Journal of Tikrit University for Humanities

The present paper explores simplification as one feature of translation universals from English into Arabic. It aims at investigating how much the translators were aware of lexical simplification as a universal feature in the translated texts and discovering to what extent the language of translation is simple in order to preserve the meaning and information to make the translated texts more reader-friendly .this study hypothesizes that the language of translation is assumed to be lexically simpler than that of non-translated target-language texts and characterized by a low level of information flow by reducing lexical density.

The students, as members of the community, come to school with many ethics and behaviours, and certainly, these behaviours vary from one individual to another. Among these students, we find the smart and the little intelligence, the talented and the dull, the sensitive and the stolid, the sports and the lazy, as well as the rich and the poor, and the villager and the civilized, and the worker. Besides, many students have been forced to change their areas of residence due to wars and social conditions, thus, we find the displaced, the immigrant, the orphan, and the homeless. To deal with all those students in the same way, i.e., the method of the curriculum is almost unfair to many of them, because they may not have the same means of studying equally. Hence, the benefit of extracurricular activities comes as an equitable factor, for those who did not get any simple facilities in life, and a means of development and treatment at the same time. The 'activity' in general makes a state of mental and physical stimulation of the individual through which new information can be introduced to him/her easily, as there is a close relationship between the state of activity that the student has, and the process of receiving information. It was confirmed by the various studies and theories that the process of education is actually a process of influencing, and changing the behaviour of the learner who will be affected by the way the teacher, his method, his behaviour, and his morals. The main goal of the school should be affecting the student through the curriculum and stimulating activities because the process of creating an effective student is one of the main objectives that educational institutions claim to seek, but actually, they focus on academic subjects only ignoring other activities, thinking that they will do the job properly. The purpose of this research is to shed light on extracurricular activities and their effective role in creating a balanced generation capable of taking responsibility towards itself and its society. The results showed that extracurricular activities are as important as the curriculum, and there is considerable neglect by educational institutions in this aspect.

Following an existential point of view, the absurd theatre depicts ideas that seem to have illogical explanation. As a case in point, Samuel Beckett is the most eminent of the absurdist playwrights, in a sense that he deals with the dullness of routine, the futility of human action, and humans' inability to communicate. Beckett who has experienced so much of life became a man with a prophetic vision, and the creator of new concepts of modern theatre. His journey continues after writing Waiting for Godot to write Endgame. Both plays share the same view that man is living in a world without a clue and placing in a universe with no purpose.
This study provides a framework of Beckett’s two absurd plays Waiting for Godot and Endgame elucidated under the umbrella of both existentialism and absurd theatre. It is divided into two sections and a conclusion. Section one deals with the genre of these two plays and the philosophy of existentialism which has its effect on the writings of the modern age. Also, it explains the main features of the absurd theatre and how the modern tragi-comedy is used synonymously with absurd theatre. Section two deals with the game of waiting in Waiting for Godot, and the final stage of life in Endgame, and how Endgame is depicted as the third act of Wating for Godot. It also shows the idea of seeking salvation which dominates the two plays but in different ways. The last part of this study is the conclusion which sums up the findings of the study.

Postgraduate students in Iraqi universities study English language as English for specific purpose (ESP) and also English for general purpose (EGP). English is taught as foreign language in Iraqi schools and universities. Using technology in teaching has witnessed wide spread all over the world in recent years. Technology has provided opportunity to learn outside classroom which becomes an instrument of teaching and learning. The most available and authentic way of teaching via technology is using the free Google Classroom Platform (GCP). Teaching via GCP provides real connection between teacher and learners, authentic materials from live sources, multimedia aids, peer cooperation and feedback, grading systems, and assignments. To this end, the aim of the present study is to reveal postgraduate students’ perceptions toward learning ESP via Google Classroom Platform (GCP). To achieve the aim of the study, the following question was set: “What are postgraduate students’ perceptions toward learning ESP via Google Classroom Platform (GCP)?” The participants were 24 postgraduate students who study English language course as ESP from Department of Arabic, College of Arts, University of Anbar during the first academic year 2019-2020. To collect the data of the study, an attitudinal questionnaire was built. Its validity and reliability were calculated. The findings reveal that there are positive attitudes toward learning via GCP. It is a method that developed learners’ language ability in a joyful and interesting way.

This study aims at exploring the debatable issue in a high-stakes testing situation which is desirable for any test taker. It has been found that, beside content knowledge, test-taking behavior, such as risk-taking strategies, motivation, and test anxiety, is important for test performance. This study assumes that teaching test-taking strategies will result in increasing students' overall scores in their tests. It is also assumed that having such strategies will reduce the level of test stress and improve students' overall attitudes toward tests.
Studies in this area often compare groups of test takers. They have for example found that high achievers tend to report using more effective test-taking strategies when compared to low achievers (Stenlund et al. 2017), that males are more prone to taking risks when answering test items (see, e.g., Baldiga 2014), and that females and low achievers seem to experience higher levels of test anxiety than males and high achievers (Stenlund et al. 2017). Findings like these can help understand and to some extent possibly explain performance differences that are often observed between manifest groups in achievement tests.

Understanding a foreign language is an important task in communication. One way of understanding it is to know the term “meaning” and its various layers especially, any language consists of a certain levels of meaning which have a lot of common denominators. Meaning is described by many scholars as a very complex phenomenon and a disputable subject which is related to a variety of aspects of human knowledge and experience of life. English language constitutes of many layers such as, literal, denotative, connotative, and interpretative, etc. These levels should be presented in the mind of the learners who are going to learn the highly stylistic and interpretative English texts.
Iraqi learners of EFL mostly face difficulties in realizing the various layers of meaning. Hence, this study is an attempt to assess EFL university students' efficiency in realizing the various layers of meaning through formulating a number of hypotheses to be verified and aims to be achieved. A representative sample of EFL fourth year students is chosen from the College of Education for Humanities during the academic year 2018-2019. An Achievement test is constructed, validated, and applied to the selected sample of students. The collected data has statistically been treated in order to verify the formulated hypotheses and achieving the constructed aims in terms of the obtained results.