The planning policy of bilingualism in education in Iraq

Iraq as a multicultural and multilingual country has different languages as Arabic, which is the dominant language, and it also has some other minority languages, such as Kurdish, Turkish, Syriac....etc. Over the last 80 years, Iraq which was involved in some political struggles, had faced many internal problems regarding the Arabic domination that occurred, and this was owing to the absence of clear language policy used. Children learning in the Iraqi system, for instance, speak and study all courses in Arabic, while speaking and using their own culture at home tend to be done in their first language. The minorities’ language usage in Iraq was ignored both inside the schools as well as in the curriculum construction. So this study focuses on the following issues: the first issue is, What is the strategy of language planning policy in Iraq? the study discusses the strategy and the planning educational system that Iraq applies now, the second issue is, What is the status of minority languages in Iraq? Iraq is a multicultural county and has many minorities communities with different languages, the third issue is, What are the challenges of language in Iraq? as long as there is different languages within one country the study also focuses on the challenges that been faced in the planning policy system, and the last issue is, Is there a homogenous relationship during the current policy? How? the study shows the homogenous relationship inside the current policy and the researches give many suggestions and recommendations regarding to the current policy and what is needed for improving the educational planning policy system

Gender Differences and Foreign Language Reading Anxiety of High School Learners in an Iraqi EFL Context

Over the past two decades Investigation of foreign language anxiety generally has progressively caught the attention of numerous investigators in the area of foreign language. Yet, anxiety variable that affects the students’ acquisition of particular language skills for instance, reading specifically have actually seldom been investigated in the context of EFL Arab learners in particular with Iraqi students. So, the study aimed to investigate the influence of anxiety variable towards reading comprehension of Iraqi high school learners. This study also sought to examine the gender differences towards reading language anxiety. Quantitative approach was applied in this research, which involved 20 Iraqi students of a high school in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The respondents comprised 10 males and 10 females with ages between 16 years and 18 years. This study made use of Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS). The results of the study showed that both male and female participants had a high level of anxiety towards the reading comprehension. Furthermore, the analysis revealed that gender played a slight role in the results of the study. Female students showed a slightly higher level of anxiety towards the reading comprehension than their male counterparts. Iraqi learners need to be exposed to the four skills of English language generally and the reading skill in particular. This exposure makes the learners aware of the four skills (Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking) that need to be acquired and also to decrease the rate of anxiety variable in addition to its influence on their performance