An analysis of grammatical and associated errors found in the writing of third grade Saudi male students in four high schools in the city of Riyadh

The main aim of the thesis is to identify and analyse the types and frequency of grammatical, lexical and general linguistic errors made in the Arabic composition writings of the third year high school students in the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This study is to provide information that can be utilised in the improvement of teaching of the grammatical rules of the Arabic language to public school students. The approach is descriptive, analytical and classificatory.Chapter one deals with the research problem, aims and significance of the study, and also discusses the limitations of the study.Chapter two reviews the background to Arabic grammar in the Saudi educational system in the country, particularly in the secondary school system.Chapter three is an extensive literature review on the background of grammatical errors and Arabic grammatical rules.Chapter four examines the prevalence of grammatical errors, their causes and complaints.Chapter five reviews the efforts and attempts to simplify Arabic grammatical rules as a reaction to the dilemma of Arabic grammar and the prevalence of the grammatical errors.Chapter six deals with the research design and methodology of the study undertaken.Chapter seven presents and analysis the main results of this study. It starts with frequency of the grammatical errors and the percentage of the students who committed grammatical errors. This chapter also presents the frequency of types of errors for each grammatical component and finally it highlights the general linguistic errors found in the students' writings.Chapter eight, which is the final chapter, is devoted to a conclusion and implications for practice and future research

An analysis of grammatical and associated errors found in the writing of third grade Saudi male students in four high schools in the city of Riyadh

The main aim of the thesis is to identify and analyse the types and frequency of grammatical, lexical and general linguistic errors made in the Arabic composition writings of the third year high school students in the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This study is to provide information that can be utilised in the improvement of teaching of the grammatical rules of the Arabic language to public school students. The approach is descriptive, analytical and classificatory.Chapter one deals with the research problem, aims and significance of the study, and also discusses the limitations of the study.Chapter two reviews the background to Arabic grammar in the Saudi educational system in the country, particularly in the secondary school system.Chapter three is an extensive literature review on the background of grammatical errors and Arabic grammatical rules.Chapter four examines the prevalence of grammatical errors, their causes and complaints.Chapter five reviews the efforts and attempts to simplify Arabic grammatical rules as a reaction to the dilemma of Arabic grammar and the prevalence of the grammatical errors.Chapter six deals with the research design and methodology of the study undertaken.Chapter seven presents and analysis the main results of this study. It starts with frequency of the grammatical errors and the percentage of the students who committed grammatical errors. This chapter also presents the frequency of types of errors for each grammatical component and finally it highlights the general linguistic errors found in the students' writings.Chapter eight, which is the final chapter, is devoted to a conclusion and implications for practice and future research

The Impact of Unfamiliar Proper Names on ESL Learners' Listening Comprehension

Vocabulary knowledge is a prerequisite to successful comprehension for native speakers and second language learners alike. Proper names, a peculiar and diverse group of lexical items, have long been the focus of discussion in general linguistics but have received practically no attention in second language vocabulary acquisition research. This study is the first attempt to assess whether proper names impact on second language learners' listening ability. First, I examine the question of how proper names can be adequately defined and discuss their semantic, structural, pragmatic and functional properties. I analyze proper names in light of the prototype theory and argue that personal, deity and pet names constitute the core of the proper name category. Names of places and enterprises occupy an intermediate position while names of events and artefacts are considered the least prototypical, i.e. peripheral members of the category. After identifying essential properties of prototypical proper names, I argue that in a spoken (as opposed to a written) text proper names cannot be considered automatically known items and place high demands on the listeners' cognitive resources. English as a second language (ESL) learners have to bring in a large amount of linguistic and encyclopaedic knowledge in order to cope with proper names in the flow of speech. I propose a 3-level model of such knowledge: recognition -> categorization -> referent properties. I then subject this model to empirical testing. The first experiment shows that among intermediate to advanced ESL learners the proper names recognition rate is around 60 percent. It is harder for ESL listeners to recognize proper names when the percentage of difficult common vocabulary in the text is high. The participants' proficiency level and the structure of a specific text were also found to affect the ability to recognize unfamiliar names. Well over a third of proper names are missed, which suggests that in real life listening, ESL learners mistake unknown common expressions for proper names and vice versa. In the second experiment, the participants' comprehension of a news story is tested under two conditions: Names Known (all proper names are familiar prior to listening) and Names Unknown (all proper names are unfamiliar). Results indicate that the presence of unfamiliar proper names hinders the intermediate to advanced proficiency learners' comprehension of a short news text as measured by immediate free recall and the ability to evaluate proper names related statements. The effect is local; it concerns comprehension of details, particularly those details that are associated with processing the proper names themselves. The Names Unknown group produced fewer details and more incorrect inferences in their recalls, scored significantly lower on the measure of proper names related comprehension, and selfreported a lower amount of comprehension. In contrast, the Names Known group produced more details and fewer incorrect inferences in their recalls, scored much higher on the measure of proper names related comprehension, and self-reported a greater degree of comprehension. The experiment also shows that participants in the Names Unknown treatment were not always able to ascertain from context what the referent of an unfamiliar proper name is, and in cases when they did, they could not extract as much information about the referent as the participants in the Names Known treatment had available. It is evidently unrealistic to expect ESL learners to determine what unfamiliar proper names refer to from context. On average, after 2-3 attempts at listening participants in the Names Unknown group were able to extract just over 40 percent of the information about the referents of unfamiliar proper names. Also participants' difficulty ratings of experimental tasks confirmed that the presence of unfamiliar proper names definitely makes the text seem harder to understand. The last experiment replicated the findings of the previous one on a larger sample. The Names Known group performed significantly better on open-ended questions and true-false-don't know statements. A substantial effect of unfamiliar proper names on the overall comprehension scores was found. Around 17 percent of the variance in the scores was accounted for by familiarity/lack of familiarity with proper names. The findings also provide some evidence in support of the claim that a name form that hints at the cognitive category its referent belongs to is less likely to adversely affect comprehension than a form that does not. Unfamiliar proper names contribute to raising the vocabulary threshold in second language listening, which should be taken into account by teachers, test-developers and other TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) professionals

Technologies of accident: forensic media, crash analysis, and the redefinition of progress

This study suggests that by the mid-twentieth century, transportation accidents were no longer thought to be something that could be eradicated through the eradication of human error. Neither were they something to be simply accepted. Instead, they were something to be expertly monitored and measured, scrutinized and analyzed, explained and contained. To these ends, transportation accidents were subjected to rigorous investigation and controlled experiment, and new means and methods were designed and implemented to technologically write, scientifically read, and institutionally manage them. Technologies of accident advances three basic propositions: (1) the transportation accident was made into an object of scientific and institutional analysis, knowledge, and control in the united states during the 1940s and '50s; (2) the transportation accident, regarded in the nineteenth century as an impediment to technological progress, was reconstituted in the twentieth as a catalyst for technological progress; and (3) accident technologies and forensic media such as the flight-data recorder, the cockpit-voice recorder, and the high-speed motion-picture camera embodied and enabled the twin transformations described in the first two propositions. This study examines the origins and implications of a cultural and institutional project driven by two interrelated imperatives: discover the transportation accident's "truth" (in the name of history or science) and discipline the transportation accident's signification (in the name of education). Particular attention is paid to how accident technologies and forensic media articulated and were articulated by their cultural and discursive contexts, as well as the ways in which they rearticulated earlier technocultural imaginings and practices

Chinese elements : a bridge of the integration between Chinese -English translation and linguaculture transnational mobility

[Abstract] As the popularity of Chinese elements in the innovation of the translation part in Chinese CET, we realized that Chinese elements have become a bridge between linguaculture transnational mobility and Chinese-English translation.So, Chinese students translation skills should be critically improved; for example, on their understanding about Chinese culture, especially the meaning of Chinese culture. Five important secrets of skillful translation are introduced to improve students’ translation skills

James Michael Curley Scrapbooks Volume 71

The James Michael Curley Scrapbook Collection consists of digitized microfilmed copies of notebooks kept by Curley from 1914-1937. These notebooks contain news clippings that were drawn primarily from Boston newspapers. Curley was born in Roxbury, MA in 1874. He served four terms as Mayor of Boston: 1914–1918, 1922–1926, 1930–1934 and 1946–1950. He also served as Governor of Massachusetts from 1935-1937. In addition to Curley’s political career, the scrapbooks also include clippings about his first wife Mrs. Mary Herlihy Curley (1884-1930) and their daughter Mary D. Curley (1909-1950). A selection of the notebooks were microfilmed in 1962. The microfilm can be found in the holdings of Dinand Library, Holy Cross’s main library. This volume includes clippings from 1932.https://crossworks.holycross.edu/curley_scrapbooks/1102/thumbnail.jp

Key terms of the Qur'an: a critical dictionary

This book provides detailed and multidisciplinary coverage of a wealth of key Qur’anic terms, with incisive entries on crucial expressions ranging from the divine names allāh (“God”) and al-raḥmān (“the Merciful”) to the Qur’anic understanding of belief and self-surrender to God. It examines what the terms mean in Qur’anic usage, discusses how to translate them into English, and delineates the role they play in expressing the Qur’an’s distinctive understanding of God, humans, and the cosmos. It offers a comprehensive but nonreductionist investigation of the relationship of Qur’anic terms to earlier traditions such as Jewish and Christian literature, pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and Arabian epigraphy. While the dictionary is primarily engaged in ascertaining what the Qur’an would have meant to its original recipients in late antique Arabia, it makes selective and critical use of later Muslim scholarship alongside an extensive body of secondary research in English, German, and French from the nineteenth century to today