DATE: 03/06/2009 10:29:56 / MOOD: research

178 students majoring in translation at the College of Languages and Translation and 10 translation and interpreting instructors were surveyed. It was found that 45% of the students use an electronic dictionary (ED). 99% of those use a general English-Arabic ED, 68% use an Arabic-English ED, 27% use an English-English ED and only 2% use a specialized ED. The students gave 12 reasons for not using an ED in specialized translation courses. It was also found that 70% of the translation instructors do not allow students to use an ED in class or test sessions. Reasons for that are given. 

Prof. Reima Al-jarf,<a href="http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf">http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf</a>

View Entry

DATE: 03/06/2009 10:28:47 / MOOD: research

The study tried to find out the percentage of ESL and translation students who use the electronic dictionary (ED), differences between ESL and translation students in using ED, level at which students started to use an ED, courses in which students use an ED, kinds of ED that students use, i.e. monolingual, English-Arabic, Arabic-English, general or specialized ED, the percentage of words that they find in an ED, kinds of linguistic information that they obtain from an ED, reasons for using an ED, limitations of an ED as perceived by the students in both groups, reasons for not using an ED at all, and the advantages of the book dictionary (BD) over an ED as perceived by users of an ED.

Prof. Reima Al-jarf,<a href="http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf">http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf</a>

 

View Entry

DATE: 03/06/2009 10:27:44 / MOOD: research

The aim of this workshop is to show English teachers how reading comprehension can be effectively taught to EFL/ESL struggling college readers. The teaching strategies include the following: (1) Helping students understand the book and chapter organization; (2) Predicting the content of a reading text from the text title before reading, comparing a text to a building, writing the topic of each paragraph in the margin, underlining the main ideas, numbering the supporting details, circling words that signal chronological order, classification, definition, comparison and contrast, exemplification, process…etc., showing the structure of the passage, i.e. relating text title to the paragraph topics and subtopics by drawing a tree diagram and filling it out while reading, summarizing the main ideas and supporting details in a chart after the reading and helping students recognize the text type: compare/contrast, classification, illustration, chronology (3) Helping students derive meanings of difficult words from context (without looking them up n a dictionary) by using different types of context clues such as punctuation marks, definitions, synonyms, antonyms and morphological analysis; (4) Helping students decode words in context: by highlighting silent letters, double letters, and hidden sounds in a word, and identifying the part of speech of words by breaking them into prefix, suffix and root (5) Helping students connect pronouns and determiners with their antecedents; (6) Helping students connect the information contained in the text with their background knowledge; (7) Helping students understand questions by circling the question word (8) Circling key words in a paragraph while skimming; and (9) Recognizing sentence types such as passive sentences, complex sentences, embedded sentences… etc; and (10) Asking questions while reading. Sample texts will be used to show attendees how reading can be taught using the above strategies.

Prof. Reima Al-jarf,<a href="http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf">http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf</a>

View Entry

DATE: 03/06/2009 10:26:44 / MOOD: research

The educational system in Saudi Arabia consists of 6 years of elementary school, 3 years of junior and 3 years of senior high school. In grades 1-3, the students learn to read and in grades 4-12, the students read for comprehension. At each grade level, the students use a reading textbook and students throughout the kingdom study the same reading textbooks and same reading curriculum. First the study will define the word identification, reading comprehension, product and process skills and reading stages. Then, it will describe the reading lesson design in each grade level and across the twelve textbooks (passages, exercises, lexical items, pictorial illustrations and so on). In addition, the word identification skills developed in grades 1-3, the reading comprehension skill levels developed in grades 4-12 (i.e., literal, inferential, appreciation and critical) and the reading process skills taught (identifying the organizational structure of the text, ability to derive the meaning of difficult words from context, anaphora comprehension and study skills) will be described. Results reported are based on an analysis of the reading comprehension questions and exercises and a list of word identification skills, reading comprehension skills, text structure, anaphora comprehension, contextual analysis and study skills. The study will also analyze the passage content and will report of the kinds of themes read. Strengths and weaknesses of the Saudi national curriculum for developing reading and literacy skills in Arabic (students' L1) will be reported. 

Prof. Reima Al-jarf,<a href="http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf">http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf</a>

View Entry

DATE: 03/06/2009 10:25:44 / MOOD: research

The study investigated ESL students’ ability to comprehend and analyze advertisements, to identify the stylistic features of advertisements, to find out the features that are easy to identify, and those that are difficult to identify. Results of a test with 66 ESL college students showed ad features that were easy to identify and those that were difficult to identify. Responses also reflect the difficulty level of the different stylistic features of the advertisement. Correcting faulty punctuation marks was more difficult than correcting faulty capitalization. Analysis of the subjects’ faulty responses showed areas with which they had comprehension difficulties. Causes of advertisement comprehension problems and recommendations for advertisement comprehension instruction will be given.

Prof. Reima Al-jarf, <a href="http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf">http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf</a>

View Entry

DATE: 03/06/2009 10:24:21 / MOOD: research

The study aimed to investigate the reading interests of female college students in terms of the magazines they read and the topics they like to read and the topics senior and junior high school reading textbooks cover. Findings of a questionnaire and interviews with female college students at King Saud University indicated that 77% of the students read women’s magazines, 77% like to read about fashion and make-up, 66% read articles about movies and pop-stars, 24% read poetry magazines, between 1%-4% read religious, educational, literary, political, computer and internet, and historical articles. Analysis of the reading school books showed that 10% of the reading texts are devoted to Quranic verses and Prophet Mohammed’s traditions, 29% on Islamic history, 13% focus on general topics, and 11% deal with classical literature. It can be concluded that female college students like to read magazines and topics that prevail in satellite T.V. broadcasting. Both magazines and satellite T.V. shows serve to marginalize the culture of young people, and distract them of the vital social issues. There is a contrast between the types of topics the students read at school and those they read at home. The study recommends that reading texts be re-selected, re-constructed and re-designed. It also recommends extensive reading, electronic reading, speed reading, reading from multiple resources and introducing new books, magazines, e-books and other resources to students.

Prof. Reima Al-jarf,<a href="http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf">http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf</a>

View Entry

DATE: 03/06/2009 10:22:46 / MOOD: research

The study aimed at describing and evaluating the reading lesson design in junior and senior high school reading textbooks. A checklist consisting of criteria for reading lesson design was used to analyze, describe and evaluate reading lesson components, layout and aesthetic aspects. Findings indicated that reading lessons lack many essential components such as advance organizers, interspersed questions, instructions and explanations in the margins. Comprehension questions that follow the reading text within each grade level and across the grade levels did not differ in number nor comprehension level measured. Reading lesson design within each grade level and across the different grade levels was found to be identical. At any grade level, reading lessons seemed to be designed independently of previous and following grade levels. Pictorial illustrations were not systematically placed in relation to the text. In some cases, illustrations were not clear and were not related to the text topic. Pictorial illustrations were not found to be helpful for the students in comprehending and recalling the text. Therefore, this study recommends that reading lessons be re-designed to help the students read and comprehend reading materials more effectively.

Prof. Reima Al-jarf, <a href="http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf">http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf</a>

View Entry

DATE: 03/06/2009 10:21:20 / MOOD: linguistics

59 EFL college students took a cohesion test in which they identified four types of cohesive ties in a reading text. Incorrect responses were analyzed. It was found that substitution was the most difficult to process followed by reference and ellipsis, whereas conjunction was the easiest. In resolving the cohesion relationships, the students used the following faulty strategies: an anaphor was associated with the closest noun whether intersentential or intrasentential. When preceded by two potential antecedents, an anaphor was associated with the farther antecedent if it was saliant or more familiar; an anaphor was associated with a synonym. In addition the students matched an anaphor with a word that is identical in pronunciation or punctuation. It was found that cohesion anomalies were caused by poor linguistic competence, especially poor syntactic and semantic awareness, and poor or inaccurate knowledge of the cohesion rules.

Prof. Reima Al-jarf, <a href="http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf">http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf</a>

View Entry

DATE: 03/06/2009 10:20:22 / MOOD: other

159 grammatical agreement errors collected from the translation projects of nine Saudi graduating seniors majoring in translation were analyzed. A grammatical agreement error was defined as the incorrect inflection of nouns, verbs, adjectives, anaphoric pronouns, and determiners to show a mismatch in singular, dual, or plural forms or a mismatch in masculine and feminine gender in correspondence with a subject, modified noun or antecedent. There were more disagreeing verbs than pronouns than adjectives. There were more gender than number agreement errors and more interlingual than intralingual. 27% were due to incorrect gender assignment to the controller or target, 3% were due to the inability to determine the number of the controller or target, 24% were due to inability to associate the verb, pronoun or adjective with its correct referent. There were more agreement errors when the controller was singular and plural, when the plural controller was non-human and when the controller was feminine.

Prof. Reima Al-jarf,<a href="http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf">http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/aljarf</a>

View Entry