Reading 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 in a more interactive and communicative manner. In this light, this study investigates the difficulties faced by engineering students in reading comprehension in a university setting where the medium of instruction and communication is not English, but where students are required to read textbooks in English. The participants are selected from College of Engineering/ University of Al-Mustansiriya to take the test. However, a standardized test is used to show the students‟ difficulties in reading comprehension. Two passages are used in the test, the first one is concerned with their specialization in engineering while the second is concerned with general topics. Data analysis is conducted through using one sample T. test and percentages statistical methods. Results of this study reveal that engineering students have great difficulties in reading comprehension since most of them have not succeeded in the test. Reasons behind such results have been illustrated and certain suggestions have been given to be useful for both teachers and students of scientific fields especially engineering.
The study was conducted to estimate the economic losses caused by insect mole cricket Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa on some agricultural crops and Potato tubers in collage of Agriculture- Abu Ghraib season 2012-2013. Study showed Mole cricket caused percentage of infestation in spring potato tubers variety Luciana reached to 11.61% and the percentage of loss in weight of tubers reached 18.88%. The study showed that addition of animal manure (organic fertilizer) to the soil when planting potatoes in the autumn increased the incidence of infestation and the number of tunnels caused by mole cricket which led to from increased economic losses. When matured potato tubers were left for a longer period in the soil percentage of infestation by mole cr
... Show MoreThis study is about awareness of teaching explanation difficulties in the Islamic university from the lecturers point of view. It discussed the difficulties and the traditional teaching methods of explanation. The study concentrated on teaching Islamic studies in general and teaching explanation in specific and set difficulties so as to be treated.
The study is of three chapters, the first contains the difficulties in several aspects like the educational goals, text contents, teaching methods and styles, students, educational techniques, educational aids and evaluation, it addition to the lecturers of Islamic university colleges in 2009-2
... Show MoreThe objective of this study is to analyze the difficulties faced by intermediate-level Iraqi students in the use of Spanish unstressed pronouns as a foreign language (ELE). Through a mixed methodology, a descriptive and explanatory analysis was conducted based on written and oral productions of B1-level students at the University of Baghdad.The results show that factors such as interference from the native language (Arabic) and English, as well as grammatical differences between Spanish and Arabic, generate difficulties in the correct use of unstressed pronouns. A contrastive teaching approach is proposed that takes advantage of students' cognitive abilities to highlight similarities and differences between both languages.This stu
... Show MoreThis article discusses a discussion of trends and patterns of understanding and application of the concept of metaphor to various subjects that may interfere with the perspective of metaphors in translation theory, an attempt was made to use the principles and characteristics of metaphors and their fundamental tradition in translation theory, and to uncover the perspective of considering metaphor as a conceptual process. presenting its merits, since it is still considered an eccentric expression of linguistics.
This paper proposes feedback linearization control (FBLC) based on function approximation technique (FAT) to regulate the vibrational motion of a smart thin plate considering the effect of axial stretching. The FBLC includes designing a nonlinear control law for the stabilization of the target dynamic system while the closed-loop dynamics are linear with ensured stability. The objective of the FAT is to estimate the cubic nonlinear restoring force vector using the linear parameterization of weighting and orthogonal basis function matrices. Orthogonal Chebyshev polynomials are used as strong approximators for adaptive schemes. The proposed control architecture is applied to a thin plate with a large deflection that stimulates the axial loadi
... Show MoreThis study examines the factors that affect oral participation of six Arab postgraduate students (two Iraqis, two Jordanians, and two Libyans), namely, three male participants and three female participants. For this purpose, a semi-structured interview was employed. The results showed that female as well male interviewees share some factors that make oral participation in classroom disheartening. These factors include high levels of anxiety, lack of confidence, shyness, and lack of preparation. It was also that there is no difference between male and female interviewees in relation to the factors that make them feel disheartened from oral classroom participation.
The paper is concerned with a linguistic analysis of the blurbs, used in advertising English and Arabic novels. A blurb is an advertising persuasive text, written on the back cover of a book. Blurbs of selected novels are chosen as representative examples. The selected blurbs belong to two languages, Arabic and English. The paper aims at studying the linguistic features that are characteristic of blurbs as advertising texts and making a sort of comparison between English blurbs and Arabic ones. A linguistic analysis on four levels is presented. Blurbs are tackled from the point of view of four linguistic disciplines that are phonology, syntax, semantics and discourse analysis. A reference is made to the linguistic featu
... Show MoreThe conjunctive ''and'' and its Arabic counterpart ''و'' are discourse markers that express certain meanings and presuppose the presence of other elements in discourse. They are indispensable aids to both the text writers and readers. The present study aims to show that such cohesive ties help the writer to organize his main argument and communicate his ideas vividly and smoothly. They also serve as explicit signals that help readers unfold text and follow its threads as realized in the progression of context. The researcher has utilized the Quirk Model of Semantic Implication for data analysis. A total of 42 (22 for English and 20 for Arabic) political texts selected from different elite newspapers in both Arabic and English for the analy
... Show MoreWith the advancement of technology ,the study of cross-cultural communication via on line has become an important and researchable topic in linguistic theory and its applications.The aims of this study are two- fold (a) exploring the influence of cultural diversity on on-line interaction between American native speakers (NSs) and Iraqi non-native speakers (NNSs) of English which, together with other factors might potentially lead to what Thomas(1983) calls "pragmatic failure" (PF), a main cause of communication breakdowns and (b) specifying which type of PF occurs more frequently between the two groups along with the reasons behind such failures. To achie
... Show MoreThis paper investigates the collocational use of irreversible food binomials in the lexicons of English (UK) and Arabic (Iraq), their word-order motivations, cultural background, and how they compare. Data consisted in sixteen pairs in English, versus fifteen in Arabic. Data analysis has shown their word order is largely motivated by logical sequencing of precedence; the semantically bigger or better item comes first and the phonologically longer word goes last. These apply in a cline of decreasing functionality: logical form first, semantic importance second, phonological form last. In competition, the member higher in this cline wins first membership. While the entries in each list clearly reflect culturally preferred food meals in the UK
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