Academic writing is a key skill for success in academic life, particularly for graduate students of a foreign language. The importance of writing to academic culture, practice, and knowledge building has led to a great deal of research in many fields, including rhetoric and composition, linguistics, applied linguistics, and English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Often, studies and research investigating academic writing are motivated by the need to inform the learning of writing to native and non-native English-speaking students, through both descriptions of professional academic writing as well as through comparisons of novice writer (native and non-native Englishspeaking) and expert production. However, while learning about academic writing to better inform teaching content and practices is an important aim, Bazerman (1994, P. 10) points out that understanding language use in the disciplines also helps us to use language more effectively, can guide writers and editors as they work with contributor texts, and helps provide non-specialist readers with access to the discourse of the disciplines. Thus, describing and understanding patterns and pragmatic of argumentation of language use in academic writing allows us to understand the disciplinary cultures and practices that they embody. This is why many linguists and scholars have long been fascinated with the language of academia, particularly in the form of written texts. This interest has developed and expanded over the past few decades, in part due to the premise that much can be learned about disciplinary practices and cultures by examining academic writing: the primary means of the transmission of knowledge in academic fields.
It is a well-known fact that publishing companies spend much money, time and energy in designing their book covers to attract potential customers. As the first thing people do when they buy or intend to buy a book is looking at its front cover. However, if there is a need to know more about the book, people usually look at the information on its back cover. This paper attempts to explore the persuasive function of blurbs beyond the constraints of the academic domain and consequently their connection with advertising discourse in two main sections: The first presents the concept of blurb and its structure while the second defines persuasion and shows the most prominent strategiesused in blurbs. Finally, this paper gives the conclusion tha
... Show MoreReading is an interactive process that goes on between the reader and the text, resulting in comprehension. The text presents letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs that encode meaning. The reader uses knowledge, skills, and strategies to determine what that meaning is. Reading comprehension is much more than decoding; it results when the reader knows which skills and strategies are appropriate for the type oftext, and understands how to apply them to accomplish the reading purpose.Reading comprehension is important because without it reading is nothing more than tracking symbols on a page with your eyes and sounding them out leaving the reader with no information. Instead of promoting traditional approaches, reading should be taught
... Show MoreTranslation is a vital process that needs much more understanding and mutual background knowledge on the part of ESL or EFL learners in terms of grammar , meaning and context of both the SL and TL . Thus , the main aim of the current research paper is to identify and figure out the techniques used by ESL or EFL learners when translating English barnyard verbs into Arabic . The main problem of this study is attributed to the fact that ESL or EFL learners may not be able to identify and understand the connotative meaning of barnyard verbs since these verbs are onomatopoeic (i.e,) a word that phonetically imitates, or suggests the source of sound that it describes. Therefore they may be unable to translate these verbs appropriately and accura
... Show MoreThe aim of the study is to diagnose the real level of technology usage in teaching and learning EFL at university from teachers and students’ viewpoints, and see if it is possible to achieve something of the researchers’ dream - accessing top universities. Two questionnaires have been used to measure the range of technology usage in Colleges of Education for Women, Baghdad and Iraqi Universities, and College of Basic Education. The results have shown that the reality of using technology is still away from the dream. The results have been ascribed to two reasons: The first is the little knowledge of using technology in teaching, and the second is that technology is not included in the curriculum.
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
... Show MoreTranslation is both a social and cultural phenomenon, it can neither exist outside a social community and it is within society, nor it can be viewed as a medium of cross-cultural fertilization. This paper aims to investigate the difficulties that a translator may face when dealing with legal texts such as marriage and divorce contracts. These difficulties can be classified according to the present paper into syntactic, semantic, and cultural. The syntactic difficulties include word order, syntactic arrangement, unusual sentence structure, the use of model verbs in English, and difference in legal system. As to the semantic difficulties, they involve lack of established terminology, finding functional and lexical equivalence, word for word t
... Show MoreEnglish teachers in Iraq and other countries around the world up to this time use traditional methods to help students memorize new vocabularies. The sense of words or structure is not to be given in either the native tongue or the target language by definition, but is induced by the way the form is used in the situation. Situational Language Teaching (SLT) has recently become the needed method for improving speaking skills. It indicates the application of learning the language in actual and social exchange expressions so as to let learners do as required in classroom and non-classroom circumstances. This pilot study seeks to answer the following questions: Can SLT improve English speaking skills of target learners? How SLT contribute to th
... Show MoreReading is an interactive process that goes on between the reader and the text, resulting in comprehension. The text presents letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs that encode meaning. The reader uses knowledge, skills, and strategies to determine what that meaning is. Reading comprehension is much more than decoding; it results when the reader knows which skills and strategies are appropriate for the type oftext, and understands how to apply them to accomplish the reading purpose.Reading comprehension is important because without it reading is nothing more than tracking symbols on a page with your eyes and sounding them out leaving the reader with no information. Instead of promoting traditional approaches, reading should be ta
... Show MoreAllah, in his Holy Quran introduced great prophet stories so as to learn from. The greatness of these stories lies in Allah himself being the author. He portrays his characters, lays the plot, defines the tests and Al- Ibtilla, provides ways of being patient, using Duaa to end all hard tests and generously describing the greatness of his rewards to all those who are patient. The purpose of this research is to study selected English prophet stories for children on three levels, the stories ability to convey lessons and Islamic teachings to children who do not speak Arabic, the stories portray the Islamic concept of patience, the teaching and learning styles andstrategies that Allah uses with each prophet. The concept of patience is defined a
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