The EFL Essay Writing Difficulties of Egyptian Student Teachers of English: Implications for Essay Writing Curriculum and Instruction

The current study is conducted with the aim of investigating the essay writing difficulties of Egyptian student teachers of English. More specifically, it attempts to fulfil the following three aims: explore the focuses of teaching essay writing at one of the pioneering faculties of education in Egypt; investigate the different essay writing practices used by Egyptian essay writing teachers from teachers as well as their students’ perspectives; and identify the essay writing difficulties encountered by Egyptian student teachers of English at the concerned faculty of education from both students and their teachers’ perspectives. The current study adopts an interpretive methodology that uses a sequential mixed methods approach to data collection and analysis. Therefore, I administered a questionnaire to 165 student teachers of English and 7 essay writing teachers, conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with 14 student teachers of English and 7 essay writing teachers, and observed nine essay writing sessions of different teachers. Data is analysed quantitatively using SPSS descriptive statistics and qualitatively using exploratory content analysis. Findings of the current study reveal that there are eleven focuses of teaching essay writing at the concerned faculty of education. These focuses have been classified into four main categories: Mechanics/Language, Content, Structure/Layout and Practising Writing. Findings also shed light on the essay writing teachers’ practices in relation to planning, teaching, feedback and assessment. Finally, findings show that student teachers of English encounter the following difficulties in their essay writing: planning difficulties, organisational difficulties including coherence, cohesion, and stylistic difficulties, lexical problems, and technical difficulties including grammar, punctuation, spelling and revision and editing. According to the above mentioned findings, a theoretical writing model has been devised and a pedagogical process genre approach to teaching EFL essay writing in Egypt has been proposed. Implications for essay writing curriculum planning and instruction are also included. Finally, suggestions for further research are provided.The Egyptian Ministry of Higher Educatio

Effects of selected additives on a luminous diffusion flame

Imperial Users onl

Optical Bistability In Nonlinear Kerr Dielectric And Ferroelectric Materials [QC1].

Kestabilan optiks dwi dan kestabilan optiks pelbagai di dalam hablur Kerr tak linear dikaji. Dua jenis sistem hablur penebat berion dipertimbangkan: bahan dielektrik biasa dan bahan ferroelektrik (FE) dengan struktur Perovskit. The optical bistability (OB) and multistability in Kerr nonlinear crystals are investigated. Two types of ionic insulating crystals are considered: a typical dielectric and a ferroelectric (FE)

Development of Energy Generation By Using Peizoelectric Material Via Structural Vibration

The heart of this project is to find a way to use lost energies. In this case vibrations caused by machines or walking is a lost energy that need to be used. As low power electronics and wireless technology starts to develop recently, it was necessary to think of new power sources that produce low power and easily to be harvested. The harvesting of power from different sources started to become commonly used in the last years. With the time the power harvesting circuits will replace the normal finite power supplies used. Piezoelectric material technology produced a new way that uses some of the energy being wasted or ignored in the surrounding, in this case vibration energy that usually lost. Theses materials is already put in to use to harvest power; however, the power produced by these material is very small to be able to power most electronic systems. The research made into this matter has always ended up with the need for methods to accumulate the produced power until an amount of enough energy is produced. At the end of this project the outcome should be a stable source of power to charge a mobile battery or a power ban

Power structure and social participation in community action: a case study

This study identifies the community power structure and the pattern of leadership in a Midwestern city besides describing the social participation of those individuals who were active in the most important issues carried out in their community through the three years prior to 1981. The reputational approach and social exchange theory are included in the theoretical framework to guide the study. The study involves a survey performed by the Department of Sociology, Iowa State University, in 1981. Participants were selected through a snowball technique starting with ten knowledgeables in the community. The final size of the sample was 120. In the interview stage, each subject was asked to limit his/her active participation to at most five issues in which he/she had participated the most;The findings of the study show that the majority of participants are married males with different levels of income and education. Based on the number of votes each individual received, a classification of top rank, middle rank, and low rank leaders is formed. Top leaders are considered to be elites not only because they represent a minority among all the leaders (eighteen out of 120) but also because they tend to have a higher IER (Income, Education, and Residency) Score. Middle and low rank leaders are considered nonelite leaders;With relation to class, status and power relationships among the elites, results show that they have no status relationship, but that they have class and power relationships in the form of clusters;Elite leaders are found to have the highest scope of participation. The elite leaders are also found to have higher extent of participation than nonelite leaders;Concerning participation in different types of issues (instrumental, expressive, and combined), the top leaders have slightly greater participation in all three issue types than do the low rank leaders, but they are nearly equal in this concern with the middle rank leaders. Elite leaders do not have greater participation in instrumental issues than in expressive or combined issues. Top rank leaders also participate more in the issues with the least degrees of conflict than do the middle rank and low rank leaders

Antifouling activity of crude extracts from some Red Sea soft corals

EnThe antifouling activity of crude extracts of 5 common Red Sea soft corals was examined. The extracts were mixed with a marine paint, applied to PVC panels immersed in the seawater of Suez Bay (Red Sea). The barnacle Balanus amphitrite (Crustacea) and tube worms Hydroides elegans (Polychaeta) are the dominant fouling organisms in this area. The results demonstrated that all the tested soft coral extracts exhibited significant antifouling activities with varying degrees. Extracts of Sinularia heterospiculata and Sinularia variabilis showed the highest and potent wide spectrum antifouling activity, particularly in the first 17 days of fouling formation. Extracts of Sinularia polydactyla exhibited significant selective inhibition against settlement of barnacle, while the extracts of Lithophyton arboreum showed significant antifouling activity against the latter successional stages of tube worms. The results of the current study propose that these soft corals may contain bioactive compounds with antifouling activity. These bioactive molecules can be isolated, purified, identified and chemically synthesized for commercial uses in the development of nontoxic and environmentally acceptable antifouling coatings

Synthesis of some new pyrazolylfuropyrimidinethiones and triazolofuropyrimidinethiones

Some novel pyrazolylfuropyrimidinethiones were synthesized from cyclocondensation of 4-hydrazino-5,6-diphenylfuro [2,3-d] pyrimidine-2(1H)-thione (3) with different enaminones and 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds. Whereas the furotriazolo-pyrimidinethiones were synthesized from reaction of compound 3 with benzoyl chloride, p-chlorobenzaldehyde and carbon disulphide. Furthermore, furotetrazolo-pyrimidinethione and ditetrazolofuro pyrimidine were synthesized

ON THE LOCATION-AWARE COOPERATIVE SPECTRUM SENSING IN URBAN ENVIRONMENT

Spectrum sensing is a key enabling technology for cognitive radio networks (CRNs). The main objective of spectrum sensing is to provide more spectrum access opportunities to cognitive radio users without interfering with the operations of the licensed network. Spectrum sensing decisions can lead to erroneous sensing with low performance due to fading, shadowing and other interferences caused by either terrain inconsistency or dense urban structure. In order to improve spectrum sensing decisions, in this paper a cooperative spectrum sensing scheme is proposed. The propagation conditions such as the variance and intensity of terrain and urban structure between two points with respect to signal propagation are taken into consideration. We have also derived the optimum fusion rule which accounts for location reliability of secondary users (SUs). The analytical results show that the proposed scheme slightly outperforms the conventional cooperative spectrum sensing approaches

Eye Gesture Analysis with Head Movement for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems

Road traffic accidents are a major cause of death worldwide. In an attempt to reduce accidents, some research efforts have focused on creating Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) able to detect vehicle, driver and environmental conditions and to use this information to identify cues for potential accidents. This paper presents continued work on a novel Non-intrusive Intelligent Driver Assistance and Safety System (Ni-DASS) for assessing driver point of regard within vehicles. It uses an onboard CCD camera to observe the driver’s face. A template matching approach is used to compare the driver’s eye-gaze pattern with a set of eye-gesture templates of the driver looking at different focal points within the vehicle. The windscreen is divided into cells and comparison of the driver’s eye-gaze pattern with templates of a driver’s eyes looking at each cell is used to determine the driver’s point of regard on the windscreen. Results indicate that the proposed technique could be useful in situations where low resolution estimates of driver point of regard are adequate. For instance, To allow ADAS systems to alert the driver if he/she has positively failed to observe a hazard

A methodology for prioritizing water mains rehabilitation in Egypt

AbstractWater distribution systems are aging and deteriorating over time. Deterioration of water mains causes reduction in the structural capacity and the hydraulic capacity of the water distribution systems. Municipalities face the greatest challenges to define the deterioration processes and the factors that can affect the rate of deterioration. To face these challenges municipalities need to define methodologies and technologies for water distribution systems planning, design, construction, management, assessment and rehabilitation, that consider local economic, environmental and social factors. Therefore, it is important to implement mitigation measures in a timely manner to extend the useful service life of water distribution systems. This paper presents a model that prioritizes the rehabilitation of water mains as well as assists in rehabilitation technology selection. A series of interviews and questionnaire surveys are conducted to identify the most important factors that affect water mains deterioration and selection of the rehabilitation technology. The weighted factors scoring model is carried out using the Simos’ procedure to develop the priority index model and the alternative evaluation model. The priority index model is integrated with the Geographic Information System (GIS) technology to visualize the condition severity of the water pipes to help the decision maker to decide the course of action. A case study of water mains sample of a set of the collected data for this research has been used to implement the proposed model