Sabariah Md Rashid

Arab ESL Secondary School Students’ Attitude Toward English Spelling and Writing

Learners’ attitude is considered a key motivational component and an important nonlinguistic factor that influences second-language learning. The primary aim of the current study is to explore Arab secondary school students’ attitudes toward English spelling and writing. To collect the data, a 52-item attitude questionnaire was administered to 70 Arab students studying English as a second language (ESL) in the Saudi School in Malaysia. The questionnaire comprises two scales: (a) attitudes toward English spelling and (b) attitudes toward writing in English that includes four writing purposes: (a) School Use, (b) Social Use, (c) Official Use, and (d) Creativity. The findings of the study revealed that the Arab ESL secondary school students have a high positive attitude toward English spelling and writing. The findings also indicated that the students’ attitude toward the Social Use of English is the highest, whereas their Creativity in writing is the least mean among the four purposes. In addition, the study revealed that there is a significant positive relationship between the students’ attitude toward spelling and writing. The findings suggest that English literature, that is, stories and literary activities, should be integrated in the curriculum to develop the students’ creativity in ESL writing. The study also recommends that other studies may investigate Arab students’ spelling error analysis as well as address other important aspects of writing such as brainstorming, drafting, revising, and editing.

Grammar-Related Semantic Losses in the Translation of the Holy Quran, with Special Reference to Surah Al A’araf (The Heights)

Translating the Holy Quran is a challenging task. However, it is a necessity due to the large number of Muslims who do not speak Arabic. To date, various translations are available for nonnative speakers of Arabic. These translations, however, have revealed complete and partial translation losses. One type of such losses is grammatical loss, which sometimes occurs due to differences between the source text (ST) and the target text (TT). This study aimed at investigating the grammatical losses in the translation of the Holy Quran, with special reference to Surah Al A’araf, and the extent these losses cause partial or complete semantic loss. Qualitative descriptive approach was adopted to analyze the data extracted from Abdel Haleem’s English translation of Surah Al A’araf. The study revealed losses occurring in translating grammatical aspects such as conjunctions, syntactic order, duality, tense, and verbs. It was also found that grammatical losses contributed to semantic losses, which are mostly partial semantic losses of the connotative or the expressive meanings. However, some of the identified grammatical losses were found to cause complete semantic losses. This study suggests that appropriate translation strategies be adopted to reduce loss in the translation.

Semantic Loss in the Holy Qur’an Translation With Special Reference to Surah Al-WaqiAAa (Chapter of The Event Inevitable)

Semantic loss, which refers to over-, under-, or mistranslation of a source text (ST), may result in partial or complete loss of meaning in the target text (TT). This phenomenon is prevalent in the translations of an ST, especially translations of the Holy Qur’an due to factors such as the lack of equivalence of some cultural words in the target language (TL). In relation to this, translators of this holy book have been critiqued for their inability to completely convey the true and accurate meanings of the Holy Qur’an. This study attempted to investigate the semantic loss in the translation of the Surah al-WaqiAAa by Abdullah Yusuf Ali. It also examined the frequency and causes of such losses. This research, which is qualitative in nature, utilized descriptive content analysis of the Surah. The translation of the ayat [verses] related to the problem of the research has been extracted from the work of Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur’an: Text and Translation. The meanings of the translated verses were verified by two Arabic language experts who had mastered English as well. The causes of losses were identified according to Baker’s typology. The findings showed frequent partial and complete semantic loss of meanings mostly due to mistranslations, semantic complexity of the vocabularies, and culture.

Contrastive Analysis of the Segmental Phonemes of English and Hausa Languages

The objectives of this study are: (1) to identify the similarities and differences between the segmental phonemes of English and Hausa languages, and (2) to predict learning difficulties among the Hausa ESL learners based on this comparison. Learners of English as a second language (L2) are usually faced with difficulties largely contributed by the features of their first languages (L1). The Hausa speakers in Nigeria learn English as a second language and features of the Hausa language are heavily evident in their spoken English. Among the causes of difficulty in pronouncing English among the Hausa speakers is the segmental deviation. This study compares and contrasts the segmental phonemes of English and Hausa. Behaviorists and Structural linguists in the 1950’s and 1960’s founded the theoretical foundations of the Contrastive Analysis (CA) and since then, this approach has been employed in the second language acquisition studies. In the course of this study, the researchers employed desk research where data were drawn from archive and then analyzed side-by-side revealing their similarities and differences. The results of the study demonstrate that although Hausa and English have some similar phonemes, the sounds do not behave the same way in the two languages, and Hausa has 47 phonemes when English has 44. Differences in the phonological features between the two languages result in challenges faced by the Hausas in learning English.