SACM - United Kingdom
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://drepo.sdl.edu.sa/handle/20.500.14154/9667
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Item Restricted Expanding our understanding of the uses of Modern Standard and Hijazi Colloquial Arabic in Education: A Study Exploring Learners’ Attention, Academic Performance, and Language Attitudes in Saudi Arabia(University of Sussex, 2024-07) Alamir, Sarah; Blair, Andrew; Alkabani, FerasThis study investigates how the use of Hijazi Colloquial Arabic (HCA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) in oral instruction affects students' sustained auditory attention and academic performance and their attitudes towards both varieties in education. To form a clear picture of how effective both varieties are, the results of a nine-week pre-post-test classroom experiment, a follow-up questionnaire, and interviews were used for analysis. First, two groups of undergraduate female students (aged between 20 and 27) assigned to the 'History of the Americas' module at Umm Al-Qura University and a professor were selected for the experiment. One group had 29 students, whereas the other had 25. One group was instructed in MSA, and the other in HCA. The study findings showed that both HCA and MSA oral instruction improved the students' ability to sustain auditory attention, leading to better academic performance, with HCA instruction being slightly more effective. In addition, the disparities in automaticity and language execution between HCA and MSA were negligible. When it comes to attitudes, both HCA and MSA groups had more positive perceptions of MSA. Their actions, however, did not reflect their beliefs and feelings. Their attitudes and the underlying reasons could be grouped into six and five categories. Globally speaking, standard codes in diglossic contexts receive positive attitudes despite the changing social circumstances, while societal changes impact colloquial codes’ perceptions. These results implicate the field of higher education in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries when considering using Colloquial Arabic codes (CAs) as a medium of instruction, as they should go hand in hand with MSA. This can be done by further research and modifying language policies to promote the coexistence between the two codes, combining them in instruction according to contexts and the psychological aspects instructors want to provoke, and using non-featured CAs, such as the educated HCA or White dialect.50 0Item Restricted Exploring Emoji Sentiment Roles in Arabic Textual Content on Digital Social Networks(Saudi Digital Library, 2024-07-09) Hakami, Shatha Ali A; Hendley, Robert; Smith, PhillipIn today’s digital landscape, emoji have risen as pivotal elements in articulating sentiment, especially within the intricacies of the Arabic language. This thesis examines the various roles that emoji can play in expressing sentiment in Arabic texts, highlighting their relevance both in academic and real-world contexts. Beginning with foundational insights, our investigation retraces the history of emoji as important non-verbal communicative tools in human interaction. Then, we explore the distinct challenges of sentiment analysis in Arabic and refer to a thorough review of previous studies to frame our method, identifying both established techniques and unexplored opportunities. At the heart of our research is the understanding that, depending on the context, an emoji can adopt a wide variety of sentiment roles. These range from acting as an indicator, mitigator, emphasizer, reverser, releaser, or trigger of either negative or positive sentiment. Additionally, there are instances where an emoji simply maintains a neutral effect on the sentiment of the accompanying text. To achieve this, we gathered a large dataset, mainly from Twitter, and developed lexicons of words and emoji tailored for sentiment analysis in Arabic. These lexicons were the basis of our analysis model. By leveraging the insights gained from the emoji-roles sentiment lexicon and combining them with our established knowledge of the sentiment roles associated with specific emoji patterns, we make a significant improvement in the conventional sentiment classifier based on the emoji lexicon. Traditional methods often assign a static sentiment score to an emoji, failing to consider its varying roles in different textual contexts. Our refined approach corrects this oversight. Instead of considering a singular unchanging sentiment score for each emoji, the classifier dynamically retrieves sentiment scores based on the specific role the emoji plays within a given sentence. In conclusion, we compare our method with other Arabic sentiment analysis tools, demonstrating the value of our approach, especially within nuanced linguistic phenomena such as sarcasm and humour. This thesis sets the foundation for future Arabic research in this expanding domain.53 0Item Restricted Long Annotated Translation of the First Chapter of "Unlawful Killings", Life, Love and Murder: Trials at the Old Bailey By Wendy Joseph(Saudi Digital Library, 2023) Alburaidi, Ibrahim Saleh; Mizori, HassanThis project introduces the translation of the first chapter of "Unlawful Killings," a true crime narrative by Her Honour Wendy Joseph QC, offering insights into the UK legal system. The translation aims to fill a gap in Arabic literature, providing Arabic readers access to a best-selling work not previously translated. The rationale is grounded in the book's thematic relevance, the translator's personal connection to the Old Bailey Court, and the absence of an Arabic version. The translation strategy employs direct translation, borrowing, calque, and literal translation, supplemented by oblique translation techniques. The target readership includes Arabic literature enthusiasts, and the potential publisher is "Athra," known for its commitment to quality translation. In addition to the translation, there is an annotation that provides further context, explanations of translation choices, and cultural insights. This comprehensive approach seeks to enrich Arabic literature, presenting a unique perspective on true crime and legal proceedings while maintaining linguistic accuracy and cultural resonance.32 0Item Restricted An Investigation into Matching Learning Material to the Different Needs of Arabic Learners with Dyslexia(Saudi Digital Library, 2023-11-29) Alghabban, Weam Gaoud; Hendley, RobertDyslexia is a common learning disability that affects people’s ability to spell, read words and their fluency in language. Adaptive e-learning is becoming increasingly popular as a tool to help individuals with dyslexia. It provides more-customised learning experiences and interactions based on the learners’ characteristics. Each learner with dyslexia has unique characteristics for which content should ideally be suitably tailored. However, adaptation to satisfy the individual needs and characteristics of learners with dyslexia is limited. In particular, the benefits of adapting e-learning based on dyslexia type or reading skill level have not yet been sufficiently explored, despite the type of dyslexia and the learner’s reading skill level being critical factors. Most previous studies have focused upon the technological aspects and have been marked by inadequately designed and controlled experiments to assess the system’s effectiveness. This limits the ability to understand the effectiveness of adaptation. This thesis aims to increase understanding about the value of adaptation of learning material based on individual dyslexia types and reading skill levels and to understand how this affects the learning experience of learners with dyslexia. To do this, an empirical evaluation through three controlled experiments with a reasonable number of subjects has been undertaken and assessed using the following metrics: learning gain, word understanding, learner satisfaction and perceived level of usability. In all three experiments, careful experimental design and precise reporting of results are all considered. A dynamic, web-based e-learning system that matches learning material based on dyslexia type and/or reading skill level was implemented to support these experiments. Across the three experiments, the findings reveal that matching learning material to dyslexia type, reading skill level and the combination of both, yields significantly better short- and long-term learning gains and improves the learners’ perception of their learning.23 0Item Restricted Hate Speech Detection for the Arabic Language(Saudi Digital Library, 2023-11-03) Alhejaili, Abrar; Moosavi, NafiseAs online social networks grow and communication technologies become more available, people can exercise their freedom of expression more than ever before. Even though the interaction between users on these platforms can be constructive, they are increasingly used for spreading hateful content, mainly due to the anonymity feature of these online platforms. Hate speech can induce cyber conflict, negatively impacting social life at both the individual and national levels. In spite of this, social network providers are unable to monitor all the content posted by their users. As a result, there is a need to detect hate speech automatically. This need increases when the text is written in a language like Arabic. Arabic is known for its challenges, complexities, and resource scarcity. This project uses transfer learning methods to adapt, and evaluate some pretrained models to detect hate speech in Arabic. Many experiments were conducted in this project to assess the transferring of some options from BERT and Sequence-to-Sequence families (e.g., DehateBERT, MARBERT, T5, and Flan-T5), and the transferring of preprocessing functions from a pretrained model (AraBERT). Experiments show that transfer learning by finetuning monolingual models has promising results to a different extent. In addition, the additional preprocessing can affect the performance in a good way. Nevertheless, dealing with low-frequency labels independently, such as our dataset’s hate class, is still challenging. Warning: This paper may include instances of offensive language.25 0Item Restricted Intonational Variation on Saudi Dialects: a cross-dialectal corpus-based approach(Saudi Digital Library, 2023-10-03) Alzamil, Aljawharah Ibrahim; Hellmuth, SamIntonational patterns have been shown to vary across Arabic dialects on a regional level. This thesis presents one of the first investigations of inter-dialectal intonational variation within a single Arabic-speaking country (Saudi Arabia). The aim of the thesis is to describe the prosodic realisation of yes/no questions (ynqs) and focus utterances in three urban Saudi dialects (Najdi, Hijazi, and Jizani) in a speech production corpus stratified by age and gender. Qualitative analysis of prosodic contours in ynqs from two speech styles showed two main findings: a dialectal difference in which ynqs are typically realised with one of two contours: a rise (Hijazi and Najdi) versus a rise-fall (Jizani), and a potential indication of dialectal change in which young Jizani speakers use more rises than older Jizani speakers. Quantitative analysis of the acoustic cues employed in prosodic marking of focus from two elicitation tasks found similar off-focus cues in both pre-focus and post-focus positions across dialects, but small dialectal differences in the type and degree of acoustic cues observed in onfocus positions; the Jizani speakers displayed less focus enhancement in subjects. Finally, qualitative analysis of non-prosodic focus-marking strategies (such as ellipsis) in data excluded from quantitative analysis due to disfluency, with comparison to data from unscripted portions of the speech corpus, revealed dialectal difference in use of syntactic focus marking strategies, which are used more by older Jizani speakers. From this first parallel description of two key features of three urban Saudi dialects, the thesis argues that the three patterns found in the results are not independent of each other, but due to a trade-off in the allocation available of prosodic strategies for marking of ynqs and marking of focus.36 0Item Restricted Assessing and Addressing Metalinguistic Awareness Knowledge Gaps Among Educators in Saudi Arabia(University of Glasgow, 2023-01) Bin Sawad, Nouf; Law, M. JeremyReading comprehension has been widely researched across various alphabetic languages and has been found to be dependent on various metalinguistic skills. As depicted by the Reading Systems Framework, metalinguistic awareness contributes to reading comprehension through three skills: phonological awareness, morphological awareness and orthographic knowledge. Furthermore, past research has shown that metalinguistics teachers' knowledge is significantly related to their students' reading. Despite the growing evidence supporting the relationship between explicit metalinguistic awareness, teacher knowledge, and reading comprehension, few studies have examined these relations in Arabic, a Semitic language with unique orthographical and morphological characteristics. This lack of knowledge and the absence of validated tools to assess metalinguistic knowledge among educators in Saudi Arabia limits our ability to inform teachers' professional training programs and curriculum reforms. Therefore, this study aimed to: 1. Identify existing evidence of metalinguistic skills’ contribution to Arabic reading comprehension and identify any specific gaps in knowledge and their implications for teaching practice. 2. Design and validate a comprehensive questionnaire to assess the current metalinguistic knowledge of Arabic-speaking educators across Saudi Arabia. 3. Determine the effectiveness and feasibility of a designed training program focused on Arabic metalinguistic awareness. This dissertation was undertaken in three phases. The first phase comprised a systematic scoping review which consolidated the current body of knowledge relating to metalinguistic skills and their relation to reading comprehension in Arabic. Sixteen studies were identified, and it was found that morphological awareness was the strongest predictor of reading comprehension. While phonological awareness was found to be associated with reading comprehension in early grades. In the second phase, a novel tool to assess Arabic metalinguistic awareness among Arab educators was developed and validated using Rasch model analyses, and it was found that the assessment task was slightly difficult for the average Saudi Arabian educator. This tool allowed us to assess and identify potential areas of weakness and strength of teachers’ metalinguistic knowledge, permitting the design of better-targeted interventions and professional development offerings. The initial survey was applied to 221 Saudi Arabian educators and then validated using a Rasch model to examine the relative difficulty of the metalinguistic knowledge assessment items. The survey was validated through the analysis of the Wright Map to aid in the reduction of questions to produce a shorter high-quality assessment; accordingly, knowledge questions were downsized from 47 to 28. Findings revealed that the assessment task was slightly difficult for the average Saudi Arabian educator. In the third phase, a professional training program was developed based on the findings from the previous phase, which identified areas of specific weaknesses and strengths among the educators. The training program was piloted by 25 teachers to interpret the program, content, and implementation effectiveness. The resulting online professional training program was found to result in significant increases in teachers' knowledge. A summary of conclusions, findings, and limitations from all previous phases was offered in the concluding chapter. In addition, it deliberated critical discussion with future recommendations made.23 0Item Restricted Arabic Obstruents: Laryngeal Contrast and Representation(Saudi Digital Library, 2023-08) Dallak, Abdulrahman; Khattab, Ghada; Altamimi, JalalThis thesis examines the phonetics and phonology of Arabic obstruents in light of Laryngeal Realism. It focuses on how the voicing contrast is laryngeally modulated across several acoustic metrics. I draw from three acoustic experiments conducted to unpack the phonetic realisation and phonological representation of Arabic obstruents. The larger picture of this thesis is comparative in nature in that it seeks to investigate whether stops and fricatives exhibit similar laryngeal behaviours. The overarching goal involves examining how phonetics may inform formal representation, and how phonological patternings may explain phonetic differences for obstruents in Jazani Arabic. This thesis also disentangles the relative contribution and robustness of each acoustic correlate in predicting the domain of laryngeal contrast. Bayesian and Generalised Additive Mixed Models (GAMMs) were used as statistical approaches to answer the research questions. For visualisation, Bayesian estimation figures and smoothing spline figures were used to visualise the predicted results. Experiment One examines how the voicing contrast is modulated in stops. The results show that 7 out of 16 voicing correlates exhibited a reliable difference between the effect of the voiced vs. voiceless stops on the respective measure with 0% of the 95% HDI of the posterior distribution falling within the ROPE range, indicating that these acoustic measures are robust and reliable for uncovering voicing distinction in the present dialect. In addition, the larger picture of the pattern of VOT and voicing%, inter alia, in all the contexts examined suggests that voiced stops in the Jazani dialect are specified as [voice] whilst the voiceless stops are specified as [tense]. Experiment Two examines how the voicing contrast is modulated in fricatives. The results show that 9 out of 14 voicing correlates exhibit a reliable difference between the effect of the voiced vs. voiceless fricatives on the respective measure with 0% of the 95% HDI of the posterior distribution falling within the ROPE range. In addition, the pattern of fricative duration, voicing%, zero-crossing rate, inter alia, suggests that voiced fricatives are specified as [voice] whilst voiceless fricatives are specified as [tense]. Experiment Three examines the effects of consonant voicing on f0 perturbation dynamically and whether it mirrors the VOT pattern and (dis)confirms the predictions of Laryngeal Realism. Laryngeal Realism predicts that acoustic correlates such as VOT, f0, etc. should exhibit a comparable pattern for either feature. The results show that voiced obstruents exhibit a pronounced lowering effect compared to the nasal baseline, indicating that voiced obstruents are specified as [voice]. In contrast, the results of the voiceless context show that voiceless obstruents exhibited an insignificant raising pattern at vowel onset. The results of f0 perturbation show that f0 perturbation exhibits a similar pattern as VOT. The results, furthermore, provide further evidence demonstrating that the feature driving these patterns in the voiceless obstruents is [tense]. These results are in line with the predictions of Laryngeal Realism. While the combined results of these experiments show that stops and fricatives appear to exhibit relatively similar laryngeal behaviours and each category can be predicted from the other, each category, nonetheless, exhibits its own characteristics at the microscopic level.11 0Item Restricted TEACHERS' AND LEARNERS' ATTITUDES TOWARD L1 USE IN UNIVERSITY EFL CLASSROOMS IN SAUDI ARABIA- A CASE STUDY(2022) Al Jasim, Khalid Mohammed Saleh; Ben-Aaron, DianaThe issue of banishment or utilisation of the first language (L1) in English as a second/foreign language classrooms has been hotly debated in the field of Second Language Teaching. This study aims to investigate teachers’ and pupils’ attitudes towards the use of L1 (Arabic) in the College of Applied Medical Sciences (KSAU), AlAhsa, Saudi Arabia. It also explores situations in which teachers and pupils prefer to use Arabic in the classroom. Two questionnaires (one for teachers and one for students) were distributed to 96 students and nine teachers. Additionally, five teachers were interviewed. The results of the present study indicated that both teachers and pupils share the same overall positive attitude toward the judicious use of Arabic in EFL classrooms. It also highlighted the fact that utilising Arabic could play a role in reducing pupils’ anxiety.15 0