Seminar

  Dr. Barbara Rumbinas delivered a presentation organized by the Language Research Center of King Khalid University on February 27, 2019.   Dr. Barbara began her presentation by defining Multimodal Analysis which is actually an inter-disciplinary approach that acknowledges that communicative acts contain more than verbal utterances or written texts. She said communicative acts are meaning-generating events including visual, spoken, gestural, written, and other three-dimensional modes of interaction. The Multimodal Approach to research, she said, examines the communicative interactions of these elements as well as their inter and intra-relationships to reveal, among other things, ideological perspectives and power relations.   The seminar was very informative and a great success. Date: 3/2/2019 Source: Mohammad Adil Siddique

  Dr. Barbara Rumbinas delivered a presentation organized by the Language Research Center of King Khalid University on February 27, 2019.   Dr. Barbara began her presentation by defining Multimodal Analysis which is actually an inter-disciplinary approach that acknowledges that communicative acts contain more than verbal utterances or written texts. She said communicative acts are meaning-generating events including visual, spoken, gestural, written, and other three-dimensional modes of interaction. The Multimodal Approach to research, she said, examines the communicative interactions of these elements as well as their inter and intra-relationships to reveal, among other things, ideological perspectives and power relations.   The seminar was very informative and a great success. Date: 3/2/2019 Source: Mohammad Adil Siddique

Saja Al Ahmari and Jawaher Al Enzi, two MA students, delivered a presentation titled Translation and Culture at the seminar organized by the Language Research Center of King Khalid University held on November 28, 2018. The seminar was held on the King Abdullah Road campus. In their presentation, they focused on the cultural awareness required for proper translation. They introduced some such specialized terms relevant to the translation theory as ‘dynamic equivalence’, etc. They showed some strategies for the knotty problem of finding equivalence for culture-specific terms. Such strategies included, but were not limited to, naturalization, neutralization, and compensation. Naturalization, they said, is a method of translating target cultural concepts by encoding them in their original target language forms. Compensation, on the other hand, they added, is a standard lexical transfer in which the meaning of the source language text is somehow lost in the process of translation. Compensation often results in ‘over-translation’ as opposed to ‘under translation’. They tried to focus on the close relation between successful translation and understanding the culture of both the source language and the target language. They introduced some interesting examples from different cultures, and how ‘literalism’ does not work out the culture-related problems. One example was taken from German which uses a phrase meaning literally ‘to have tomatoes on one’s eyes’. This is rendered into Arabic as على عينيه غشاوة, obliterating any sense related to literal ‘tomatoes’. More interestingly, they drew the audience’s attention to the fact that some target texts excelled their source counterparts in quality. One example is Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Al Khayyam’s Persian quadruplets into English in 1859. Despite the desperate attempt by other successors like Robert Graves and Omar Ali Shah in 1967, they failed to produce a translation that would replace Fitzgerald’s. The seminar was an overall success. Date: 11-29-18 Source: Mohammad Adil Siddique

Saja Al Ahmari and Jawaher Al Enzi, two MA students, delivered a presentation titled Translation and Culture at the seminar organized by the Language Research Center of King Khalid University held on November 28, 2018. The seminar was held on the King Abdullah Road campus. In their presentation, they focused on the cultural awareness required for proper translation. They introduced some such specialized terms relevant to the translation theory as ‘dynamic equivalence’, etc. They showed some strategies for the knotty problem of finding equivalence for culture-specific terms. Such strategies included, but were not limited to, naturalization, neutralization, and compensation. Naturalization, they said, is a method of translating target cultural concepts by encoding them in their original target language forms. Compensation, on the other hand, they added, is a standard lexical transfer in which the meaning of the source language text is somehow lost in the process of translation. Compensation often results in ‘over-translation’ as opposed to ‘under translation’. They tried to focus on the close relation between successful translation and understanding the culture of both the source language and the target language. They introduced some interesting examples from different cultures, and how ‘literalism’ does not work out the culture-related problems. One example was taken from German which uses a phrase meaning literally ‘to have tomatoes on one’s eyes’. This is rendered into Arabic as على عينيه غشاوة, obliterating any sense related to literal ‘tomatoes’. More interestingly, they drew the audience’s attention to the fact that some target texts excelled their source counterparts in quality. One example is Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Al Khayyam’s Persian quadruplets into English in 1859. Despite the desperate attempt by other successors like Robert Graves and Omar Ali Shah in 1967, they failed to produce a translation that would replace Fitzgerald’s. The seminar was an overall success. Date: 11-29-18 Source: Mohammad Adil Siddique

Prof. Hamad Al Dosari delivered a presentation titled Developing and Assessing the Relationship between Intercultural Communication Competence and Intercultural Sensitivity in the EFL Classroom at a Language Research Center seminar held on October 31, 2018. His presentation is about a paper he is going to present at the 24th Annual International Conference of the Bolivian English Teachers Association. Prof. Dosari first explained Communicative Competence in detail. He emphasized that it involves intercultural competence and intercultural sensitivity. Learning should include verbal communication such as conversational styles in addition to nonverbal communication such as gestures and body language which is behavior that adds to spoken or written language, said Prof. Dosari while quoting Arévalo-Guerrero. Some researchers, he added, suggested that "intercultural competence, intercultural communicative competence, intercultural sensitivity, and cross-culture adaptation" can be used interchangeably. In his study, he used two instruments – the Intercultural Communication Competence Survey by Aldosari & Mekheimer (2018) and the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS) of Chen and Starosta (2000). Prof. Dosari, based on his research findings, concluded that intercultural communication competence and intercultural sensitivity could be achieved when the basic knowledge, skills, motivation, awareness, behaviors, and attitudes towards intercultural competence are focused on in the foreign language curriculum. He emphasized that foreign language curriculum should be integrated into cultural education that would show differences and similarities between the native cultures of the FL learners and the target cultures of the foreign language. The seminar was an overall success. Date: 11/1/2018 Source: Mohammad Adil Siddique Multimedia Source: Mohammed Jabir

Prof. Hamad Al Dosari delivered a presentation titled Developing and Assessing the Relationship between Intercultural Communication Competence and Intercultural Sensitivity in the EFL Classroom at a Language Research Center seminar held on October 31, 2018. His presentation is about a paper he is going to present at the 24th Annual International Conference of the Bolivian English Teachers Association. Prof. Dosari first explained Communicative Competence in detail. He emphasized that it involves intercultural competence and intercultural sensitivity. Learning should include verbal communication such as conversational styles in addition to nonverbal communication such as gestures and body language which is behavior that adds to spoken or written language, said Prof. Dosari while quoting Arévalo-Guerrero. Some researchers, he added, suggested that "intercultural competence, intercultural communicative competence, intercultural sensitivity, and cross-culture adaptation" can be used interchangeably. In his study, he used two instruments – the Intercultural Communication Competence Survey by Aldosari & Mekheimer (2018) and the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (ISS) of Chen and Starosta (2000). Prof. Dosari, based on his research findings, concluded that intercultural communication competence and intercultural sensitivity could be achieved when the basic knowledge, skills, motivation, awareness, behaviors, and attitudes towards intercultural competence are focused on in the foreign language curriculum. He emphasized that foreign language curriculum should be integrated into cultural education that would show differences and similarities between the native cultures of the FL learners and the target cultures of the foreign language. The seminar was an overall success. Date: 11/1/2018 Source: Mohammad Adil Siddique Multimedia Source: Mohammed Jabir

Dr. Mohammad Shuaib Asiri delivered a presentation titled Comparing Multiple Choice, Verb Conjugation, and Error Correction in Grammar ‎‎Assessment at a Language Research Center seminar held on October 24, 2018. His presentation was about his research in grammar assessment. Dr. Asiri first compared selected-response tasks with constructed task formats. He identified the negative outcomes of the former. In his research, he said, he had chosen three types of tasks used in grammar assessment: Multiple choice, verb conjugation, and error correction. His research questions were about task formats’ correlation with the measurement of grammatical ability, performance on task formats relationship with strategy use and their correlation with the elicitation of answer explanation. Dr. Asiri conducted his research on 106 intermediate-level students. He explained in detail the findings of his research questions. Dr. Asiri concluded that multiple choice tasks differ significantly from verb conjugation and error correction tasks in measuring grammatical ability in terms of whether they reflect learners’ ability to recognize a rule or produce something on their own. The use of strategies, he added, varies across three tasks mentioned above in terms of test management and test-wiseness. There is a positive correlation, he said, between the difficulty involved in tasks and answer explanation. He recommended there be more constructed tasks than selected-response ones so that proper learning takes place, and task formats, he emphasized, must be incorporated with language skills. The seminar was very interactive and an overall success. Date: 10/24/2018 Source: Mohammad Adil Siddique

Dr. Mohammad Shuaib Asiri delivered a presentation titled Comparing Multiple Choice, Verb Conjugation, and Error Correction in Grammar ‎‎Assessment at a Language Research Center seminar held on October 24, 2018. His presentation was about his research in grammar assessment. Dr. Asiri first compared selected-response tasks with constructed task formats. He identified the negative outcomes of the former. In his research, he said, he had chosen three types of tasks used in grammar assessment: Multiple choice, verb conjugation, and error correction. His research questions were about task formats’ correlation with the measurement of grammatical ability, performance on task formats relationship with strategy use and their correlation with the elicitation of answer explanation. Dr. Asiri conducted his research on 106 intermediate-level students. He explained in detail the findings of his research questions. Dr. Asiri concluded that multiple choice tasks differ significantly from verb conjugation and error correction tasks in measuring grammatical ability in terms of whether they reflect learners’ ability to recognize a rule or produce something on their own. The use of strategies, he added, varies across three tasks mentioned above in terms of test management and test-wiseness. There is a positive correlation, he said, between the difficulty involved in tasks and answer explanation. He recommended there be more constructed tasks than selected-response ones so that proper learning takes place, and task formats, he emphasized, must be incorporated with language skills. The seminar was very interactive and an overall success. Date: 10/24/2018 Source: Mohammad Adil Siddique

Dr. Eyhab Bader Eddin delivered a presentation titled 'Multiplicity of Different English Functional Semantic Realizations of the Translation of the Arabic Preposition ب' at a seminar organized by the Language Research Center of King Khalid University held on October 10, 2018. His presentation was about his research on a particular Arabic preposition, namely ب and its diversity of meaning when translated into English. The seminar, originally a published paper in a refereed specialized journal, throws a spotlight at an uncharted territory in the field of translation and grammatical analysis, taking the fact that the semantic functions of the preposition ب in Arabic have been the cynosure of all linguists’ and translators’ eyes for decades as the point of departure. The different realizations in English of the same preposition in Arabic are meant to enrich translators’ and linguists’ appreciation and critical understanding of the different semantic functions of the preposition ب. Failure to correctly understand the semantic functions inherent in the preposition ب in different contexts definitely washes away meaning, and causes translators to bog down in unanswered questions pertaining to the exact meaning intended. Dr. Bader Eddin first compared Arabic parts of speech with English ones. The English word class of ‘nouns’ covers in Arabic the word classes of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and adverbs, he exemplified. Particles in Arabic, referred to as حروف, can be further divided into two types of particles, namely حروف مبنى (alphabetical letters) and حروف معنى (prepositions), he added. He went further to say that the tri-classification of Arabic parts of speech does not mean that English has more parts of speech than Arabic does. It is noticed that the semantic behavior, expressed by بـ in Arabic is richer than that in English, and thus cannot always be transferred through a one-to-one correspondence into English. The seemingly same ب in Arabic can be said to be an overloaded preposition in Arabic that no one particular preposition can be predicted in English. This linguistic phenomenon is context-bound in that the same preposition ب behaves semantically different, and thus cannot be dealt with according to watertight criteria predictably. In Arabic, particles are divided into ‘effective or operative’ and ‘passive’ عامل وعاطل. By the former, we mean that their occurrence before the noun it accompanies brings about what is grammatically known as ‘declension’ الإعراب. This means the last morpheme or inflection of the word carries a marker (diacritic mark) showing its grammatical case and category. Such particles, depending on what particles are used, may make the word they precede in the nominative, accusative, dative or apocope case, that is حالة الرفع أو النصب أو الجر أو الجزم respectively. Prepositions are considered one type of ‘effective or operative particles’ as they transform the noun following them into the dative case. Dr. Bader Eddin also explained in detail the various types of Arabic preposition ب their semantic functions and possible English realization. He particularly adduced evidence from the Holy Qur'an for this research out of the firm belief that the Holy Qur'an is the model of linguistic excellence whose style is described as ‘sui generis’. He highlighted the fact that one preposition in Arabic can be realized differently in English. His research, he believed, would enrich translators’ and linguists’ critical understanding of different semantic functions of the preposition. Some of the semantic functions carried by the preposition ب are ‘physical contact, instrument, transitivity, causal, substitution, oath administering, etc. A volley of questions were posed at the end, and answers were provided. You may have a look at the PowerPoint presentation by clicking here. It is worth mentioning that the King Abdullah Road campus attended the seminar online. The seminar was very informative and overall successful. Date: 10/10/2018 Source: Mohammad Adil Siddique Multimedia Source: Mohammed Jabir

Dr. Eyhab Bader Eddin delivered a presentation titled 'Multiplicity of Different English Functional Semantic Realizations of the Translation of the Arabic Preposition ب' at a seminar organized by the Language Research Center of King Khalid University held on October 10, 2018. His presentation was about his research on a particular Arabic preposition, namely ب and its diversity of meaning when translated into English. The seminar, originally a published paper in a refereed specialized journal, throws a spotlight at an uncharted territory in the field of translation and grammatical analysis, taking the fact that the semantic functions of the preposition ب in Arabic have been the cynosure of all linguists’ and translators’ eyes for decades as the point of departure. The different realizations in English of the same preposition in Arabic are meant to enrich translators’ and linguists’ appreciation and critical understanding of the different semantic functions of the preposition ب. Failure to correctly understand the semantic functions inherent in the preposition ب in different contexts definitely washes away meaning, and causes translators to bog down in unanswered questions pertaining to the exact meaning intended. Dr. Bader Eddin first compared Arabic parts of speech with English ones. The English word class of ‘nouns’ covers in Arabic the word classes of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and adverbs, he exemplified. Particles in Arabic, referred to as حروف, can be further divided into two types of particles, namely حروف مبنى (alphabetical letters) and حروف معنى (prepositions), he added. He went further to say that the tri-classification of Arabic parts of speech does not mean that English has more parts of speech than Arabic does. It is noticed that the semantic behavior, expressed by بـ in Arabic is richer than that in English, and thus cannot always be transferred through a one-to-one correspondence into English. The seemingly same ب in Arabic can be said to be an overloaded preposition in Arabic that no one particular preposition can be predicted in English. This linguistic phenomenon is context-bound in that the same preposition ب behaves semantically different, and thus cannot be dealt with according to watertight criteria predictably. In Arabic, particles are divided into ‘effective or operative’ and ‘passive’ عامل وعاطل. By the former, we mean that their occurrence before the noun it accompanies brings about what is grammatically known as ‘declension’ الإعراب. This means the last morpheme or inflection of the word carries a marker (diacritic mark) showing its grammatical case and category. Such particles, depending on what particles are used, may make the word they precede in the nominative, accusative, dative or apocope case, that is حالة الرفع أو النصب أو الجر أو الجزم respectively. Prepositions are considered one type of ‘effective or operative particles’ as they transform the noun following them into the dative case. Dr. Bader Eddin also explained in detail the various types of Arabic preposition ب their semantic functions and possible English realization. He particularly adduced evidence from the Holy Qur'an for this research out of the firm belief that the Holy Qur'an is the model of linguistic excellence whose style is described as ‘sui generis’. He highlighted the fact that one preposition in Arabic can be realized differently in English. His research, he believed, would enrich translators’ and linguists’ critical understanding of different semantic functions of the preposition. Some of the semantic functions carried by the preposition ب are ‘physical contact, instrument, transitivity, causal, substitution, oath administering, etc. A volley of questions were posed at the end, and answers were provided. You may have a look at the PowerPoint presentation by clicking here. It is worth mentioning that the King Abdullah Road campus attended the seminar online. The seminar was very informative and overall successful. Date: 10/10/2018 Source: Mohammad Adil Siddique Multimedia Source: Mohammed Jabir