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

Code-switching in online communication among Arabic-English speakers

Language is essential for communication. People who are involved in cross cultural communication have to be bilingual in order to interact with people from a different language background (Blackwell. Woolard, K. (2005). Bilingualism opens up various new pathways of thoughts, expressions, and it helps to reduce misunderstanding in interactions (Hidayat, T. 2012). The purpose of this review is to find out how code-switching plays a vital role in language communication especially in the social media such as Facebook, Twitter, SMS and Chat. This study reviewed fifteen journal articles to examine the ways code-switching was used. The review was to discover social phenomena and authentic identities of social actors. The study discovered that code-switching has been used widely to unmask bilinguals’ cultural background and group identity during online communication via Facebook. Finally, code-switching can be used to obtain positive feelings to the interlocutor, which here was combined with introducing humour as an in-group marker, quoting, and to some extent topic specificity as well as possible vocabulary limitation in one language or the other, in the online conversation by bilinguals such as to express group solidarity

Acquisition of English Prepositions among Iraqi Secondary School Students in Kuala Lumpur-Malaysia

The study focuses on the acquisition of English prepositions among students of Iraqi secondary school in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Participants in the study were (20) students all of them at sixth level. The researchers studied the students’ responses to the given test to investigate the problematic prepositions of English language that Iraqi English as foreign language (EFL) learners have in their everyday and academic usage; and investigate the way that EFL Iraqi learners differentiate between using English and Arabic prepositions. The major finding in this study is that the main reason for all the errors is the dominance of the mother tongue (MT) on English language (EL), especially with Arabic language having a syntactic structure when imposed on EL that too with Arabic meaning on EL. The dominance and influence of one’s MT is a major challenge in using the EL in the right way by Iraqi EFL learners. In a subconscious manner, Iraqi EFL learners tend to use or impose their MT’s syntactic, semantic structures and patterns on EL. Arabic and English have different number of prepositions and word-to-word equivalents of prepositions cannot be found between Iraqi Arabic and English Languages. Iraqi EFL learners are influenced by the prepositional system of their MT (Arabic) when they intend to use the prepositions in EL and this leads to errors and lack of idiomaticity. Inaccuracy is a result of this, which is reflected in class hours for EFL learners.Keywords: Arabic Preposition, English Preposition, Iraqi EFL Learners, English as Foreign Language (EFL

Acquisition of English Prepositions among Iraqi Secondary School Students in Kuala Lumpur-Malaysia

The study focuses on the acquisition of English prepositions among students of Iraqi secondary school in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Participants in the study were (20) students all of them at sixth level. The researchers studied the students’ responses to the given test to investigate the problematic prepositions of English language that Iraqi English as foreign language (EFL) learners have in their everyday and academic usage; and investigate the way that EFL Iraqi learners differentiate between using English and Arabic prepositions. The major finding in this study is that the main reason for all the errors is the dominance of the mother tongue (MT) on English language (EL), especially with Arabic language having a syntactic structure when imposed on EL that too with Arabic meaning on EL. The dominance and influence of one’s MT is a major challenge in using the EL in the right way by Iraqi EFL learners. In a subconscious manner, Iraqi EFL learners tend to use or impose their MT’s syntactic, semantic structures and patterns on EL. Arabic and English have different number of prepositions and word-to-word equivalents of prepositions cannot be found between Iraqi Arabic and English Languages. Iraqi EFL learners are influenced by the prepositional system of their MT (Arabic) when they intend to use the prepositions in EL and this leads to errors and lack of idiomaticity. Inaccuracy is a result of this, which is reflected in class hours for EFL learners.Keywords: Arabic Preposition, English Preposition, Iraqi EFL Learners, English as Foreign Language (EFL

Movie Effects on EFL Learners at Iraqi School in Kuala Lumpur

Previously, one of the vital tasks of  English learning is to find new methods and resources to make the EFL students more stimulating and productive. Recently, the usage of movies (in DVD format) in courses became popular or supplementary resources to learn English among EFL learners. Many researchers stated that authentic video is an advantage and inspiring tool in language learning. However, there have been quite few studies on the relationship between effective learning and students’ movie preferences. This research aims at finding the relationship between effective learning and students’ movie preferences. To this end, data were collected by using posttests. Participants were students from a Iraqi school in Kuala Lumpur. The researchers uncovered that the participants had insight into the subtitles/captions which are used in the movie in classrooms. The implications of these findings and suggestions are discussed.Keyword: Movie, learning language, vocabularies, implications

Movie Effects on EFL Learners at Iraqi School in Kuala Lumpur

Previously, one of the vital tasks of  English learning is to find new methods and resources to make the EFL students more stimulating and productive. Recently, the usage of movies (in DVD format) in courses became popular or supplementary resources to learn English among EFL learners. Many researchers stated that authentic video is an advantage and inspiring tool in language learning. However, there have been quite few studies on the relationship between effective learning and students’ movie preferences. This research aims at finding the relationship between effective learning and students’ movie preferences. To this end, data were collected by using posttests. Participants were students from a Iraqi school in Kuala Lumpur. The researchers uncovered that the participants had insight into the subtitles/captions which are used in the movie in classrooms. The implications of these findings and suggestions are discussed. Keyword: Movie, learning language, vocabularies, implication