The purpose of the study was to investigate the beliefs of English teachers and students at the tertiary level regarding language learning and autonomy. A descriptive approach was employed to conduct the research. All the teachers and undergraduates of private sector universities of Pakistan were the populations of the study. The snowball and convenience sampling techniques were used to select the sample of the study. The study sample was 330 (30 teachers and 300 undergraduates). The teachers and the students filled out two separate sets of questionnaires. The study demonstrates that students have more control over selecting learning materials and approaches. Teachers also think that students may be able to identify their strengths and weaknesses and evaluate their progress with learning autonomy. The findings of the study would be significant for language teachers, students, and curriculum developers.

In the 1950s, the well-known Iraqi poet Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab wrote his long poem “The Blind Prostitute”, a poetic epic portraying how the outdated social system in Iraq pushed a poor girl into prostitution. The poem was written in a phase described as the realistic phase in Al-Sayyab’s poetry. The purpose of the current paper is to analyze the poem and examine Al-Sayyab’s attitude towards women by applying the Appraisal Theory framework to see if his attitude was affected by his ideological and literary tendencies. The researcher found that the application of this theory confirmed that Al-Sayyab was a loyal poet to realism when he was evaluating women and that he believed that the salvation of his country could only be achieved by liberation from the exploitation of colonialism, and then creating a society that is educated and culturally civilized, in the cities as well as in the countryside.

This paper is a review of the literature of the research and readings which are related to my study of the celebrated Iraqi poet Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab (1926-1964) and his attitude towards women. Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab is the most studied poet and a lot of studies, books and articles in various languages dealt with his life and poetry. Researchers followed various approaches to examine his social status, his political stands and even his psychological condition. However, only a limited number of researchers studied his poetry in terms of language and linguistics. Besides, and as far as it is related to our study, researchers did not state whether Al-Sayyab‟ 's ideological and political stands influenced his attitude toward women.

As a specialist in TEFL/ESP, the writers of this research paper submitted a proposal for a symposium about TEFL/ESP titled “Teaching ESP in Iraqi-Kurdistan Region: Reality & Prospects”, to the Deanery of the College of Languages/Nawroz University in collaboration with the College of Administration & Economics/Nawroz University. Four researchers from three universities in the Dohuk Governorate area delivered six papers on the platform of Kurdistan Hall/Nawroz University.