The current study is concerned with investigating the difficulties that Iraqi EFL learners of English may face when translating English collective nouns. Such collective nouns as committee, government, , jury , Parliament , etc. are considered singular when the concept of the unity as a group is emphasized , but when the concept of the individuals or numbers is emphasized they are treated as plural. A sample of twenty undergraduate students have been selected randomly to translate certain English collective nouns in some selected political texts in order to find out the difficulties they might face in rendering them into Arabic. It is hypothesized that most of the testees have used the singular form rather than the plural ignoring the notion of meaning of these nouns. Theoretically speaking, the most important conclusions that the present paper has come up with are: Firstly, English collective nouns may co-occur in the singular with either a singular or a plural form of the verb; secondly, in terms of form, three types of collective nouns can be recognized : (a) invariable singular collectives, (b) invariable plural collectives, (c) variable ( singular and plural); thirdly, in terms of meaning there are two types of collective nouns , i.e. human and non- human collectives. Empirically speaking, the paper shows the following conclusions: English collective nouns are problematic and difficult to translate due to the disparity between form and meaning of both languages , the inadequate knowledge of the function of some structural clues in determining the emphasized idea (i.e., singular or plural), and formal equivalence and literal translation are used by most testees.
Abstract
The main question raised in this paper is: Is it possible to translate the ‘genre’
of Quran? And if this ‘genre’ is Quran specific, a ‘genre’ of its own, i.e. a unique one,
how can the Quranic text be translated from Arabic into English or any other
language? This question has been raising a lot of controversy among translation
theorists, linguists, philosophers and scholars of Islam and specialists in the sciences
of Arabic language let alone Quran exegetes. Scholars of the Arabic language and
scholars of Islam have argued that because of the genre of Quran is the genre of (ijaz),
translatability can never be possible. Equivalence, thus, cannot be achieved especially
if we know that so far
Many people, especially among the youth or scholars, wonder about the position of Islam or the scholars of faith on the terminology used by scholars of theology in a certain period of time, and then circulated by people throughout the times and to the present day, such as the terms (the old, the maker, the updated, the cause and the cause) and so on, and this What I felt myself while teaching this subject from some of the students, some of whom consider it blasphemy, and some of them consider it an innovation of speech, and so there were many questions about this subject, which led me to write and research it, after relying on God Almighty, although the research is not long due to the nature of This topic on the one hand, and because I d
... Show MoreReading 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
... Show MoreVarious theories on learning have been developed with increasing frequency in the last
few decades. In tandem with this, Multiple Intelligence theory appeared as a new approach to
education as well as an important theory in the field of language learning. Gardner explains
that all human beings have different intelligence fields and a potential to develop them. These
intelligences are (verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, musical, bodilykinesthetic,
interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, and Existential).
This study aims at investigating Multiple Intelligences of Iraqi college EFL students. To
achieve the aims of the study, a questionnaire is adopted according to Birmingham model
which incl
Online learning is not a new concept in education, but it has been used extensively since the Covid-19 pandemic and is still in use now. Every student in the world has gone through this learning process from the primary to the college levels, with both teachers and students conducting instruction online (at home). The goal of the current study is to investigate college students’ attitudes towards online learning. To accomplish the goal of the current study, a questionnaire is developed and adjusted before being administered to a sample of 155 students. Additionally, validity and reliability are attained. Some conclusions, recommendations, and suggestions are offered in the end.
The study targets exploring the similarities and differences between Iraqi and Malaysian learners of English in refusing marriage proposals. Also, it examines the favored politeness strategies that learners use to protect their interlocutors’ face, heeding both their social distance and status. Data were gathered by a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) which contained six marriage situations. Responses were analyzed based on Beebe et al.’s (1990) refusal taxonomy and Scollon et al.’s (2012) politeness system. The findings indicated that both the Iraqi and Malaysian learners preferred the indirect refusal strategies in marriage proposals, as well as the hierarchical politeness in the form of independence strategies regardless of t
... Show MoreThe study targets exploring the similarities and differences between Iraqi and Malaysian learners of English in refusing marriage proposals. Also, it examines the favored politeness strategies that learners use to protect their interlocutors’ face, heeding both their social distance and status. Data were gathered by a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) which contained six marriage situations. Responses were analyzed based on Beebe et al.’s (1990) refusal taxonomy and Scollon et al.’s (2012) politeness system. The findings indicated that both the Iraqi and Malaysian learners preferred the indirect refusal strategies in marriage proposals, as well as the hierarchical politeness in the form of independence strategies regardless of t
... Show MoreThis study shows impoliteness as a form of face-threatening that can be intentionally caused by verbal threats in a particular setting. It investigates: what strategies and mitigators do Iraqi-Kurdish English as a foreign language (EFL) learners use in situations of threat responses? The present investigation paper aims to examine impoliteness strategies and mitigators by these learners when they respond to threatening situations in their context. Thus, it fills a gap in pragmatics literature by investigating the reactions to threats in an Iraqi-Kurdish EFL context. To this end, 50 participants have participated in this study. An open-ended questionnaire in the form of a Discourse Completion Task (DCT) is used to elicit responses fr
... Show MoreDBN Rashid, IMPAT: International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts, and Literature, 2016 - Cited by 5