Possibility and Probability in Siin Seereer Language

The present work deals with possibility and probability in Siin Seereer, a language belonging to the West Atlantic branch of the Niger- Congo family. Possibility and probability are two notions which are so close in meaning and that lots of people make confusion in their uses mainly in the verbs and phrases used to express them. The enunciator, focusing on his/her observation of facts, shows the possibility or the probability that the grammatical subject has to realize the predicate. In other words, he/she accounts the possibility or the probability of the realization or the non- realization of the predicative relationship. Thus, we have pointed out that most of the verbs, operators and phrases used to express these concepts are most of the time placed at the beginning of the sentence. Furthermore, there are some verbs which are used to express possibility and that can also be used to express probability if they are combined with other verbs or phrases.

Figurative Competence of Jordanian Graduate Students of English: An Analysis of Their Errors and Strategies

This study uses a translation task consisting of 15 sentences to examine the figurative competence of Jordanian graduate students majoring in English. It also attempts at shedding some lights on their strategies and errors when translating fixed figurative expressions into Arabic. The sample of this study consists of 36 Jordanian graduate students in the English department of two Jordanian universities. Half of the participants are M.A. students, while the other half are Ph.D. students. The findings of the study indicate that Ph.D. students have a slightly higher idiomatic competence than M.A. students, though the two groups perform poorly in the translation task. The findings also suggest that graduate students of English often rely on the context, metaphor, and knowledge of L1 to approach the meaning of English figurative expressions. Furthermore, the findings show that paraphrasing and giving an Arabic equivalent are the most common translation strategies used by graduate students.

Arabic Learners’ Production of Regular English Past Tense Verbs

Previous studies show that second language (L2) learners of English sometimes produce the verb with proper past tense inflectional morphology as in help[t] and sometimes repair the cluster, as in helpø or hel[pəd]. Complicating matters, these studies focused on L2 learners whose native languages disallowed codas or had very restricted codas. Thus, it is difficult to tell whether any problems in producing past tense morphology are due to first language L1-transferred coda restrictions, or an inability to acquire the abstract feature of past tense. To rule out native language syllable structure interference, this paper aims to examine the production of the English regular past tense verb by Arabic L1 ESL learners, a language that allows complex codas. The paper also examines the role of a phonological universal, the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) that disallows two adjacent similar sounds, and its effect on learners’ production. The data come from twenty-two English as a Second Language (ESL) students at three levels of proficiency. The task was a sentence list eliciting target clusters in past tense contexts that violate manner in OCP: fricative + stop ([st], [ft]) vs. stop + stop ([pt], [kt]). Results show that L1 Arabic speakers have difficulty in producing past tense morphology, even though their L1 allows complex codas. Fricative + stop clusters are repaired (epenthesis/deletion) at a lower rate (low =25.71%, intermediate = 6.6%, high=11.11%) than stop + stop clusters (low=57.14%, intermediate = 40.27%, high=22.91%). The higher rate of repair is clear in stops + stop clusters suggesting that learners abide by phonological universals and prefer not to violate OCP. Finally, proficiency level has an effect on target-like production, as higher-proficiency learners produce past-tense morphology at a higher rate than lower-proficiency learners. Together, these results indicate that L1 transfer is not the only source of difficulty in the production of past tense morphology, and that the abstract feature of tense is problematic, particularly at the early stages of ESL development.

“A Mirror” of the Alternation of Ethics --- The Ethical Selection of The Maples in Updike’s Separating

Separating, by John Updike, tells a story that happened in a middle-class family, where the protagonists the Maples decide to separate from each other, and they announce their decision to four children, thus resulting in a family conflict. This essay intends to analyze the choice made by the Maples and the reasons behind them, hence revealing the changes in American marriage thoughts and the contradictions that exist in American marriage life in the 1960s.

COVID-19 and the Notion of ‘South-Working’ in Italy’s Discourse: Origins and Narrative

The aim of this paper is to investigate the notion of ‘south working’ – a word which has been used in Italian discourse during the pandemic – and to explore the origins and different narratives associated with this terminology. To this end, a dataset consisting of newspaper articles was compiled and examined, in order to understand the possible meanings attached to ‘south working’ and their discursive contexts.

Arabicization in Saudi Arabia: Procedures and Implementations

Educators and policymakers maintain that Arabicization is of paramount importance. The question, however, is why the Arabicization process has been lagging behind in almost all Arab countries and in Saudi Arabia particularly. This paper attempts to evaluate the planning process of Arabicization based on Haugen’s language planning model (Haugen, 1983) depicting the success in Arabic as a national language but its regression at an official level. Being the clearest language planning in KSA, it still has some problematic areas in terms of its proper implementation. It incorporates distinct steps; the identification of financial resources, creating time schedules for conclusion, and the evaluation and assessments. This research begins with an introduction to Haugen’s language planning model (1983) and its basic elements. Moreover, some historical foundations including the objectives of language planning are investigated. Activities of Arabizing language planning are explored as well as the effects of globalization on Arabizing language outlining. The argument here is situated on the exploration of the Saudi language program and supporting legislative records. This paper tackles the questions of implementation in the light of its failures and successes as far as the Saudi policy is concerned.

Saudi EFL Instructors’ and Students’ Perspectives Towards Virtual Learning During COVID-19 Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic and the sudden transition from face-to-face to virtual learning have given rise to various challenges and obstacles in teaching contexts all over the world. This paper explores the impact of this unexpected transition in the teaching and learning process based on English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ and learners’ experiences at a Saudi university. This research employed a mixed methods approach. Four male and female EFL teachers were involved in addition to thirty-six students from a preparatory year program. The key findings of the study revealed that there were three major challenges encountered in the use of virtual classroom applications during the pandemic, including crucially a lack of technology and Internet connection, having large numbers of students in a virtual learning classroom, and lack of student and teacher interaction when using virtual learning classes. Although Saudi EFL students and teachers viewed the virtual learning classes in a positive light during the pandemic period, they reported that in the post-pandemic period and over the long term, they would prefer traditional face-to-face teaching.

Question -Response in Online Synchronous Videoconferencing Class

With recent developments in technology and its massive impact on the education field, videoconferencing has emerged as an effective teaching learning tool in the language classroom. It is mainly a means of communication to overcome the impediments of geographical distance and separation. However, despite the successful implementation of this technology, it has been stated that using videoconferencing for online teaching is problematic. Videoconferencing impedes instructor-learner interaction and is unable to replace the traditional face-to-face classroom. To understand online interaction from a sociocultural standpoint, this study examined the characteristics of instructor questions in terms of cognitive level so as to investigate if instructor question can function as a stimulus for interaction in the online classroom. The results show that cognitive level of instructor question can function as an effective factor to promote online classroom interaction. Conclusions and implications are drawn at the end of this paper to help understand interaction in online learning.

Exploring Thematic Progressions in Two Excerpts From Amma Darko’s Faceless

This study explores thematic progressions in two excerpts from Amma Darko’s Faceless. The study aims at looking into the different types of thematic progressions used in the selected excerpts to decode there-from the deep meanings linguistically encoded by the author. The study further aims at examining how the different thematic progressions used in the studied texts contribute to their cohesion and contextual coherence. The research appeals to the mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology. Via this method, the number of thematic progression patterns identified has been quantified per excerpt to pave the way to the interpretation of the findings that ensued. The study has arrived at impressive results. Among several others available in the interpretation of the findings subsection, Amma Darko has purposefully not used the Split-Rheme Pattern to avoid a complex writing style that would make her writing not accessible to her readership. The simple linear thematic progression and the overriding theme reiteration patterns extensively used in both texts have allowed the author to emphasize the key thematic points of the studied texts. Moreover, the theme reiteration development strategy used in both texts has provided them with clear focuses. Some of these include skin bleaching, tradition and marriage in Africa, street children, women’s life conditions in Ghana to name but a few. For deeper meanings decoding in the studied excerpts, further studies on discourse-semantics, contextual coherence, conjunctive and lexical relations, as well as experiential and interpersonal meanings could pick up from this article findings.

The Dynamics of Individual Differences in Teaching/Learning of English as a Second/Foreign Language

The subject of individual learner differences (IDs) in English as a Second/Foreign (ESL/EFL) Language teaching and learning is an area which has been much debated and investigated. Since these differences vary according to the geographical or cultural influences of the learners, variations in results and opinions among language instructors are inevitable. However, the indubitable fact is that these differences considerably influence the ESL/EFL language learners’ performances. Individuals are different in personality styles, and these personality styles are influenced by age, cultural background and a whole lot of other factors. These IDs lead to dynamism in language acquisition. The current study thus examined three set of IDs to determine how they affect the learning style preferred by individuals. The individual differences analyzed in this study include: race, exposure to English Language, and personality type (i.e., introvert or extrovert). The study concluded that while race and exposure to English Language affected the preferred learning style significantly as expected English language acquisition, personality style, however, did not have an influence on the preferred learning style for this study sample. IDs are extremely complex, with a large number of variables. As a result, it is critical for researchers as well as English language instructors to identify the source of the problem from a psychological standpoint and consider variables that would aid in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) improvement.