Journal of Education for Humanities

Teaching prepositions to primary pupils is not an easy task, because prepositions do not follow certain grammatical rules, thus it is recommended that non-native English teachers who teach prepositions to EFL primary pupils should be through creative, interactive learning environments. Utilizing relatable contexts, visuals, and games, they foster cultural sensitivity and language diversity, enhancing comprehension and practical usage. It is a fact that pupils in primary schools and even in intermediate and secondary schools face difficulties in choosing the most appropriate preposition. This study aims to reveal the effect of the Real-Life Scenarios Technique (RLST) in developing 5th-grade primary pupils' prepositions achievement. The participants were 25 pupils from 5th grade at Al-Kawakib Primary School in Ramadi City, Anbar. The Real-Life Scenarios Technique was used as an instructional instrument. A pretest and post-achievement test were used to collect the data. The result revealed that using the Real-Life Scenarios Technique has a positive significance in developing 5th-grade primary pupils' prepositions. And the female pupils' scores were higher than the male pupils.

The current study is mainly devoted to investigate the discursive strategies and linguistic tools chosen by the characters in the selected cartoon film, The Knight and the Princess(2019),to reveal an ideology that might influence the cognition of the viewers (Children and teenagers). Cartoons are entertainment source but animators tend to use them as communicative tools by using discursive strategies to imply and impose certain ideologies which represent their social cognitions. These social cognitions have effects on the personal cognition. The data selected for this study consists of five extracts purposively selected from the film namely, The Knight and The Princess (2019). Highlighting the communicational function of cartoon films, this study aims at uncovering the cultural representation of anti-feminism, as a hidden ideology, in the cartoon film, The Knight and the Princess (2019) has been selected accurately by the researchers because it shapes a set of ideas about anti-feminism. This study is intended to answer the following research questions: how is the cultural stand of anti-feminism realized through language? And how can cartoon films function to communicate or reveal ideologies as cultural representations? The significance of this paper is to increase parental and caregiver awareness by highlighting the communicational value of cartoons. The study's application of van Dijk's (1998) model to children's literature is also crucial for academics using the critical discourse analysis theory. The Knight and the Princess (2019) uses a variety of language tools and methods, including lexicalization, level of description, schemata, explicitness, local coherence, semantic representation, and rhetorical devices, to advance the ideology of anti-feminism, according to the academics. The present study is qualitative in nature as it critically examines the revelation of ideologies in a cartoon film in a particular culture by means of adopting Van Dijk's (1998) approach of critical discourse analysis.

This article investigates the documentation of racism in Anna Deavere Smith’s Fires in the Mirror (1992), which is a one-person drama that talks about the Crown Heights riot, happened in Brooklyn in August 1991 and its aftermath. The play is told through the African-American and Jewish perspectives by the people who are attached directly and indirectly to the unrest. The study explores the historical roots for what happened in Crown Heights through documenting the racist acts exercised by both the blacks and Jews in Brooklyn. The study introduces a better understanding for this historical event highlighting the real reasons behind this act of violence.

English news headlines require considerable attention to understand as they are characterized by a special style in their formulation. The study aims to identify the factors that hinder comprehending English breaking news, a type of news headline, by Iraqi university EFL learners. To this end, the participants were 35 fourth-year learners whose major is English at the College of Education for Humanities, the University of Anbar for the academic year 2019-2020. In the form of a questionnaire sent to participants online, the participants were required to decide upon the factors influencing their understanding of breaking news. Ten breaking news headlines were collected purposively from the Euronews website. The data were qualitatively analyzed based on Donoghue’s (2009) classification of the factors that cause difficulties in comprehending news headlines. The findings showed that learners ascribe the difficulty of comprehending breaking news headlines to six main factors: purpose, being an active reader, the kind of text being used, quality of literacy instruction, interest and independent practice. The agreement variable occupies the highest percentage while the uncertain variable scored second place and the disagreement variable has the lowest percentage.

It is now widely accepted that written texts embody the author and reader interaction. This interaction is intended to influence readers via various interpersonal and argumentative strategies. Though much literature has been conducted on metadiscourse devices, fewer studies were conducted in the Iraqi EFL context at the university level. The current research addresses how authors of MA linguistics theses engage with their texts and readers to establish a connection within the discourse community. To this end, the data were collected from ten MA linguistics theses from the University of Anbar and Tikrit University. The qualitative data was analysed using Hyland's (2005a) model. Based on a contrastive analysis of the frequencies of interactive and interactional Metadiscourse markers in the Master's theses of both universities. It has been shown that the predominant devices used in theses are Transitions as authors use distinct Metadiscourse markers. The observed results could be explained by the excessive focus put on these gadgets by English educators at the intermediate and secondary educational levels. The findings implicate giving careful consideration to these indicators, especially in the context of advanced academic writing, in order to enhance students' pragmatic ability.

Facial expressions are the nonverbal cues that people use to communicate. They are crucial aspects of interlocutors' daily conversation and interaction. This paper is based on the ideas that many interlocutors utilize facial expressions as a persuasive tool in interactions with others to express emotions, thoughts, and attitudes, as well as fulfill their purposes and persuade individuals of specific messages. It aims to investigate the significance of facial expressions and how they affect interaction, as strategies of persuasion in political interviews. To achieve these aims, two sorts of approaches are used: theoretical and practical. The theoretical approaches entail explaining the fundamental concepts of persuasion and nonverbal communication.
The practical processes, on the other hand, entail examining recorded videos of five political interviews from various regions and cultures around the world. The videos are collected from the YouTube channel. The selected interviews are evaluated using an eclectic model based on Cialdini's (2001) model of persuasion techniques, Matsumoto's (2013) model of universal facial expression forms and functions, and Argyle and Dean's (1965) model of eye contact functions. The results of analyzing the collected data demonstrate that both interlocutors, interviewer and interviewee, highly employ facial expressions as persuasive techniques and strategies in political TV interviews, but they differ in the degree of using facial expressions and the purposes. The interviewer has an impact on the guest and persuades him to speak frankly. The interviewee, on the other hand, employs facial expressions to convey his point of view, intentions, and feelings to the interviewer and audience. In relation to the use of eye contact, the function of information seeking is the most important and frequently occurring function, and then come the functions of happiness and liking.

The decision by the United States to go to war with Iraq in the early 2000s was a multifaceted and intricate matter. The Bush administration's primary justification revolved around their assertion of a strong connection between the Iraqi regime and global terrorism, particularly in terms of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). This justification served as the foundation for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Brian Turner, an American soldier and poet, participated in this horrible conflict in Iraq. Turner's commitment forced him to witness the horrors of war and the falsehoods of its claims. In light of Said's Orientalism, this study examines the process of otherizing and harmonizing the self in Turner's "Night in Blue". "Night in Blue" offers a poignant perspective on the psychological and emotional effects of war on an individual soldier. By focusing on the soldier's personal struggles and emotions, the poem challenges the stereotypes and dehumanizing tendencies that often accompany narratives of war and conflict. In doing so, it engages the poet and the reader in the process of otherizing and harmonizing the self as well as unmasking the fallacies of war narratives used to invade Iraq.

The linguistic messages cannot be understood well without the investigation of their force and perlocutionary force. These terms are suggested by Austin (1962) to explain how the utterance can be interpreted in respect to the context in which it occurs. This study aims at finding out the role of speech act and politeness (pragmatic concepts) theories in reflecting the guidable ideology of in religious texts. It is concluded that the ideology of the texts under analysis is described as guidable depending on identifying the speech acts used and the degree of politeness. As well, the nature of ideology is part of the interpretation of religious texts. Three main conclusions are come up with; 1- exhortation is utilized more extensively than intimidation and advice 2- Despite that Al-Emam can use the lest degree of politeness according to the equation of politeness measurement, he uses a high degree of it 3-Speech act analysis can reflect the nature of ideology that Al-Emam follows to disseminate the religious thought and the values of Islam.

This paper deals with simultaneous interpreting as a demanding cognitive task that involves various cognitive processes under severe time pressure; it is considered one of the most stressful tasks which causes heavy cognitive load on interpreters. Stress in interpreting refers to those responses that have emotional and harmful effects which occur when the requirements of the task are more than interpreter’s available resources. Interpreters experience different types of stress during Simultaneous Interpretation (SI) such as environmental, i.e. temperature, humidity and air quality as well as Psychological stress affected by personal factors such as self-confidence and the situation judgment way. The study aims at investigating stress experienced by professional and student interpreters during English-Arabic-English SI. It is hypothesized that the more professional the interpreter is, the more able s/he is to successfully cope with this stress by utilizing some stress coping strategies. In order to investigate the impact of stress on the interpreter’s performance when rendering simultaneously and to study interpreters’ awareness of stress, 40 student and 3 professional interpreters are chosen to participate in English-Arabic-English interpreting tasks. The study concludes that both groups experienced stress in this dual task. However, students’ stress has negative effects on their performance and on the interpreting process when they resorted to pause and omit the SL segments. On the other hand, professionals’ stress motivated them to search and apply stress coping strategies such as inferring the meaning of the source message and generalization.

This study attempts to highlight the practices of marginalization and social exclusion of the colonizers and the local inhabitants alike on the white creole community in the Caribbean Islands. The papers shows how this treatment causes psychological confusion on the part of the white creole subjects and makes them suffer from the inevitability of their identity loss due to bewilderment as to whether they belong to the colonized or colonizers’ community in these islands.
This paper also attempts to explore racism practiced on creole subjects in the West Indies and the horrifying realities that white creole males as well as females encounter. While the study clarifies these behavioral traumas, it comes across the ways how the aforementioned genders develop their sense of self, the way financial security or insecurity affects their life, and society plays its role leading to their insanity. This study is intended to provide an insight into the traumatic instances they confront as they mingle and communicate with a society that rejects and excludes them.

It is vital to learn the skill of communication in order to live a larger and happier life. The more we communicate, the less we suffer and the more we enjoy our environment. Humor is a method of communication that is thought to be a universal trait prevalent in all languages. The purpose of this study is to look at humor through a universal pragmatic perspective in a stand-up comedy show called You Wanna Hear Something Crazy. It seeks to examine the validity claims in humorous speech acts raised by the comic in order to bring the audience closer to mutual understanding. The researchers employ Habermas' universal pragmatic theory (1979, 1984, 1987, 1998) to achieve the study's goal. The study of the codes (Validity Claims) raised by the speaker to attain mutual understanding with the hearer in a specific setting is known as universal pragmatics. After analyzing three representative extracts, the study concludes that the universal validity claims of truth, sincerity, and normative rightness for achieving mutual understanding with the audience are raised when producing humor employing various speech acts of Habermas (1981) and more than one validity claim can be raised.

Learners of a language often adapt their pronunciation in response to who they are speaking to in a linguistic phenomenon called phonetic convergence. This study examined Iraqi EFL learners’ pronunciation in three different tasks. More specifically, the study measured voice onset time (VOT) values in different phonetic contexts; a baseline, after a native model, and after a non-native model. VOT is different between Arabic and English as Arabic is a non-aspiration language; while English is. The study hypothesized that learners accommodate their pronunciation in response to what they listen to. Hence, the study attempted to identify if the identity of the model, being native or non-native, affects learners’ pronunciation. To achieve this aim, VOT values were measured via PRAAT and compared via SPSS tests to identify any possible convergence strategies in the pronunciation of learners towards the models. The results of Independent samples Tests and correlation values showed that learners tended to act in response to both native and non-native speakers. Learners were more correlated with the native model supporting speaker's identity effect. The study recommended that English language teachers and EFL learners should seek innovative techniques through which they can compensate for the inadequacy of having non-native teachers with accented pronunciation.

This paper explored the impact of listening strategy instruction on Iraqi EFL learners' listening strategy use. It is to be noted that just a few earlier studies have explored the use of these strategies to improve EFL learners' listening strategies. The main aim of this paper is to examine the effect of the listening strategy instruction on listening strategy use among Iraqi EFL learners and to determine which listening strategies are most developed. This study used an experimental design in which two groups of fourth-year students at the Department of English, College of Education, Al Hamdaniya University were randomly selected to participate in the study. A total of 60 participants were split into two groups: the experimental group (N=30) and the control group (N = 30); the former got explicit listening strategy instruction and the latter did not. For the purpose of gathering data, a listening strategy use questionnaire designed by Vandergrift (1992) was developed and employed. This instrument served as a pre- and post-test for both groups. According to the findings, it has been demonstrated that participants in the experimental group developed listening strategies than those in the control group and this indicates that listening strategy instruction has impact on EFL learners’ listening strategy use.

The research is a study of reinforcing and teaching the speaking skill of English language psycho- linguistically for academic students who want to talk English fluently.
Any language can be regarded as a diacritical trait of human beings. So, speaking is a performance and productive skill of an oral language, that is why, it can be a complex process.
Although most of this paper scrutinizes the role of speaking strategies and activities to plan and learn speaking English language whether inside the lecture discourses or in real interlocutions outside it, the paper emphasizes on what the academic students say, not on how they say by converting the students’ thoughts into EL and expressing them in manner that can be acceptable to native speakers. The paper findings arise the importance of expanding the sightedness of EL teachers about what students’ possibilities can be accomplished and supplied different ideas within the real communicational contexts to achieve their proficiency in EL speaking based on statistical analysis of (YES/ NO) test of (10 items) is given to (20) academic students in the Open Education College in Governorate of Diyala.
Finally, a set of conclusions is made and the references of this paper are authenticated.

This research investigates the concept of surveillance in Bina Shah’s Before She Sleeps (2018). Surveillance is a disciplinary power that functions as a method adopted by the State to convert individuals into bodies categorised as submissive and productive. It adopts a Foucauldian conception of power, its procedures, mechanisms, and effects in creating a panopticon society. A coercive State manipulates power by enforcing surveillance, discipline, and a normalisation process on its citizens, particularly women, to gain universal power. However, the population resists the dynamics of the dominant power of surveillance to change the stereotyped images enforced on them. The research confirms that resistance is a direct reaction of the subjugated individuals against the fragility of the surveillance power.

The study investigates conflict avoidance (as a translation strategy) in translating Arabic political televised debates into English. As conflict avoidance in political debates is one of the key functions of politeness, translators would violate some maxims of politeness so as to achieve certain ends which go with their line of thinking. Therefore, to achieve conflict avoidance, translators may add, delete, or substitute to successfully convey the desired meaning to their TL readers and be up to their readers' expectation.

This study attempts to investigate the ability of Iraqi undergraduate fourth-year students' and M.A. students' recognition of felicitous speech acts. To achieve the aims of the study , a sample of (50) Iraqi EFL fourth-year undergraduate students and (13) M.A. students at the Department of English, College of Education for Human Sciences, Tikrit University, have participated in responding to a test composed of ten situations used to assess the learners' ability to recognize felicitous speech acts. The following hypotheses have been set:1) There is no statistically significant difference between the calculated value and the tabulated value of the recognition test of felicitous speech acts for undergraduate fourth-year students, 2)There is no statistically significant difference between the calculated value and the tabulated value of the recognition test of felicitous speech acts for M.A. students, 3)There is no statistically significant difference between the calculated value and the tabulated value of the recognition test of felicitous speech acts for males and females of undergraduate fourth-year students,4) There is no statistically significant difference between the calculated value and the tabulated value of the recognition test of felicitous speech acts for males and females of M.A. students, and 5) There is no statistically significant difference between the calculated value and the tabulated value of the recognition test of felicitous speech acts for undergraduate fourth-year students and M.A. students. The most important conclusions are:1)Fourth- year undergraduate students have recognition in using felicitous speech acts, 2) M.A. students have recognition of felicitous speech acts, 3) In terms of the recognition test, there is no variation between males and females of fourth- year undergraduate students use of felicitous speech acts ,4)There is no variation between males and females of M.A. students recognition of felicitous speech acts and 5) M.A. students have better recognition than fourth- year undergraduate students in the recognition of felicitous speech acts.

The study of language and gender reveals how language works as a symbolic tool to construct and preserve personal, social, and cultural aspects and identities, going beyond merely documenting the distinctions between men's and women's linguistic patterns. Thus, tackling proverbs as data being loaded with important themes, mainly, gender inequality and prejudiced views represents a fertile area of research. The study attempts to examine sexist proverbs pragmatically to prove the legitimation of the ideological aspects of gender bias in terms of speech act. This leads to a major aim the study sets in advance, which is to show that gender neutrality is not always the case.
The study hypothesizes: 1. Proverbs are performative speech acts as proverbial speech acts both constitute and instigate gender discrimination. 2. Gender bias is legitimized in the proverbial discourse that blocks the way towards gender neutrality.
The study concludes: (1) Proverbs, related to gender, provide insight into gender dynamics in terms of locutions and lexical triggers (father, mother, etc.). These proverbs are discriminatory speech acts in which hate, and discrimination are promoted and instigated by the social and traditional authorities. (2) Gender bias and the ideologies behind it are legitimized in proverbs by the social authority like, the personal and model authority of father; and traditionality where it is generally not opposed.
 

‘‘The Middle Years’’ is a short story for the American-born British writer Henry James (1843-1916). It depicts the suffering of a writer during his attempt to achieve his career. As it portrays the life and suffering of writers, so it involves some aspects of Henry James’s own life. The paper argues that Henry James’s ‘‘The Middle Years’’ has autobiographical aspects which can be discovered through a close reading of the story by comparing it with his own life. James is presented in the story through the character of Dencombe, as there are some parallels between the writer and the story’s main character. The paper also argues that the character of Dencombe mirrors Henry James in many aspects such as the writing career, personality, age, concerns, hope, achievement, frustration, negative attitude to woman and sexual orientation. Hence, the paper investigates and analyzes the autobiographical aspects in this story by connecting them to the writer himself.

The current work tends to study persuasion from a rhetorical perspective as employed in tourism videos. It attempts to tackle the persuasion concept from a much wider and novel perspective by presenting various definitions, theories, elements, models, and strategies. It also clarifies rhetoric and its tropes. The study mainly explores the rhetorical strategies that tourism advertisement makers usually use to achieve their goals of attracting a considerable number of tourists to a particular destination. The researcher qualitatively analyzed the data which was 10 videos of tourism on the basis of the linguistic rhetorical strategies of persuasion. The present study revealed that there are specific rhetorical devices such as consonance, alliteration, and assonance that are used most frequently in tourism videos. At the same time, other rhetorical figures are found in tourism videos but in a low percentage.

Abstract
Learning a language skill is governed by factors that positively and negatively affect students' learning performance. This study aims to investigate EFL University professors' perspectives on the factors that affect EFL students' listening comprehension. To achieve the aim, the following question was set "What factors affect EFL students' listening comprehension?". The nature of the study is action research, the number of participants is limited to 7 university professors from the College of Arts and from the College of Education for Humanities at the University of Anbar. The study was conducted during the first semester of the academic year 2022-23. To collect the data a semi-structured interview was prepared. The sentence unit was used to analyze the data. The data was categorized into two groups, namely the "Positive Factors" and the "Negative Factors". The results revealed that the positive factors that affect students' listening performance are as follows: the length of the passage, the duration of practicing the listening skills, the nature of the topic, the motivation, vocabulary bank, instructor's fluency. The negative factors are: figuring out the main idea, quality of the listening source, attention span, speaking speed, number of English lessons, note-taking, body language, and idiomatic expressions. The conclusion revealed that listening comprehension is a difficult task that needs practice, time, effort, exposure to the native language, increased motivation, reduced speaking speed, increased listening time, and proficient university professors who are specialized in teaching language skills.