English Language

Translating contemporary Arabic fiction into English gained momentum after the Egyptian novelist, Naguib Mahfouz, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. However, this activity and the ensuing translated output, have been considered the outcome of the negative hidden agendas adopted by the patrons who commission the translations. Indeed, these patrons have been branded as repressive agents that advocate orientalist views since the fiction they select for translation reinstates the stereotypical images of the Arabs, and hence fulfills the Anglo-Saxon readers' expectations and the patrons' financial aspirations. This paper attempts to look at the other side of the coin and considers the positive role patrons have played in translating contemporary Arabic fiction into English.

The impact of globalization and the advent of satellite channels and digital technology have played an instrumental role in changing the audiovisual translation scene in Jordan. During the last two decades, the subtitling industry has flourished at an exponential rate as manifested in the number of institutions engaged in this form of translation, the quantity of multimodal texts commissioned for translation and the widening remit of translation activities conducted under the rubric of subtitling. The marked development in the subtitling industry, however, has not received adequate support from the academic institutions in the country. Departments that award undergraduate degrees in translation rarely teach courses in subtitling, and research conducted on the pedagogy of this kind of translation is almost nonexistent. This paper argues that courses in subtitling should be incorporated in the translation studies curricula offered at Jordanian universities not because these courses ar...

The influx of Syrian refugees to Jordan is considered one of the most serious social events that the country has witnessed in decades. The unprecedented flow of refugees that received extensive coverage by the Jordanian print media played an instrumental role in shaping the representation of both the event and the actors involved in the crisis. This paper departs from the premise that news reports are “elements of social events” and as such employ language to change, maintain or inculcate the knowledge, beliefs and social relations shared by members of a society. To this end, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is adopted to investigate how Al-Ghad Newspaper uses language to represent and frame the Syrian refugee crisis and the Syrian refugees and considers whether this portrayal has contributed to the reconciliation or alienation of the Syrian refugees in the Jordanian society.

This study examines how the insights provided by the models of translation derived from the disciplines of linguistics and cultural studies contribute to our understanding of the translation decisions undertaken in the act of translating Newsweek International from English into Arabic. The main argument is that the aforementioned models are complementary and should be taken into consideration in the analysis of journalistic texts that have been translated between two languages and cultures that are very distant. To show how these models can both be applied to translation studies, the study examines how the cohesive devices, the ideological images pertaining to the Arabs, Muslims and Islam and the ideologically significant instances of passivization employed in Newsweek International are rendered in Newsweek in Arabic.

This paper investigates the translation strategies that have been employed in translating Donald Trump's posts on Twitter from English into Arabic, taking into consideration Trump's use of language characterized by the excessive use of sentence fragments, colloquialism and a discourse that generally lacks cohesion. To achieve this goal, sixtyfive tweets posted in 2019, and translated by two media news agencies, namely Russia Today and Anadolu Agency are analyzed to identify the translation strategies adopted by the translators affiliated to these agencies, and to determine the impact of the strategies utilized on the target language texts. The analysis of the corpora reveals that the three most predominant translation strategies adopted by the translators of the aforementioned media outlets are, in order of importance, explicitation, omission and shifts. Overall, these strategies produce target language texts that flow smoothly and succeed in transferring the messages originally expressed in the English tweets. However, on rare occasions when unnecessary omission and unmotivated shifts are adopted, the translators of Russia Today and Anadolu Agency fail to transmit the same communicative values Trump originally conveyed to his English-speaking followers.

Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the Palestinians have gone through a number of harrowing experiences. These experiences have been depicted in Palestinian novels, characterized by copious reference to culture-specific manifestations peculiar to the Palestinian community. Since the transfer of culture is of paramount importance in literary translation, emphasizing culture-specific connotations in Palestinian novels is likely to cause translation problems in the act of reworking these texts from Arabic into English. This entails that the translators undertaking this challenging translation task must have a thoroughgoing command of the culture that produced the original work to secure the production of target texts that can successfully introduce the ‘foreign’ culture to English readers. This paper tries to investigate whether the translators’ cultural background, and hence familiarity with the source language culture, affects the strategies that these translator...

In an article entitled "Shifts of cohesion and coherence in translation', Blum-Kulka (1986) introduced the 'explicitation hypothesis.' The hypothesis posits that translators add information in the target text that is implicit in the source text. This amplification, that produces translated texts that exhibit a higher degree of explicitness in comparison with the originals, takes place regardless of the differences between the language pairs involved in the act of translation. Therefore, explicitation is considered to be part and parcel of any translation activity whether conducted by professional or non-professional translators. This paper tries to test whether this hypothesis applies to the translations of non-professio nal translators by analyzing the work of fourth year students majoring in translation at the University of Petra, Jordan. The analysis of the students' translated texts has revealed that non-professional student translators 'spell out' i...

Competency-based language teaching (CBLT) is an application of the principles of competency-based education. It concerns accountability, management and quantification. CBLT focuses on the competencies and outputs. If teaching competencies becomes an end in itself, stakeholders become the object rather than the subjects of the educational process. On the other hand, if competencies are seen as tools to enable learners to act for change in their lives, critical thinking will be promoted. After a brief history, this article introduces competency-based language teaching. Then it will be followed by how it will be evaluated. Finally the pros and cons of this kind of instruction are elaborated in details.

Netspeak refers to the language used in any online communication environment such as chat rooms, Facebook, or Twitter. By drawing on John Dewey’s concept of habit formation, Baron believes that after years of constant use of Netspeak, language learners will naturally employ the features of this language into their formal writing practice. This would happen when language violations such as spelling mistakes and the misuse of punctuations or capitalization have become acceptable and fossilized in learners’ formal writing activities. This study will present findings of a research, primarily aimed at investigating the fossilization of errors in writing among ESL (Malaysians) and EFL (Jordanians) learners due to the aforementioned phenomenon.
Two research methods were employed: a questionnaire that was designed based on Selinker’s theory of interlanguage and the factors contributing to the use of lexical features of Netspeak, and semistructured interviews. Questionnaires were administered to 300 participants; 150 Asian students from one public university in Malaysia (representing the ESL learners) and 150 Middle East students from the Irbid National University, Jordan (representing the EFL learners). This study managed to provide some valuable insights on the issues, by demonstrating some new perceptions and ideologies pertaining to the ignorance of language consistency in formal writing practice, resulting from a constant use of Netspeak in the online communication environment.

As an established fact, corpus-based studies are of paramount value to shed some light on the qualitative and quantitative linguistic analysis whose extension is getting prevalent in the realm of language learning and teaching especially by making grammar subservient to lexis. Concordance as a vibrant technique for corpus-based studies elucidates some of the previously-ignored features of language learning which have colossal implications for language teaching. This study accentuates on this technique and delves extensively into myriad of applications of ELT situation and its associated prerequisites and conditions. It is done via providing tangible procedure-based strategies and analyzing pitfalls attributed to concordance applications through which the language learning is thought to be facilitated and teachers paves the way for achieving the intended objectives.

English language learning beliefs play a key role in the language learning process, especially among EFL (English as a foreign language) learners. This study seeks to clarify English learning beliefs among EFL students in Jordan, and to examine whether female and male learners differ in these beliefs. Horwitz’s (1987) Language Learning Beliefs Inventory (BALLI) was adapted to gather relevant data from 83 English major participants at a private university during regular classes. Frequency analysis and T-tests were then performed utilizing SPSS. The findings demonstrate that while Jordanian students are not sure about language difficulty, they are highly enthusiastic about learning the English language. Furthermore, female and male students only had significantly different results in two aspects of BALLI: 1) motivation and expectations and 2) difficulty of language learning. Hopefully, the results will provide constructive insights to lecturers concerning students’ beliefs about learning English, which will help improve the English-learning process in Jordanian universities.

This study observes the use of Facebook in the complex social phenomenon, natural disasters. By adopting an affordance perspective, this study emphasizes on how local Jordanian communities harness the power of Facebook during the 2018 Dead Sea flash flood. Through using an interpretive approach, three affordances of Facebook were identified, namely, disaster warning, volunteer mobilization, and the coordination of response and recovery. Then, the researchers examined how these affordances helped the Jordanian communities to respond to disaster situations and achieve social outcomes during the floods. Based on the data analysis, it has been noticed that Face-book changed the way individuals; organizations, activists, and governments respond and act to the challenges posed by a disaster. This study contributes to the emerging literature on the use of Facebook in natural disasters in the Jordanian context. There is a hope that this research could inspire more researchers about the use of emerging digital technologies in examining a variety of natural disasters.

Empowering new generations with technology through employing blended learning approach to teach English as a Foreign Language has been recently investigated by many researchers in various contexts. This mixed-methods study aimed at examining the effects of the blended learning approach on Jordanian EFL learners' grammar performance. The study also aimed at investigating the attitudes of Jordanian EFL learners toward blended learning. To achieve the objectives of the study, it employed a quasi-experimental design (pre and posttests) followed by qualitative interviews. The participants were divided into two groups: experimental and control groups. Among the 28 students in the sample, those in the experimental blended learning group (n=13) were taught using Moodle while those in the control group (n=15) were taught using conventional methods. All the 13 participants in the experimental group were interviewed. The results of the posttest revealed that students in the experimental group outperformed students in the control group. Furthermore, the qualitative analysis results showed that blended learning had a positive impact on the learners' English grammar performance and that they were strongly satisfied and motivated to learn English using similar methods. It is concluded that blended learning could be used as an effective method of teaching English grammar in EFL settings. It is hoped that these results will help the university, faculty, and students to develop the skills necessary for blended learning.

This study investigated the effect of using Google Classroom on the reading and writing performance of diploma students with English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Jordan. It aimed to investigate the attitudes of students toward using Google Classroom as an innovative online platform. A total of 26 EFL Syrian diploma students participated in this study; the participants sat in one intact group. The researchers employed a quasi-experimental design and one-group pretest-posttest design based on the quantitative data. The data were collected through a reading and writing test and a questionnaire. According to the results of the study, Google Classroom improved the reading and writing performance of Syrian students. Students showed positive attitudes toward using Google Classroom in terms of its ease of use, usefulness, and accessibility. Future studies should analyze the effectiveness of Google Classroom with respect to other contexts. This study affirmed the liability of utilizing Google Classroom in wider contexts.

Jordan, like other countries in the world, is facing the Coronavirus pandemic and is making a great effort to continue education in Jordanian schools and universities through distance education. To evaluate this novel experience, this study aimed at investigating the effectiveness of distance education in Jordanian universities in light of the Coronavirus pandemic and identifying the obstacles faced by university students. To reach the research objectives, a questionnaire was developed by the researchers followed by semi-structured interviews. A sample of 1000 students was selected randomly from public and private universities. The results revealed that the majority of the Jordanian university students are not pleased with this distance learning experience as most of the students encountered some obstacles such as internet speed, technological difficulties, and online content design.

The study aimed to investigate the attitude of 36 participants on using Sms in their conversation and writing. To achieve the study objectives, a questionnaire was developed and reliability and validity of the questionnaire were checked. The study sample consisted of 36 using Sms. twelve of them were parents. The results of the study indicated that each of the three groups use Sms differently. Sms English is used for communication by the majority as it saves time, space and easy to use. Finally, in light of the results, future studies should analyze the use of Sms English with respect to other participants. Research undertaking a bigger sample should be done to arrive at a more concrete conclusion.

The explicit meaning of speech may not express the intended meaning and may lead to ambiguity in speech communication. The current study aims to explain how pragmatics can facilitate an understanding of the speech communications and convey the intended meaning. Furthermore, the study shows how encapsulated (implicit) meaning in many phenomena of pragmatics may fundamentally influence the nature and the quality of translation between Arabic, and English languages. In this regard, the study demonstrates the pertinence of pragmatics theories for translators' work by providing authentic examples of translation between Arabic, and English languages. It argues how a pragmatically oriented process can perform the balance in human communication to avoid breakdowns of communication.

Usage of electronic information resources is a vital element in the current distance education. The study also investigated students' satisfaction and highlighted the challenges faced by English language and translation students when using these resources. This was a mixed-methods study that applied a questionnaire followed by qualitative interviews. The participants were 150 female and male students from the Department of English Language and Translation. The findings revealed that electronic information resources were highly helpful and flexible to use. The students were satisfied with the electronic information resources. In contrast, some students reported that they faced several challenges such as internet issues, lack of skills and lack of orientation programs. Conclusion and recommendations regarding the use of these resources were provided.