel approach to speaker profiling by combining filter bank initializations, such as continuous wavelets and gammatone filter banks, with one-dimensional (1D) convolutional neural networks (CNN) and residual blocks. The proposed end-to-end model goes from the raw waveform to an estimated height, age, and gender of the speaker by learning speaker representation directly from the audio signal without relying on handcrafted and pre-computed acou
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