2023-09

Humanities Journal of University of Zakho (Issue : 11) (Volume : 3)

The current study investigates the use of fillers produced by a sample of 80 Kurdish EFL university students (males and females), freshers and seniors, in relation to speaking fluency. The general methodological procedures of discourse analysis (hence, DA) by Potter and Wetherell (1987), Fairclough (1995) and Van Dijk (1997) have been followed to analyze the data extracted from the selected sample (i.e., spoken corpus). For finding the types of fillers, it was helpful to use Rose’s (1998) classification of fillers into unlexicalized fillers (UFs) and lexicalized fillers (LFs). Further, by using a speaking fluency rubric, the statistical correlation between fillers and speaking fluency was measured. The results showed that the lexicalized fillers (LFs) were used by the Kurdish EFL university students three times more than the unlexicalized fillers (UFs). Also, it was found that the most frequently used examples of UFs were Uh and Um, and the highest percentages of LFs were recorded for and, so, yeah and yes. With regard to speaking fluency levels, it was concluded that fillers are considered to be markers of mid or low levels of fluency. In other words, although fillers were also used in higher levels of fluency, however, the higher the level of fluency is, the lesser the use of fillers is.

2022-01

Koya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences (Issue : 1) (Volume : 5)

The study investigates the impressions of students at University of Zakho, Kurdistan Region of Iraq, about e- learning during the Covid-19, highlighting some problems resulted from using this e-learning system. Also, the statistical significance of correlations according to gender is calculated. Using qualitative and quantitative methods for data collection, a questionnaire of seven items is utilized via google document and sent to nearly 1000 participants (males and females) via social media and online platforms. Only 752 responses returned. The data were interpreted and analyzed by Excel sheets and SPSS software. As there was statistical significance in gender differences, the results showed that the majority of the participants do not view e-learning as a fun process for their education and they have no willingness to use it for their future studies. In addition, more than half of the participants agree that (1) e-learning is costly; (2) lectures are better understood in classrooms; (3) e-learning is not adequate because of the internet and electricity outage; and (4) e-learning leads to some eye problems and headaches. Generally, knowing the students’ impressions about using e-learning for their education will be helpful for the university administrators, educational policy makers, teachers to determine the students’ genuine needs, motivation or challenges. This will be helpful to gain an understanding of e-learning in Kurdistan Region of Iraq, to cope with challenges involved in the process of e-learning, and develop approaches to solve the problems resulted from.

2020-06

Humanities Journal of University of Zakho (HJUOZ) (Issue : 2) (Volume : 8)

This paper aimed at studying the effect of semantic map (also known as mind map) on the students’ awareness and mastery of new vocabulary on different topics. The study is based on data collected from pre and post-tests administered to a sample of third year students form Dept. of English, Faculty of Humanities, University of Zakho. the study has adopted Gunning strategy (1992) in applying the effect of semantic mapping on students’ learning vocabularies. Moreover, to conduct the present study, two tools fro data collection were used, namely a test and classroom observation.The data collected were analysed using Software SPSS. Finally, the paper concluded that such strategy had no effect on the students’ learning vocabulary.

2020-06

Asian EFL Journal (Issue : 3.2) (Volume : 27)

The present study aims at assessing some practices for increasing the amount of time allocated to students in EFL classrooms. Recently, increasing the student talking time (hence, STT) has become the attention of lots of teachers and pedagogists. For the purpose of the study, a sample of 32 undergraduate students from the English Department, Faculty of Humanities University of Zakho, was selected to assess their abilities to comprehend some pragmatic topics. Dividing the sample into control and experimental groups, the students enrolled in a class of pragmatics were noticed to have some difficulties in understanding such topics, assuming that these topics were new to them. Finally, they were seen as inactive to participate in classroom activities. That is why; some practices, especially group discussions and presentations by students, were conducted to increase the STT. This was an attempt to make the teaching process be a kind of student-centered. By applying the techniques of group discussions and presentations, the researchers followed the methods of observation and evaluation to discover whether different pragmatic topics and vocabularies related to them could be identified and understood easily. In conducting an independent t-test and multiple comparison correlations by SPSS, the results showed that the mean difference was slightly significant in favor of increasing the STT. This means that the STT practices were found to have an observed effect on the comprehension of some pragmatic topics especially presuppositions, the Co-operative Principle, deixis, and reference.

2020-05

The Asian ESP Journal (Issue : 2) (Volume : 16)

The present study investigates the effect of gender differences on the proxemic behaviors manifested by teachers in Bahdini EFL university classrooms, showing the learners’ attitudes and opinions toward these behaviors. In reference to teaching, much uncertainty still exists about the state of proximity of teachers and students at university level in Kurdistan Region of Iraq; this paper tries to address that. For conducting the study, a sample of 12 male and female teachers and 100 male and female EFL learners from the English Department, School of Languages, University of Zakho, was selected. By adopting Hall’s proxemic zones (1959), a descriptive observation method was utilized to collect data from the teachers and a questionnaire to obtain data from the learners. By using Excel sheets and tabulations, the results showed that the majority of male teachers were in the public proxemic zone while most female teachers were in the social proxemic zone. However, the learners had different views, expressing that teachers should move around the classroom from time to time and stay either social or personal, but not public. Also, the majority of EFL learners had male-male and female-female proxemic attitudes. Finally, the results of this study will help making university teachers and learners be aware of proxemic zones in EFL classrooms because the way teachers and learners behave certainly has influence on the teaching and learning processes.

2020-03

Humanities Journal of University of Zakho (HJUOZ) (Issue : 8) (Volume : 1)

The present study aims at understanding, explaining and assessing the teacher talk time (TTT) strategy, which has become an increasingly important teaching strategy for teachers at EFL university classrooms, namely, University of Zakho, School of Languages, Department of English. The third-year students were noticed to have some difficulties in understanding some semantic topics and be inactive to participate in classroom activities. That is why; the TTT strategy was found very helpful in reducing the time allocated for the teacher. Hence, the teaching process would be a kind of student-centered. By applying the technique of implementing group discussions, the researcher followed the methods of observation and evaluation to discover whether different semantic topics and vocabularies related to them could be identified and understood easily. In conducting a t-test and multiple comparison correlations by SPSS, the results showed that the mean difference was highly significant in favor of reducing the TTT. This means that the TTT was found effective because the students developed their skills in the awareness of some semantic topics especially the theoretical ones.

2019-12

Humanities Journal of University of Zakho (Issue : 4) (Volume : 7)

This study investigated the production of English monophthongs by Kurdish EFL learners at university level. Twenty native speakers of Northern Kurmanci (i.e. NK) undergraduate EFL learners read a list of sixty English words containing all the twelve English monophthongs. Their reading of the words was recorded and then transcribed by the researchers. The recording of each word was listened to several times for detecting mispronunciation of the monophthong vowel in it. After careful examination, results showed that the central vowels were the most problematic sounds for Kurdish EFL learners in terms of pronunciation followed by high back vowels. In principle, participants were expected to have problems with central vowels of English, mainly because they do not exist in their mother language, but the findings indicated that high back vowels also are quite noticeably difficult for them to correctly pronounce, even though these already exist in their mother language, NK Kurdish. The main reasons Kurdish EFL learners mispronounce English monophthong vowels are due to the absence of some of these vowels in their first language and also due to the participants’ lack of exposure to and practice of English pronunciation.

2019-12

UKH Journal of Social Sciences (Issue : 2) (Volume : 3)

This study explores the use of presuppositions in the Kurdish short story, Zilkê Şixatê (The Matchstick), which is written in Northern Kurmanji dialect (hence, NK) by Isma’il Hajani. It attempts to determine which type of presupposition is the most recurring one in the short story and why it is so. The data in this study are analyzed descriptively and qualitatively. Yule’s (2006) classification which divides presupposition into six types has been employed: existential, factive, non-factive, lexical, structural, and counterfactual. The data of the research are sentences which contain presupposition triggers (i.e. linguistic forms to mark presuppositions). Applying the formula presented by Oktoma and Mardiyono (2013: 79), the results obtained throughout this paper show that different types of presuppositions have different percentages from the total number of presuppositions. They are (94) in number. It is noted that the most dominant type of presupposition used in the short story is the existential presupposition, manifesting definite descriptions of facts about real life, while the structural presuppositions have the lowest percentage. This shows that much of the story text is written to definitely describe the main theme, the characters and the events as they are. Finally, this study is particularly important because no other such studies have been conducted on the use of presuppositions in any literary work in NK. Therefore, this study occupies a crucial place in the research literature into pragmatic aspects of NK.

2019-12

Journal of Educational and Human Resource Development (Issue : 7)

The current paper tried to answer the question: How are Hacani’s short stories texts maximized and minimized to save face? It is imperative to study the maximized (ie hyperbole) and minimized (ie understatement) off-record strategies among Northern Kurmanji EFL university students. Therefore, the current study tackled the use and availability of these strategies as manifested in written discourse. The researcher followed the methodological procedures of Content Analysis (CA) by Berelson and Krippendorff, as well as Brown and Levinson’s Model of Politeness. Tackling maximized (hyperbole) and minimized (understatement) off-record politeness strategies, the results manifested that from the total of 41 instances, 70.7% of samples have been hyperbolically maximized while only 29.3% of the discourse have been minimized. It was reflected that many social affairs presented in Hacani’s short stories have been treated by revealing and inspiring new ideas. Hence, concentrating on specific ideas, hyperbole, as an off-record strategy, simply saved the face of readers. In contrast, understatement was less commonly used in order to reduce the degree of severity of certain situations, leaving room for a more favorable interpretation of distasteful topics. It was helpful to consult Excel and SPSS software to test statistical differences between hyperbole and understatement. Finally, it is recommended that other off-record strategies are used to analyze literary texts between Kurdish dialects or between Kurdish and English languages.

2018-06

Humanities Journal of University of Zakho (HJUOZ) (Issue : 2) (Volume : 6)

The current paper tries to answer the question: What are the most important strategies for forming euphemisms on the word and sentence levels in the Kurdish daily newspaper, Evro? In order to reach accurate findings and results, the researchers followed the methodological procedures of Content Analysis (hence CA) by Berelson (1952) and Krippendorff (2003). Adopting a modified version of Warren’s Model (1992) for the classification of euphemistic strategies, the data extracted from sample texts were processed and analyzed statistically via Excel sheets and SPSS software. The results obtained throughout this paper show that different euphemistic strategies within various news topics (i.e. politics, economy, death, religion, sports, etc.) manifest different percentages. On the word level, loan words show the highest percentage (40.3%) from among all other strategies. In contrast, euphemisms related to reduplication strategy have the lowest percentage (1.8%). With regard to other strategies, they are measured from highest to lowest, starting from understatement (24.4%) followed by remodeling (13.7%), acronyms (7.6%), overstatement (6.9%) and underspecification (5.4%). On the sentence level, the passive voice strategy shows the highest percentage (30.4%) from among all other strategies; however, euphemisms related to litotes strategy have the lowest percentage (6.7%). With regard to the other strategies, they start from metaphors (25.5%) followed by idioms (25.2%), and finally downtoners (12.1%). Finally, the use of euphemistic strategies in question was measured to test statistical differences between these strategies across specified semantic news topics, by means of a series of Chi-Squares and multiple comparison correlations, that were programmed and output by SPSS software 17.0. Statistically, there were moderate significant differences (i.e. V = .220, p < 0.05) between and within all the news topics and euphemistic strategies.

2018-03

IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS) (Issue : 2) (Volume : 23)

The current paper tries to answer the question: What are the most important euphemistic functions in the Bahdini daily newspaper, Evro? In order to reach accurate findings and results, the researcher followed the methodological procedures of Content Analysis (hence CA) by Berelson (1952) and Krippendorff (2003). Following Burridge’s (2012) classification of euphemistic functions, the results obtained throughout this paper show that different euphemistic functions within various topic clusters (i.e. politics, economy, death, religion, sports, etc.) manifest different percentages. According to the six functions (totally 4333 in number), they were ranked from high to low percentages, starting from the protective function (29.1%, 1261 occurrences), followed by underhand (21.5%, 933 occurrences), provocative (17.8%, 774 occurrences), cohesive (13.9%, 604 occurrences), uplifting (13.7%, 597 occurrences) and finally ludic (3.7%, 164 occurrences). Regarding the frequencies and percentages of the functions in relation to different topic clusters, the highest percentage among all the euphemistic functions manifested in the Evro daily newspaper was the protective function, which mostly related to politics (49.5%, 625 occurrences), medicine (15.5%, 196 occurrences), sex (5.3%, 67 occurrences) and death (6.7%, 85 occurrences); whereas, the lowest percentage was for the ludic function (0% of 0 occurrences) in the latter three semantic topics. Finally, the use of euphemistic functions in question was measured to test statistical differences between these functions across specified semantic topic clusters, by means of a series of ANOVAs and multiple comparison correlations, that were programmed and output by Excel sheets and SPSS software 17.0.

2014-05

European Scientific Journal (Issue : 14) (Volume : 10)

The present study aims at understanding, explaining and assessing the word identification strategy, DISSECT, which has become an increasingly important skill for learning disabilities, to minimize oral reading errors made by students at the Department of English, School of Languages, University of Zahko. Giving first year students of English a previously prepared list of affixes, the students could make use of them to decode difficult and unfamiliar multisyllabic words taken from a variety of content areas. Focusing on the students’ adoption of the DISSECT strategy, the researcher followed the methods of observation and evaluation to discover the range of reading skills through word awareness on the part of the students. Depending on a number of tests, the researcher evaluated and measured students’ abilities to easily master the word awareness skills. Following some teaching instructions and practices, students were given the steps of DISSECT strategy to assess their word awareness skills. Finally, the strategy in question was measured to evaluate students’ abilities in mastering and improving the reading skills, by means of a series of t-tests, ANOVAs and multiple comparison correlations, that were programmed and output by SPSS software 17.0.

2014-03

IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS) (Issue : 1) (Volume : 19)

The study aims at assessing, understanding and explaining the phonological awareness skills with university students, namely, University of Zakho, School of Languages, Department of English, using different skills and tasks. Focusing on the students’ participation in a variety of previously prepared tasks, the researcher followed the methods of observation and evaluation to discover the range of phonological awareness skills with the students. Depending on a number of tests, the researcher evaluated and measured the students’ abilities in whether they easily master phonological concepts and topics. Here, the four levels of phonological awareness are targeted in the current paper: word awareness, syllable awareness, onset-rhyme awareness, and sound awareness. Following some teaching instruction and practice, participants were administrated fifteen tasks to assess different types of phonological awareness skills. Finally, these tasks were measured to show the participants’ abilities in mastering the phonological structure of language, using a series of t-tests, ANOVAs and multiple comparison correlations, that were programmed and output by SPSS software.

2013-10

Academic Journal of Duhok University (Issue : 1) (Volume : 17)

The present study aims at shedding light on a very important phenomenon in language that is the use of euphemistic and dysphemic words and expressions in everyday communication in Bahdini Dialect (henceforth BD) especially in Duhok speech community. It is very commonly used by native speakers of BD. The occurrence of such expressions varies from one genre to another and from one situation to another. As a matter of fact, such phenomenon is approached in terms of classifying the different situations in which these expressions are used. Using any term, whether euphemism or dysphemism, depends to a great extent on the type of relation between the addresser and the addressee, age, sex, job, educational background, and social position.

2012-06

Academic Journal of Duhok University (Issue : 1) (Volume : 15)

Speakers of Northern Kurmanji (NK) especially those who live in Duhok speech community use different types of abbreviations in different fields of life. These include everyday communication, education, internet, computer, medicine, industry, and military, among others. However, the speakers are not aware what type of abbreviations they use. The present study aims at classifying such types of abbreviations linguistically. To carry out this task, different types of abbreviations used in NK are collected from the above mentioned fields to be analyzed. This will hopefully be of great importance to learners of Kurmanji as a first language, non-speakers and teachers of Kurmanji to understand this linguistic phenomenon.

2011-06

Academic Journal of Duhok University (Issue : 1) (Volume : 14)

The study aims at understanding and explaining the sociolinguistic dynamics of text messaging (texting or SMS) within the Kurdish context, namely the College of Education, University of Duhok. The content of SMS messages is studied on the basis of (1) structure and (2) themes and categories. The structure of SMS texts involves types of words, length of short messages (SM), punctuations, abbreviations and emoticons, salutations and closings. On the other hand, themes (like coordination, information, questions, answers, orders and requests) and categories (like messages of greetings, friendship, fun, religion, romance, business, sports and occasions) are taken into consideration. The structural and semantic characteristics of SMS messages are analyzed according to three social norms: (1) age, (2) gender and (3) degree of formality. In the Kurdish context, SMS texting is finding its way to be a means of developing social orientation of friendship, but not family relationship.

2009-02

Academic Journal of Duhok University (Issue : 1) (Volume : 12)

The current paper deals with informal style and its uses in Northern Kurmanji especially in Duhok city. The informal style is apparently used among people who are familiar with one another in various informal social situations: everyday life conversations, dialogues and chitchats. The informal style is marked by the existence of different registers, social classes and groups, power and solidarity, sex distinctions, and so on. The informal style is used in casual speech, power and solidarity relations, instructions, commands, orders, and so many other social situations. The informal style of any given speech or utterance is definitely characterized by different features: grammatical features like use of simple sentences, no passive voice, ellipses in dialogue , personality and so on, vocabulary features such as use of slang, idiomatic expressions, nicknames, vocatives, optatives, taboos, etc., semantic features, for example, subjectivity, ambiguity, direct speech acts, and the like.