اللحياني ، إلهام حميد عبد الحميد

Recent studies show a strong relationship between prosody and focus (i.e., as an aspect of information structure) in some languages. Therefore, prosodic information is represented in linguistic frameworks adopted to account for facts existing in languages including English (Lambrecht, 1996). Recent research, however, has revealed that focus is not prosodically encoded, and hence its prosodic role is not crucial in some languages, such as Hausa (Hartmann and Zimmermann, 2007). Studies investigating the role of focus in the prosody of Makkan Arabic being rare, this study presents an experimental investigation into whether focus is prosodically encoded in Makkan Arabic. Fifteen native speakers of Makkan Arabic were recruited for the experiment. The participants read test materials in question-answer paradigms to evoke three different types of focus: broad focus, "narrow" information focus, and "narrow" contrastive focus. The narrow information focus and the narrow contrastive focus were placed in three different sentential positions: initial, penultimate, and final. Only excursion size of the fundamental frequency of the pre-/post-/on-focus region has been analyzed. Results show that only the excursion size of the information focus and contrastive focus are more expanded than that of their broad-focus counterparts. The type of focus, either information or contrastive, are not prosodically , distinguished. This leads to conclude that focus is prosodically encoded in Makkan Arabic however, the types of focus are not. As for the post-focus region, results show that focus has no prosodic effect on post-focus region when the focused word is sentence-initial. However, when the focused word is sentence-penultimate, only the excursion size of the post-focus region occun-ing after the contrastive-focus words are more compressed than of their counterparts in the broad-focus utterances. Pre-focus region is not prosodically affected when the word in focus is sentence-penultimate, however, when the word in focus is sentence-final, the excursion size of pre-focus region occurring before information focus and contrastive focus are more expanded than of their broad focus utterance. These results show that prosodic effects of focus in Makkah Arabic are different from prosodic effects found in Hijazi Arabic, Egyptian, and Lebanese Arabic .

العمري، ايمان ظافر

Tremendously fast, the English language is becoming a key instrument in education and technology. Hence, mastering the language is considered one of the requirements of the present time. Undoubtedly, various variables play a vital role in the English language learning process. As evidence by previous research, learning autonomy and motivation toward learning English are viewed as key factors in successful English language learning outcomes. This study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of learning autonomy and language learning motivation on the English achievement of Saudi EFL learners. The researcher addressed the following five questions: Firstly, what is the level of perceived learning autonomy for Taif university students? Secondly, what is the level of language learning motivation for Taif university students? Thirdly, are there any differences between males and females in motivation, autonomy and English achievement? Fourthly, Can learning autonomy affect EFL students` English achievement at Taif University? Fifthly, Can motivation affect EFL students` English achievement at Taif University? The sample consisted of 130 Saudi male and 153 female first year university–level students enrolled in a mandatory course of English as a foreign language in the Science department of Taif University, Saudi Arabia. The data was collected quantitatively by a language learning motivation questionnaire (Saheb, 2014) and learning autonomy questionnaire (Orawiwatnakul and Wichadee, 2017). Additionally, learners' scores on an English test were collected to measure their English achievement. The data were analyzed using descriptive analysis, mean standard scores, standard deviation, t-test and regression analysis. Results indicated that learners reported a moderate level of learning autonomy but a high level of language learning motivation. Gender differences exist in learning autonomy, motivation and English achievement, all in favor of female learners. In addition, the findings revealed that language learning motivation and autonomy do affect the participants' English achievement.

باعيسى، بشائر علي محمد

Most research in language and gender has focused on how women and men express their gender identity by using language, and how they are represented in language. Recently, the language used by women and men and the language about women and men have been investigated as one process, i.e., the social construction of gender. However, little attention has been paid to how language reveals our attitudes towards gender divisions and social practices. Hence, this thesis addresses the question of how society evaluates gender behaviors, more particularly wrongdoings. It explores the attitudes of Twitter users in Saudi Arabia towards two cases: (a) kidnapping and raping 13 young girls by a Saudi man, and (b) driving a car by a Saudi woman in spite of the ban on Saudi women driving. The thesis employs critical discourse analysis and the appraisal theory to examine the data which comprise 120 (Arabic) tweets posted during 2011 and 2012. The findings show that gender as a social concept does influence evaluation. Such an effect could be illustrated by the following: Firstly, although most attitudinal stances were judgmental, and affectual stances outbalanced appreciative ones in the two cases, there were significant differences between the two cases in terms of the frequency of judgmental as well as affectual instances. Secondly, the evaluative stances found in the two cases were significantly different in terms of their directness. Thirdly, the tweeters utilized many fallacious and paradoxical arguments which in turn resulted in a biased evaluation of the two wrongdoers.

العتيبي، ممدوح مسفر مشاري

The thesis concentrates on selected poems of Langston Hughes' poetry, one of the pioneers of the African-American literature and Harlem Renaissance. It treats how these selected poems reflect the image of the blacks and their individual and collective dreams in an American racist community. One of the main objectives of the thesis is to attempt to portray the concept of ''dream'' in Hughes' poetry and the significance of his utilization of ''dreams'' in his poems. A close examination of Hughes' poetry reveals that his poems are, to a large extent, characterized by ''dreams'' as a means to achieve a prosperous life to the African-Americans. In Hughes' poems, freedom, equality, and brotherhood nearly represent the central concerns of his dream poetry as an African-American poet. Therefore, certain poems of Hughes' poetry will be selected and analyzed to bring to the fore the dreams these selections depict and to show how Hughes takes the issues of his race into his consideration. Usually, people prefer to live in dreams in order to escape the bitter reality of their lives and to make their lives bearable. No wonder that Hughes, as an oppressed African- American poet, dreams about freedom, equality, and brotherhood that all African-Americans strive to attain. Based on the poems selected, it seems that Hughes employs his dream poetry to display an optimistic view of the future despite the oppression that he experiences. As an African-American poet, Hughes delineates in his poems his hopeful dreams to achieve freedom and equality to his fellow men. Finally, the central objective of this thesis is to present the collective dreams the African-Americans aspire to fulfill in an oppressive system and the struggle that accompanies. To fulfill the African-American collective dreams has been an obstacle and impossible because of several factors such as racial segregation, white supremacy, and skin color. Despite these factors, the selected poems portray Hughes' sense of optimism and hopeful insight to see the dreams of freedom, equality, and brotherhood one day come true.

البقمي ، تغريد صنيدح ميل

The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton’s strong indictment of the patriarchal American society of the last decades of the 19th century. The society maintains its stability and continuity by enforcing a set of rigid rules and strict social codes upon its members. For instance, men and women have clearly defined, albeit lopsided, gender roles to perform and social expectations to fulfill. Men are expected to be family breadwinners, but also leaders, thinkers, and arbiters of social tastes and codes of behavior. Women are expected to be “innocent” and pure before marriage, and loyal wives and dedicated mothers after marriage. Studying these patriarchal divisions and the mechanisms of their enforcement, the thesis will argue that social stability and traditional continuity in such a society entail the oppression of women and the corruption of the supposed “innocence” of the society. For such patriarchal divisions privilege men by giving them power and freedom, while depriving women of equal freedom and equal access to power. Within this context, the thesis will show how these enforced traditional gender roles produce judgmental double standards, especially with regard to gender equality and sexuality, that further contribute to the oppression of women. Finally, the thesis will argue that the society’s rigidly policed gender divisions, enforced social codes, and morally unacceptably double standards take their toll not only on women’s emotional fulfillment and happiness, but also on men’s, as the emotionally unfulfilled lives of the leading characters of the novel testify. From a related perspective, instead of being an “Age of Innocence,” Wharton ironically depicts an age of corruption, as men and women are forced, under the pressures of social and gender expectations, to feign “innocence,” to engage in hypocritical patterns of behavior, and to sacrifice their love lives for the sake of maintaining a proper social appearance

الحارثي، رائد حسن

Mother tongue and teaching a foreign language have been a rich point of debates for decades. The present study investigated the attitudes of EFL students toward using Arabic inside English language classrooms. This study took pale in three schools in Taif district. (80) secondary school students and (26) teachers have participated in this study. The researcher used two different questionnaires, one for the EFL students and the other for the English language teachers. These questionnaires were distributed in classrooms during school day. Teachers questionnaires were distributed in teachers' free time. They were collected and then analyzed and the scales were coded. Then, all the data were analyzed via SPSS program. The results showed that secondary school students have positive attitudes towards using Arabic, but the amount and the need for using Arabic decreases according to the students levels. Also, the usage of Arabic language facilitates both learning and teaching processes of English language in the context of this research. Moreover, Arabic forms a useful strategy for the teachers concerning accurateness in delivering the information, and classroom time management. It have been concluded that, Arabic should not be permitted totally in EFL classroom, especially in the beginner classrooms. Teachers must manage the use of L 1 in EFL classrooms. Accordingly, this research suggests some further researches such as to trace the effectiveness of some learning and teaching strategies in using mother tongue in EFL classrooms.

الوقداني ، عائشة عبد الله عبيد

In Saudi Arabia, it has been observed that EFL students’ skills in reading and in listening could use some improvement. At the same time, there are studies which show that students use of metacognitive strategies involving approaches such as planning, monitoring, and evaluating can have a positive effect on improving learning these skills as seen in students’ results. Metacognition is briefly the perception of one's cognitive processes. This study aims at exploring the contribution of students’ metacognitive strategies awareness and the role it plays in EFL listening and reading achievement for Saudi students. The sample of this study included (679) male and female Saudi college–level students studying English as a foreign language in the EFL section of the Preparatory Year Program at Taif University, in Saudi Arabia, where they study language skills such as reading, writing, listening and speaking for 12 hours weekly over two academic semesters. Five research hypotheses were addressed in this study to examine whether: (1) the use of metacognitive strategies can predict students` listening achievement, (2) the use of metacognitive strategies can predict students` reading achievement, (3) there are statistical differences between males and females in the use of metacognitive strategies in favor of males, (4) there are statistical differences in achievement between males and females in listening and reading, and (5) there are statistical differences between the Health Stream students, the Science Stream students and the Humanities Stream students in metacognitive strategy use and its factors. Students were asked to answer questions on the 7-point Likert-scale metacognitive strategies questionnaire. One-way ANOVA, multiple regression, t-test and Pearson coefficient correlations were used to analyze the data. The results showed that metacognitive strategies contributed to the achievement in listening by 50.1% and to the achievement in reading by 23.2%. Gender differences favoring male students were evident in most analyses conducted in the current study. Significant statistical differences were found favoring male students in overall metacognitive strategies use, listening and reading achievement in the Humanities Stream, and reading achievement in the Science Stream. There were also significant statistical differences in the emotional interest, deep understanding, orderliness/systematic approach and total score between the Health and Humanities Streams in favor of the Health Stream. Also, there were significant differences between the Science and Humanities Streams in the deep understanding and the total score in favor of the Science Stream

الوقداني ، عايشه عبدالله عبيد

العرابي ، شذا عبد الله عبيد الله

الكاملي ، هديل محمد صلح عبد الغني

Writing in general, second language writing in particular, can be an obstacle for some students. The reason why writing can be hard to learn is that writers face many challenges the moment they start writing. The challenges could be from gathering the ideas to be written planning of the outline, focusing on sentence structure, choosing the appropriate expressions and also making sure of the organization. Moreover, these challenges can cause students to have negative attitudes towards writing ., Previous studies suggest that using writing strategies can help student control the writing process which have a positive effect on their writing achievement and their attitudes towards writing. The strategy of mind mapping is used as a pre-writing strategy to help writers visualize the structure of their writing. However, the researcher proposes using mind mapping strategy not only to organize ideas, but also to organize grammatical and linguistic knowledge. This study investigates the effect of using this mind mapping strategy as a pre-writing strategy to enhance female language learners’ writing achievement and their attitudes towards writing in English at Taif University, Saudi Arabia. In a quasi-experimental design, a mixed methods approach was adopted by collecting quantitative and qualitative data. The study population is 128 students in an experimental group (n1= 57) and a control group (n2=71). The former received the treatment of instruction using mind mapping strategy and the latter received traditional instruction. The objectives of this study are first, to identify any differences between the mean scores of the experimental group and the control group on post-tests of writing attitudes and writing achievement; second, to identify differences between the mean scores of the pre- and post-tests of writing attitudes and writing achievement for the experimental group; third, to explore students' views concerning difficulties to write in English. fourth, to identify the strategies they used to overcome these difficulties; fifth, to investigate if students thought that mind mapping helped them write better and, if so, how. The researcher prepared a test to measure the writing achievement of female first-year EFL students, and a questionnaire by Sturm (1996) to measure writing attitudes. An interview was conducted with a focus group from the experimental group to achieve the third ,fourth and fifth objectives.. Independent samples and paired sample t-tests were performed to quantitively analyze data from the writing achievement test and the writing attitudes questionnaire. Data collected from the interview were qualitatively analyzed. The finding of the current study are first, there exists differences between the mean scores of the experimental and the control group on the post-tests of the students` writing achievement and writing attitudes, in favor of the experimental group; second there exists significant differences between the mean scores of the experimental group’s pre- and post-tests in writing achievement and writing attitudes, in favor of the post-test; third, students’ difficulties to write in English include lack of vocabulary , organization, spelling and grammar; fourth, students are accustomed to memorizing , practicing, and self-correcting, which indicates they are not used to planning their writing finally, students also positively perceived the strategy of mind mapping and thought it helped them to better write in English.

القرشي، نهى عطيه عبدالرحيم

The present study aimed at investigating the effectiveness of jigsaw strategy in developing oral communication skills of elementary stage female students. The study adopted the quasi experimental design employing two groups (experimental and control). The design included an independent variable (jigsaw strategy) and a dependent variable (oral communication skills) which were measured by the oral communication skills test. The sample of the study consisted of 6th elementary stage students from elementary school in Taif (N=60). The students were divided into two groups experimental and control. The experimental group (N=30) was taught four units of English language book of 6th grade through jigsaw strategy. The control group (N=30) was taught the same content through normal method. The two groups' scores were analyzed using T-test. Results revealed that jigsaw strategy had a positive effect on the learners' oral communication skills except one skill which was participating in role play. In the light ofthe study results, some pedagogical recommendationsand suggestions for further research were proposed.

الشريف، شروق أحمد

According to Ladd (1981)’s strong universal hypothesis, questions universally tend to end with arising tone. However, recent empirical studies show that there are languages such as Hawaii Creole English language (Murphy, 2013), Standard Hungarian (Ladd,1981), and Spoken Moroccan Arabic (Benkirane, 1998) which are characterized by a low tune. This present study is the first systematic study, to our knowledge, that provides an empirical investigation of interrogatives in Makkan Arabic (MA). To achieve this, a production experiment has been conducted to discover how MA interrogatives are phonologically and acoustically encoded. A total of 22205 utterances including declaratives, WH-questions, rhetorical questions, embedded in questionanswer paradigms, were produced by fourteen native speakers of Makkan Arabic. Phonological results showed that interrogatives are marked by a H% boundary tone that reflects its interrogative status, contrary to the default intonation of their declarative counterparts. Not only that, they also show that the WH-words, regardless of their sentential positions are acoustically realized with a higher F0; whereas the words occurred after them are realized with lower F0, compared with their neutral-declarative counterparts. Interestingly, words occurred before the non-initial WH-word remain intact prosodically. These results have implications for interrogative studies and prosodic typology.

النفيعي ، ريم عباس

This thesis highlights the sufferings of the American Minority families attempting to save the cultural identity of their children from the cultural displacement which they have experienced . In The Woman Warrior: A Memoir of a Girlhood among Ghosts, Maxine Hong Kingston depicts the cultural displacement crisis she encounters while, at the same time, showing her mother’s efforts to maintain her Chinese cultural identity through storytelling. In American Indian Stories, Gertrude Bonnin sheds light on the oppression which she has gone through during her childhood so as to abandon her cultural identity. Edward Said’s memoir Out of Place records his individual experiences as an outsider or isolated person who was brought up as a multicultural person due to the European colonization of Palestine and Egypt during his childhood . The thesis also demonstrates how those authors have departed from societies that used to glorify traditions and cultural identity to a new society which takes little account of such deeply established norms. It further displays the American Minority’s constant attempts to resist cultural displacement and the white American’s propensity to marginalize those who adhere closely to their cultural identity. Drawing upon Postcolonial theory, the present thesis seeks to explore the reasons behind the diaspora of the cultural identity, reveal the minority children’s unconscious assimilation of a multicultural identity, and examine the cultural, social, and psychological impacts of the loss of American Minority’s cultural identity. It concludes by stressing the role of American minority in confronting any further attempts by the American majority to gradually wipe out their cultural identity .

القرني ، نورة علي سعد

الأسمري ، ياسمين أحمد

This thesis aims at revealing the nature of the connection that links the theme of violence to the black character in Faulkner and Wright's writings. Therefore, the ' ideologies that are adopted by the black characters and their societies in both writers novels will be examined in depth. Besides, this thesis intends to unveil the social, psychological and economic motives behind the violent nature of the black character in general. Finally, it explains why Faulkner and Wright shared the same perspective even though both writers represent different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The researcher will apply race theory including, postcolonial, African-American, and psychoanalytic perspectives to the novels. All novels will be analyzed according to the African-American perspective which reinforce the superiority of the Anglo Saxon race as internalized racism and the social constriction of race. In addition, a psychoanalytical explanation will be applied to the black characters in general. Postcolonial perspective are drown upon this thesis in order to examine the social/historical factors that affect the novels' black characters.