I3rab: A New Arabic Dependency Treebank Based on Arabic Grammatical Theory

Treebanks are valuable linguistic resources that include the syntactic structure of a language sentence in addition to part-of-speech tags and morphological features. They are mainly utilized in modeling statistical parsers. Although the statistical natural language parser has recently become more accurate for languages such as English, those for the Arabic language still have low accuracy. The purpose of this article is to construct a new Arabic dependency treebank based on the traditional Arabic grammatical theory and the characteristics of the Arabic language, to investigate their effects on the accuracy of statistical parsers. The proposed Arabic dependency treebank, called I3rab, contrasts with existing Arabic dependency treebanks in two main concepts. The first concept is the approach of determining the main word of the sentence, and the second concept is the representation of the joined and covert pronouns. To evaluate I3rab, we compared its performance against a subset of Prague Arabic Dependency Treebank that shares a comparable level of details. The conducted experiments show that the percentage improvement reached up to 10.24% in UAS and 18.42% in LAS.

Arabic open information extraction system using dependency parsing

<p>Arabic is a Semitic language and one of the most natural languages distinguished by the richness in morphological enunciation and derivation. This special and complex nature makes extracting information from the Arabic language difficult and always needs improvement. Open information extraction systems (OIE) have been emerged and used in different languages, especially in English. However, it has almost not been used for the Arabic language. Accordingly, this paper aims to introduce an OIE system that extracts the relation tuple from Arabic web text, exploiting Arabic dependency parsing and thinking carefully about all possible text relations. Based on clause types' propositions as extractable relations and constituents' grammatical functions, the identities of corresponding clause types are established. The proposed system named Arabic open information extraction(AOIE) can extract highly scalable Arabic text relations while being domain independent. Implementing the proposed system handles the problem using supervised strategies while the system relies on unsupervised extraction strategies. Also, the system has been implemented in several domains to avoid information extraction in a specific field. The results prove that the system achieves high efficiency in extracting clauses from large amounts of text.</p>

Attitudes of primary school teachers towards e-learning in teaching Arabic and the obstacles they face

The study aimed to identify the trends of primary stage laborers towards e-learning in teaching the Arabic language, and the obstacles they face from their point of view. The study relied on the descriptive and analytical approach, and the study population consisted of (170) male and female teachers working in public schools in Jerash governorate. The study sample (75) male and female teachers, who were chosen randomly. The results of the study showed that the attitudes of primary school teachers towards e-learning came at a positive level, with an arithmetic average (3.61), and the obstacles facing primary school teachers in e-learning came with a high degree, with an arithmetic average (3.84). The study recommended giving attention to providing electronic learning tools to include all schools, connecting all schools to the Internet and providing computers in proportion to the number of students in schools, and the study also recommended the necessity of dissolving all obstacles in e-learning, in terms of providing Internet labs in schools in proportion to the number of students and courses Scholastic.

Maghreb Journal of Documentation and Information from 1983 to 2020: a bibliometric study

Throughout this work, the general characteristics of the Maghreb Journal of Documentation and Information have been introduced since its’ establishment in 1983 to 2020. The Maghreb Journal of Documentation and Information is published annually by the Higher Institute of Documentation. The researchers have used the bibliometric approach in order to quantify the frequency of publications and to review the percentage of articles’ productivity and their distribution during the years of publications. The study found that there is an average of 447 articles published by 572 authors in 29 issues over a period of 24 years from the actual publications, without considering the years of interruption. It is worth to mention that the journal was resuming its activities and functions after each interruption, especially after the scientific events to publish their activities or after changing its directing members. Moreover, in order to clarify the direction of the journal and its editorial board, the bibliometric approach has also helped to extract the sub-topics presented by the publications, as it is the only journal specialised in the information science in Tunisia. In addition, besides studying of the linguistic writing choices of the authors; the study focused on the Influence of the French language in writings to understand the general cultural and social framework that made the Arabic language ranked as a second language in number of publications.

Arab Scholars’ Perceptions on The Quality, Reliability, and Adequacy of Arabic Digital Content

Despite the availability of millions of information resources on the internet, the Arabic digital content represents a relatively small percentage compared with the information available in other languages. The size of Arabic content, the lack of an adequate number of Arabic databases that organize this content and make it available to the Arab reader, and the lack of novelty and originality are the main issues that feature the Arabic content on the internet. The aim of the current study is to clarify the Arab scholars’ perception regarding the quality, reliability, and suitability of Arabic digital content that is available on the internet. A quantitative approach was adopted in this study in order to answer the research questions. A questionnaire was distributed online among a sample of Arab scholars to determine the quality and reliability of the Arabic digital content. Moreover, the questionnaire tried to identify the extent to which the current Arabic digital content meets the growing information needs, to identify the Arab scholars’ uses of Arabic content, and to discover the criteria that determine the digital content suitability. The findings of this study revealed that Arab scholars believe that Arabic digital content is weak and there is a lack of originality. In addition, the results indicated that Arabic digital content on the internet does not satisfy the scholars' needs which enforce them to use English information resources to compensates for the lack of Arabic resources. The study recommended the necessity of establishing mechanisms to support Arabic digital content and increase the academic institutions' role in enhancing Arabic digital content by encouraging and supporting scholarly research in the Arabic language.

Perceptions of non-native speakers of Arabic language towards cloud-based educational activities based on the entrance of multiple intelligences.

The need to diversify educational cloud activities arose due to social distancing, the widening of individual differences between learners, and the need to employ the possibilities offered by cloud education to achieve language goals. This research identifies the perceptions of non-native Arabic language learners towards the cloud-based educational activities based on the entrance of multiple intelligences. The descriptive approach was used, and a questionnaire was designed, consisting of: (Linguistic, Musical, visual- Spatial, Interpersonal, and Interpersonal). The sample consisted of (33) male and female students. The results showed that learners' perceptions are highly positive on all areas of activities. The highest percentage was interpersonal intelligence activities. Also, there are no statistically significant differences due to the sex. The originality of the research presents a vision of the entrance of multiple intelligences; To benefit from its educational applications in teaching Arabic online to non-native speakers, and to keep pace with global trends in the adoption of cloud education and its activities. It is also expected that the results of this research will benefit the following groups: institutions concerned with teaching foreign languages, experts who prepare curricula for teaching Arabic, and teachers of Arabic for non-native speakers.

Arabic Festival 2020: Appreciation of the Khazanah Araby (Gaza) “Strengthening Arabic Language Capabilities in Pandemic Situations”)

The desire to build common awareness in order to improve Arabic language skills and make Arabic a popular language in the world. This article presents an overview of the online language festival, Gebyar Appreciation Khazanah Araby (GAZA) organized by the student association of Arabic Language Education Department of UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang online (on the network), as well as the perceptions of the participants in participating in this event. This research is useful to provide an overview of the online language festival held by students majoring in Arabic Language Education at UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang which can be used as a reference in the implementation of language festivals in a similar environment or situation.

Relation between exposure to different multimedia programs and presentation of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Background The current study aimed at constructing an Arabic-language questionnaire to investigate the association of the severity of ADHD with children’s degree of exposure to multimedia per day and the age of starting the engagement, and the effect of different multimedia programs on the attention, language, and socio-behavioral aspects in children presented with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The present study was conducted on 69 children who attended the Phoniatric Unit at Mansoura University Hospitals and were divided into 2 groups: 30 normal typically developing children as a control group and 39 children with ADHD as the study group. The study group was subdivided into 3 subgroups according to ADHD severity; each subgroup consisted of 13 children. Results The time at which the child started to be exposed to multimedia showed no significant differences among ADHD subgroups as all of the cases started before the age of 2 years. Kids with mild ADHD had a significant increase in watching children’s programs, cartoons, rhymes, and commercials than the other two higher grades (moderate and severe) of ADHD. Conclusion The constructed Arabic questionnaire proved to be reliable and a valid tool that examined the relationship between multimedia usage and ADHD.

Learning Arabic language in China: Investigation on instrumental and integrative motivations of Chinese Arabic learners

There is an increasing demand in recent years for the study of the Arabic language by foreign learners as a second language, especially Chinese students. There are wide ranges of necessity to Arabic languages, such as commercial, industrial, economic, cultural, political, media, and other fields. Many foreign learners are learning this language to increase demands in all areas of life and use it in non-Arabic-speaking countries. China is one of those earliest countries that took this advantage and offered this program for an academic major. It’s almost 37 universities and institutes where the Arabic language is taught in China. The request for learning this language has increased because of the urgent need for exchange programs with Arab-speaking countries. As result, international experts believe motivations are an important factor in teaching Arabic to non-speakers that can be influential reasons for the foreign learners to practice, argue, push and motivate them to benefit more and overcome the difficulties of the Arabic language. This study examines two facial types of motivations, instrumental and integrative motivations. In this study, all participants are Chinese students currently studying in China. The number of participants was 125 students from both genders, including 4 academic directors of the Arabic language department in five public Chinese Universities. The findings show that Chinese students learning Arabic as a Second Language (ASL) are highly instrumental than integrative to studying Arabic. A lack of experience of the Arabic language in their classrooms and society guides their attitude. The findings also revealed that there is a relationship between the language structure and a classroom environment that decreases their motivation and achievements of learning Arabic.

Mother Tongue Use in Beginner EFL Grammar Classes in Saudi Arabia: A Case Study

Using the mother tongue (MT) in English as a foreign or second language (EFL/ESL) classrooms is indispensable, especially in beginner classes. This paper aims to add to the present literature on this issue by highlighting the attitudes of both students and teachers towards MT use in English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom, the justifications for its use, and some of the actual interaction practices in grammar classes. It investigates the attitudes of 110 Saudi EFL female beginners and their two teachers toward using the Arabic language in EFL grammar classes at Jazan University. It also investigates the students’ reasons for using or avoiding their MT. Moreover, it presents some of the functions that MT serves in EFL grammar classes. To collect the data, the researchers used two questionnaires and classroom observations. For data analysis, they used Microsoft Excel and thematic content analysis. The results indicated that, although both students and teachers generally have positive attitudes toward using the MT in EFL classes, they are also aware of the adverse effects of its overuse. The results also revealed that the teachers and students use MT in EFL classes to serve different classroom functions that ease the teaching and learning processes. Based on these findings, the study provided recommendations for teachers, curriculum designers, and future r