2019-02-17

Abstract The present study aimed at investigating the effect of Multiple Intelligences-based activities on university students learning English as a foreign language through designing a quasi-experimental research. It tried hopefully to address the differences among the students by implementing the philosophy of Multiple Intelligences in English Language classes. The study is based on data from 3 research tools: a questionnaire from Berman (2002), pre-and posttests (quantitative data), and journal writing (qualitative). The analysis of the data collected via the questionnaire helped to identify the students’ dominant intelligences, and to plan 24 lessons to be used for teaching a grammar course for 12 weeks to a sample of 34 seniors (4th year students), at the Department of English, Faculty of Humanities, University of Zakho chosen on the basis of nonprobability sampling strategy as they were already set in intact classes. The sample of the students was divided into a control group taught according to the curriculum adopted by the Department of English Language and an experimental group taught according to the philosophy of Multiple Intelligences. The data collected were analyzed using Software SPSS (version 20) through One-Sample t Test, Independent-Samples t Test, Paired-Samples t Test, and according to frequencies and percentages. The results arrived at indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between the students’ dominant types of intelligence according to gender, except for the bodily-kinesthetic intelligence in favor of male students. The results also showed that the students’ dominant intelligences in the experimental group were ranked from the highest to the lowest as follows: interpersonal, linguistic, visual-spatial, logical-mathematical, bodily- kinesthetic, intrapersonal, musical, and naturalistic. Moreover, the mean scores and P-values scored by the experimental group were significantly different from those scored by the control group. That is to say, the experimental group achieved better learning compared to the control group due to the implementation of Multiple Intelligences philosophy-based activities in the lessons of teaching the grammar course. Likewise, the results obtained from journal writing also supported the results obtained on the posttest. In other words, the students had a positive impression of the teaching styles and the activities used in the lessons. The present study will contribute to the domain of teaching grammar. It has presented a seminal way of teaching English grammar based on the philosophy of Multiple Intelligences for the first time at the university level, including all the techniques and strategies adapted for this purpose. It has connected teaching grammar to other language skills, such as writing and reading skills, and used journal writing as a tool for getting students’ reflection and feedback on the teaching style, which helped the researcher a lot to make adjustments in the teaching style. Hence, this approach of teaching grammar could be used in teaching English by other teachers with some modifications to fit their teaching context.

2002-02-19

ABSTRACT The present study aims at investigating and analysing the different uses of “it” in scientific English texts both syntactically and semantically. Since “it” is considered as a source of difficulty for many Iraqi learners of English (ILE) for being absent in Arabic, the present study tries to make clear the different uses and functions of “it” through classification and description given in Chapter Two. Besides, it tries to investigate the most prominent types of “it” in scientific English and their importance as stylistic and cohesive devices commonly found in such writings. To achieve this aim, 2000 textual fragments representing different uses and functions of “it” are taken at random from four different scientific disciplines. The authentic English texts to be analysed in this study are: Microbiology, Chemistry, Environmental Geology and Mechanical Metallurgy. Since anaphoric and cataphoric uses of “it” are taken into consideration, the present study does not treat separate sentences ; but it rather adopts textual fragments. It is worth mentioning here that the scientific texts chosen for analysis include up-to-date scientific information written by scientists whose native language is English. The present study consists of four chapters. The first chapter is an introductory one. It deals with : statement of the problem ; aims of the study ; the hypotheses ; value of the study ; limits of the study ; procedure and data collection. A section on scientific English is given at the end of Chapter One which includes the different pedagogical implications of such variety of language. In Chapter Two, a rapid review on the different uses of “it” is given chronologically. The present study depends to a certain extent on Quirk et al. 1985: “A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language”. Besides other references are used to enrich the literature review. The present study does not follow a specific model ; but more than one model is adopted. So, the model adopted here can be an eclectic one. It deals with “it” as a pronoun with reference to : “person”, “gender”, “number” and “case” ; prop it found in colloquial idiomatic expressions and the expressions stating : time, weather conditions and distance ; anticipatory it when “it” replaces nominal clauses in subject and object position for easy processing texts ; as a focus marker found in cleft sentences. Moreover, a section is devoted to ellipsis of “it” in certain constructions and another one to some syntactic/semantic problems encountered by ILE and Arab Learners of English (ALE) when they study “it”. Chapter Three deals with the analysis of the four scientific English texts from which 2000 textual fragments are taken as the whole corpus. Data to be analysed in the light of the literature review given in Chapter Two covers “it” as : “pronoun” ; “anticipatory it” ; “prop it” and a “focus marker”. As a matter of fact, the distribution and percentage of the number of occurrences of different types of “it” are tabulated. It has been found that the most dominant type of “it” in the four scientific texts is “it” as a personal pronoun (i.e., anaphoric use of “it”), one of the texts also scored the highest percentage at anticipatory it, whereas the four texts did not score any use of prop “it” found in colloquial expressions and idioms. Chapter Four deals with the general conclusions, recommendations and suggestions for further studies. In the light of the results which have been come up with in the present study, the validity of the hypotheses, about the importance of “it” as a stylistic device commonly used in written texts, is verified.