This study sought to investigate students’ attitudes towards listening and speaking in the English classroom at Al Istiqlal University. The researchers noticed that freshmen students at Al Istiqlal University were de-motivated and reluctant to get involved in listening and speaking activities in the English classroom. One root cause may be students’ prior experience of learning English in Palestinian state schools where Arabic is the dominant language (Hamdallah, 1999) and where there may be little provision of speaking and listening to English. The researchers sought to experiment with innovative teaching methods to address these problems. These included using group work, giving students clearly defined roles, using technological applications and drawing on students’ personal lives as strategies to motivate students and change their attitudes towards listening and speaking activities. A stratified–purposeful sample consisting of 18 freshman students was selected. The researchers used a quantitative approach to measure changes. The researchers also used qualitative instrument for the purpose of the study. A questionnaire was administered at the beginning and end of the study to determine changes in students’ attitudes. Also, interviews were organized to decide and get comments on the influence of the strategies which were used. Results indicated that there was a significant difference in students’ attitudes towards listening and speaking activities in English class. When the researchers used different strategies such as: role plays cards, group activities, technology and different assessment forms, students expressed positive feelings, enjoyment and fun. The researchers recommend that teachers in similar university-level context should implement different strategies such as: group wok, role plays, cards, videos and some applications i.e. Padlet to motivate students bridge the gap between school life and university life. It was also found that such strategies help to change students’ attitudes to listening and speaking.
This paper is an analytical study investigating metaphors, the most aesthetic device, in the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish. In this study, the researcher categorized metaphors into three main groups: metaphors of plants and trees like wheat, metaphors of birds and animals as the hoopoe, butterfly, and dove, and metaphors of abstract and concrete elements of nature. The researcher concluded that metaphors employed in the Darwishian poetry are linguistic and cultural phenomena. Darwish focuses on the use of metaphors connected with nature with the help of which he turns the sign into the signified, the subject into the object, and nothingness into something, thus transferring the land of Palestine into a poem and making this poem one with Palestine. More importantly, metaphor is a sort of manifestation of identity, a paradoxical and illogical one since it is 'this' and 'that' at the same time. It combines two entities together that are similar and dissimilar. The poet resorts to metaphor as to the most unrestrained method of thinking in order not to prove anything through reasoning, but rather to reveal a concealed and subtle truth which paradoxically affirms that "poem and land are one." Keywords: metaphor, aesthetic device, metaphors of plants, metaphors of animals, metaphors of nature. Significance of the StudyThe present study seeks to look at the use of metaphors to illustrate recurrent topics such as death, freedom, nature and love in several poems written by the Arab modern poet Mahmoud The poems of Darwish are full of images, imbedded meanings and metaphors that play a major role in building up their artistic flavor. Darwish is a poet of global significance whose message transcends the personal to the public, and he is well-known for using many types of metaphors in his poems to count on certain messages and images to express his themes in an indirect way. The researcher will analyze each metaphor in the source text (ST) and its translation(s) to investigate the themes that the poet highlights in his poems.The current study sheds light on the poetry written by an Arab poet from Palestine whose main target is to depict the life and experience of his nation under occupation. Darwish has contributed considerably to Arab and English culture and literature respectively. The researcher attempts to highlight the metaphors used by the poet which are connected to nature to express political views in connection with the poet`s homeland. Moreover, the researcher explores the technique as represented in Darwish's works. In other words, the study presents Darwish as a man who is deeply rooted in his homeland with a special focus on his idiosyncratic and subjective interests.
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