Conference Presentations by Abdulfattah Omar
This study addresses the issue of integrating mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) systems in... more This study addresses the issue of integrating mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) systems into L2 reading instruction in the Saudi secondary schools in order to improve the reading comprehension skills of struggling EFL students. The focus is to find out whether students' language performance is accelerated by using MALL together with teacher instruction versus conventional instruction alone. In order to assess the effectiveness of MALL systems and activities in improving reading comprehension skills in EFL contexts, an experimental study was carried out where 120 participants of grade ten students in four public secondary school of Riyadh District in Saudi Arabia were randomly divided into two groups: experiment and control. Reading skills of the participants' were measured by pre-test and post-test by a panel of three national experts. The comparison between the experimental group and the control group pinpoint that MALL materials and systems improve reading comprehension skill among EFL students. The findings indicate clearly that there was a significant difference between MALL users and nonusers in favour of the experimental group (p < .05). It can be then generalized that MALL systems and applications in general provide a motivating learning environment for teaching reading which has its positive implications on improving the reading skills of students.
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A fundamental challenge in sociolinguistics is modeling individual variation in spoken language. ... more A fundamental challenge in sociolinguistics is modeling individual variation in spoken language. Individuals have their own speaking styles, depending on many factors, such as their dialect, accent, age, occupation, locality, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background. Conventional sociolinguistic methods have provided good results on linguistic changes pointing to correlations of linguistic change and social variation of education, gender, and age. This paper however examines the feasibility of an empirical approach to modeling individual linguistic variation in Saudi spoken Arabic using hierarchical cluster analysis methods. One advantage with computational methods is that they are objective since they are replicable. The study is based on a corpus of recorded speech for 500 Saudi speakers who were selected from the 13 provinces in Saudi Arabia. Speakers represent different social groups and the recordings or data samples are authentic in the sense that they were taken from real-life situations. Discriminative phonetic and lexical features are analyzed using hierarchical methods in conjunction with one or more fundamentally different types of clustering method, and then to select the analysis on which the hierarchical and the other method(s) agree most closely. Results indicate that exploratory multivariate analysis methods can be usefully used for modeling individual linguistic variation. Given the increasing availability of large electronic corpora
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Numerous analyses have been proposed in the critical study of the prose fiction of Wilkie Collins... more Numerous analyses have been proposed in the critical study of the prose fiction of Wilkie Collins based partly on textual content and partly on biographical considerations. These analyses and criticisms have been generated by what will henceforth be referred to as 'philological method', that is, by individual researcher's reading of printed materials and the intuitive abstraction of generalisations from that reading. With the advent of electronic text, however, a large number of literary works, including the works of Collins, have become available, and this electronic format now permits computational data analysis concepts and procedures to be applied to them. The aim of this study is to see if such concepts and procedures, and more specifically those which constitute the class of cluster analysis methods, can usefully supplement philological methods in generic classification of the prose fiction writings of Wilkie Collins. In order to do this, cluster analysis methods are used in order to find the similarities and/or dissimilarities within the texts with the purpose of generating hypotheses about the domain of interest. To support reliable generalizations about the thematic content of the prose fiction of Collins, the study includes nearly all the novels, collection of short novels and short stories, and individual short stories of Collins. Prior to data processing, texts underwent four main processes respectively, cleaning up, removing function words, executing stop word lists, and stemming. A data matrix M ij is then abstracted from the corpus in which the rows i represent texts, the columns j represent the lexical types that occur across all the texts, and the value at Mij is the frequency of occurrence of lexical type j in text i. Using Clustan Graphics software, the Mij is hierarchically analysed. Squared Euclidean Distance method is used to measure the proximity among the entries. Increase in Sum of Squares method is then used for clustering M. Results indicate that the texts fall into two distinct groups, labelled G1 and G2. Centroid vectors for each group are constructed to identify the distinctive properties of each group. It is finally suggested that an objective, replicable, and this reliable generic classification of Collins' novels and short stories is possible.
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Papers by Abdulfattah Omar
2020 Sixth International Conference on e-Learning (econf), 2020
Despite the impact of online social media language and applications on translation theory and pra... more Despite the impact of online social media language and applications on translation theory and practice, Arabic translation studies are so far largely based on what is referred to as Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) with little regard to colloquial and spoken forms of Arabic which represent the main bulk of online social media. As thus, this study argues for the importance of incorporating social media language and colloquial forms of Arabic into translation studies and addressing the sociocultural aspects (including, in particular, the dialectical and linguistic changes) that impact the translation accuracy and reliability. This study explores the role of linguistic variation as reflected on the use of intensifiers in Egyptian and Libyan Arabic Dialects on the translation accuracy and reliability. For the purposes of the study, a corpus is designed of 12, 723 Twitter Posts on the Egyptian and Turkish intervention in the Libyan Conflict. Four intensifiers were identified. Two of these colloquial intensifiers are from the Libyan Arabic dialect: halba and (uram) and two from Cairene Egyptian Arabic Dialect: awui and (gddan). Analysis shows that intensifiers are rendered differently among Libyan and Egyptian Arabic dialects. It can be quite a challenge to recognize the intended degree of the intensifier at hand: a case that requires translators to render it correctly and convey the intended message to the best. Results also indicate that the language of social media in Arabic exhibits unique linguistic features that have their implications to the accuracy and reliability of translation performance and thus need to be considered in translation education and training. Translation students and trainees thus should be equipped with the online social media competencies to cope up with the increasingly rapid changes of the digital age.
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2019 International Conference on Innovation and Intelligence for Informatics, Computing, and Technologies (3ICT), 2019
This study addresses the increasing demands for reliable translation services due to the advent o... more This study addresses the increasing demands for reliable translation services due to the advent of the electronic text, the prolific production of texts in different disciplines, the increasing communication among individuals from different languages and cultures, and the unprecedented development of new technologies, software and applications (referred to as CAT tools). Human translation cannot address these increasing demands of customers and businesses. Hence, this study assumes that translation technologies and machine translation systems can be usefully integrated into translation classrooms for improving learners' performance and translation quality. An experimental study was carried out where 20 Level-6 students, who are attending one translation course in Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, volunteered to participate in an optional legal translation course. Participants were divided into 2 groups: an experimental group whose instruction was supported by CAT tools, and a control group who were taught using only conventional teaching methods. Results showed that there was a statistically significant difference among CAT users and nonusers in favor of the experimental group (p < .05). It can be concluded then that translation systems and software can be usefully used for improving EFL students' translation skills. The integration of CAT tools into the learning environment not only support the practical and professional skills that well-qualify graduates for the translation industry, but it also creates an environment that enables them to acquire different skills in some related disciplines such as assessment of translation techniques, interaction between humans and the machine, and text analysis. The study suggested that translation instructors should adopt blended learning models where they integrate translation technology with conventional teaching methods. Educational institutions are also recommended to provide professional training for instructors on the use of language software and translation systems.
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International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 2021
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Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 2021
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Texto Livre: Linguagem e Tecnologia, 2020
Classifying literary genres has always been methodologically confined to philological methods and... more Classifying literary genres has always been methodologically confined to philological methods and what is commonly known as Vector Space Clustering (VSC). The problem has been exasperated with the widening gap between computational theory and traditional analysis of literary texts. Towards finding a solution to this problem, the current study utilizes a synergetic approach that brings together two established methods. First, a computational model of genre classification is drawn upon for identifying concept-based, rather than word-bound, topics, where the representation of texts is secured via the ‘bag of concepts’ (BOC) model as well as the sense-restricted knowledge and meaningful links holding between and among concepts; relatedly, the two model strands of explicit semantic analysis (ESA) and ConceptNet have enacted text classification. Second, a contextual lexical semantic approach (CRUSE, 1986, 2000) is employed so that the contextual variability of word meanings and concepts c...
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Register Journal, 2021
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has witnessed unprecedented reforms within the framework of the Saudi... more The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has witnessed unprecedented reforms within the framework of the Saudi Vision 2030. However, despite prolific news reports related to economic, social, and political reforms associated with the Saudi Vision 2030, there is a general lack of studies on the ideological constructions of these reforms in the Saudi press. As thus, this study seeks to explore the news representation and ideological construction of the vision 2030 reforms in the Saudi press. It focuses on the reproduction of women’s empowerment in the Saudi press. For this purpose, a corpus of 1578 newspaper articles, reports, stories, and editorials published in Arab News and Saudi Gazette is designed. Analysis of the data is carried out through corpus-based critical discourse analysis (CDA) quantitatively and qualitatively through a concordance, frequency, collocates, and dispersion. Results indicated that the Saudi press, under its ideological orientation, reproduced the vision 2030 as a matter...
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Journal of Social Studies Education Research, 2018
This study addressed the issue of linguistic politeness and media education in its socio-cultural... more This study addressed the issue of linguistic politeness and media education in its socio-cultural perspectives through the adoption of a lingua pragmatic approach of the Egyptian media, particularly their talk shows which are recognized education platforms in pragmatics. The selected talk shows from the Egyptian TV channels aired during the period 2011 to 2013 were used to investigate the changes that were felt in linguistic politeness, particularly in ‘forms of addresses used by presenter(s) of these shows. The study premised that these changes could contribute to media education in the form of enhancing media literacy about lingua-pragmatic aspects of ‘forms of address’ used on various media platforms. The study also followed the proposition that there existed a close relationship between linguistic politeness and pragmatics that often makes media as a means of social education. Secondly, a ‘form of address’ constitutes a well-defined media-educational pragmatic subject as reveale...
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Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 2021
In recent years, numerous computational methods have been developed that have been widely used in... more In recent years, numerous computational methods have been developed that have been widely used in humanities and literary studies. In spite of the potential of such methods in providing workable solutions to various inherent problems in research within these domains, including selectivity, objectivity, and replicability, very little empirical work has been done on thematic studies in literature. Such studies are almost entirely undertaken through traditional methods based on individual researchers’ reading of texts and intuitive abstraction of generalizations from their reading. This has negative implications in terms of issues of objectivity and replicability. Furthermore, there are challenges in dealing effectively with the hundreds of thousands of new novels that are published every year using traditional methods. In the face of these problems, this study proposes an integrated computational model for the thematic classification of literary texts based on lexical clustering metho...
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International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 2021
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International Journal of English Linguistics, 2018
Code-switching between Arabic and English marks a significant linguistic change in the history an... more Code-switching between Arabic and English marks a significant linguistic change in the history and use of Arabic in Saudi Arabia. Any kind of language change, which is an inevitable process in almost every world language, has always been resisted in Saudi Arabia mostly due to a national identity and religious factors. The current study investigated the attitude of the Saudi academia comprising English language instructors and English major students towards code-switching between Arabic and English. The study examined the perceptions of the academia towards the use of varying languages and the attitude that resulted from a perception. A sample size of 10 instructors and 40 students from four universities in the Riyadh region of Saudi Arabia was taken for the purpose of carrying out this qualitative study. Focus Group and interview methods were used to collect data and a content analysis technique was adopted to analyze their transcripts. Findings and Results indicated that there was ...
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International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 2021
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International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 2021
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International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 2020
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International Journal of English Linguistics, 2020
This study is concerned with investigating the treatment of women and gender roles in Glasworthy’... more This study is concerned with investigating the treatment of women and gender roles in Glasworthy’s Forsyte Saga and Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy from a sociopragmatic perspective. The texts studied for this paper have not been evaluated to socio-pragmatic analysis that reflects the little application of this approach to literary works. As thus, the goal of this paper is to advance sociopragmatic analysis to these novels—there is salience from the style, narrative techniques, and language utilized by both writers in their books, which indeed points to pragmatic undercurrents that must be explored. The results indicate that social and political aspects are key elements for understanding women and gender issues in the selected texts. The integration of these contextual elements revealed how the two authors manipulated literary discourse to reflect on the power relations and struggles between men and women of their age. It can be claimed that sociopragmatic approaches provide opportun...
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International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), 2020
The recent years have witnessed an increasing importance of machine translation systems due to th... more The recent years have witnessed an increasing importance of machine translation systems due to the prolific production on online texts in different disciplines and furthermore, the inability of traditional translation methods in addressing translation needs all over the world. It is even argued that training on translation tools should be integrated into translation pedagogies and ultimately, courses should be provided for students and professionals. In spite of the effectiveness of translation tools and systems in providing solutions in relation to different disciplines and text genres, the usability and reliability of such systems in terms of literary texts, however, is still highly controversial. Many critics and educators still underestimate the usefulness of the machine translation systems in literature, which could be partially attributed to the unique nature of the language of the literary texts. The issue has its pedagogical implications to translation instruction due to the...
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International Journal of English Linguistics, May 23, 2018
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International Journal of English Linguistics, 2020
In recent years, both research and industry have shown an increasing interest in developing relia... more In recent years, both research and industry have shown an increasing interest in developing reliable information retrieval (IR) systems that can effectively address the growing demands of users worldwide. In spite of the relative success of IR systems in addressing the needs of users and even adapting to their environments, many problems remain unresolved. One main problem is lexical ambiguity which has negative impacts on the performance and reliability of IR systems. To date, lexical ambiguity has been one of the most frequently reported problems in the Arabic IR systems despite the development of different word sense disambiguation (WSD) techniques. This is largely attributed to the limitations of such techniques in addressing the issue of linguistic peculiarities. Hence, this study addresses these limitations by exploring the reasons for lexical ambiguity in IR applications in Arabic as one step towards reliable and practical solutions. For this purpose, the performances of six ...
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Conference Presentations by Abdulfattah Omar
Papers by Abdulfattah Omar