2015
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Item Social class variation in language use(UMT Lahore, 2015) TABASSUM SABAThis study is a sociolinguistic investigation of how social class affects language use and the major differences which occur in language due to difference in social classes. It focuses the lexical and grammatical differences and different patterns of code-switching which are adopted by different social classes. It also aims at the practice of code-switching in formal and informal settings. The data is selected through recordings and a large-scale questionnaire from undergraduate students at a public sector university. The findings revealed variation in language of students coming from middle class and working class in their vocabulary, syntax, lexical items and code-switching. The results are stated after analyzing their recordings and questionnaires.Item Borrowing of verbs and light verbs(UMT Lahore, 2015) AYESHA BATOOLBorrowing is a socio linguistic practice when one language takes a word from another language. Borrowing of verbs is a cross linguistics phenomenon. Different morphological processes involve in the accommodation of a verb from one language to another. Some languages borrow verbal roots from other languages and put in those verbal roots into their own morphology. However, some exceptional case or a light verb as “to do” is required to adjust the borrowed verbal root. Light verbs are a very important syntactic issue in world’s languages. In some languages, light verbs are covert and others have overt light verbs. This study discusses the borrowing pattern of verbs in English and Urdu, and their relationship with covert and overt light verbs. Through content anaylsis this study differentiates the inflectional pattern of native and borrowed verbs in English and Urdu. The findings show that having covert light verbs, English borrowing pattern is different from Urdu which have overt light verbs. English borrows verbal roots from other languages particularly Greek, Latin and French and treat these verbal roots as a native item. Urdu also has borrowed significant number of verbs from Arabic, Persian and Turkish lexicon. But Urdu language has different approach in borrowing because light verbs are overt in it. Light verbs are widely used in Urdu. The borrowed verbs in Urdu do not follow the morphological pattern of Urdu; instead of this these borrowed verbs remain uninflected and take light verbs ker “to do”, de “give” and ly “take” along with them.Item The Pattern of Unidirectional Code Switching among Pakistani Languages(UMT Lahore, 2015) Arshad UllahThe present study deals with the pattern of code switching among the four target languages: English, Urdu, Punjabi and Pashtu, by setting them into four pairs. It attempts to explore the social factors which lead the bilinguals to switch or not within the pair of languages. To unfold these issues, for each pair of language set, six competent bilinguals were selected randomly and engaged in conversation for at least 50 minutes with the help of ‘the friend of a friend’ approach. The bilinguals’ interactions were recorded in their respective pair of languages by ensuring paradox observance as naturally occurring data was required. 50 minutes for each interaction of each pair of language were selected, and then the selected sample was transcribed in complementiser phrases (CPs) by using roman alphabets to analyse the pattern of code switching which existed within the pairs. The analysis of the CPs shows that the socio-cultural factors were the main stimulus which influenced the interlocutors to adopt code switching in each pair. The pattern of code switching suggests that the more prestige a language enjoys, the more it switches into the less or non-prestigious language. English asserted its power and prestige vis-a-vis Urdu and Urdu vis-a-vis Punjabi and Pashtu, but when the bilinguals spoke Pashtu and Punjabi in their interaction, neither unidirectional nor bidirectional code switching was found. Both the languages as the ethnic symbols of the regional groups, are balanced in power in Pakistan. In addition during the conversation the speakers’ behaviour of switching or non-switching reflects their self-identification with a certain language and also reflects marked and unmarked choices as proposed by Myers-Scotton (2006).Item Preventive forensic linguistic analysis of urdu/english suicide notes(UMT Lahore, 2015) Sumera Shan AhmadAim of this study is to suggest some recommendations for suicide prevention with the help of linguistic analysis of suicide notes. As sudden increase in the rates of suicides in just a few decades has made it a global issue. Almost every country of the world including Pakistan has been affected by it. Most of the world’s religions and cultures are against committing suicide. That’s why a number of organizations are working in different countries like Australia, USA, UK etc. for suicide prevention. Laws also have been made against it such as in Pakistan there is punishment with different amounts of fines or prison if someone attempts suicide but if he/she remains successful in doing so, no law can do anything. It is beyond understanding that why people use to commit suicide inspite of strict religious, cultural and legal obstructions? Though these factors influence rate of suicides to a great extent but why still there are suicide cases and why there is increase in them? To answer these questions, 25 suicide notes were collected from some regions of Pakistan like from Nankana Sahib, Lahore, Islamabad, Faisalabad and Mardaan. Those notes were collected from police stations, army officers, psychiatrists, judges, lawyers and affected families. Two research questions have been devised and these notes have been analyzed according to them. Quantitative paradigm was used to support the qualitative one. Extensive reading of notes pointed out emerging patterns in SNs. For example, there was a logical relationship between sentences though a few instances were also traced where it seemed that wrong or ambiguous information is provided in SNs. It shows that SCs wanted to convey something more than what is explicitly stated. Those implicit meanings can be interpreted by the readers which may help in understanding their actual reasons of committing suicides. It showed the trends of suicides in Pakistan that which type of suicide is more common in Pakistan. Based on these above mentioned emerging patterns, relevant theories such as entailment, cooperative principle, relevance theory and Durkheim’s theory of suicide have been applied on SNs. Results of the analysis showed that there are some differences in language usage of males and females in SNs. Mostly there is logical relationship between sentences from both the SNs which creates coherence within texts and also helps in having better understanding of it. There is violation of Grice’s maxims most of the time. Both genders violate maxim of quality and both follow maxim of relevance while maxims of quantity and manner are violated by males only and observed by females. Analysis of implicit information shows that behind intimacy, interpersonal and economical issues actually there is society. It is the negative impact of the society on individuals which forces them to commit suicide. These reasons may not have reached to their extreme and became the causes of their suicides if society didn’t interfere negatively in them. So such preventive measures should be adopted which can change society’s negative influence on individuals to lessen the rate of suicides in Pakistan. It is hoped that the study would contribute to forensic linguistic analysis of suicide notes and to suicide prevention.Item A descriptive study of the Motivation (Instrumental & integrative) as a major drive for the learning of English Language at Graduate and post graduate level in Pakistan(UMT Lahore, 2015) Anila IramThe research project examines the type of motivation (instrumental & integrative) working as a driving force for the learning of English language in Pakistan at graduate and post graduate levels. The emerging trend of English language learning at a high rate calls forth to answer the question such as why learners are so ambitious to learn this language in the presence of a national language. Secondly, if they are learning English language, what is the kind of motivation urging them to learn it. The theoretical framework of the study comprises the literature related to the famous researches of R C Gardener and Wallace Lambert in the field of second language learning motivation conducted in the middle of 19th century. These researchers came up with the view that there are two types of motivation i.e. Instrumental and integrative motivation which work as driving force for the learning of any second language. Following the assumption of Gardner’s theory of L2 learning motivation the present study explored the type of motivation for English language learning (ELL). The research is descriptive in nature and data was collected through survey questionnaire. The questionnaire was adapted from Attitude motivation Test Battery AMTB developed by R. C Gardner (1985). The findings of the study show that English language learners at graduate and post graduate levels are highly instrumentally motivated. That means they learn English language as a means to attaining social, economic and educational success and not as a means in itself. The evidence gathered through statistical analyses also supported the view that English language learners in Pakistan are instrumentally motivated.Item The Frequency of Local and Global Errors in the Writing Skill of Undergraduate ESL Learners of Pakistan(UMT Lahore, 2015) Muhammad RizwanTo investigate the nature of the writing skill problems of undergraduate learners at local and global levels, one hundred and twenty ESL male learners randomly selected from Government Postgraduate College Samna Abad, Faisalabad were asked to complete three writing skill tasks. In the first task, based on fifth word deletion test in expository and narrative writing, the learners were required to provide the missing cohesive ties and grammatical items. In the second task, the learners’ topic-based discussion was rated by the language experts by focusing on four analytic scoring rubrics such as cohesion, coherence, lexical range and grammatical accuracy. The third task was related to intra-sentential coherence assessment through a paragraph of jumbled sentences and the learners were asked to form it as a unified piece of discourse. The statistical outcomes of the repeated measures regarding local and global errors indicated that the learners’ rate of error frequency in cohesion was (N= 648), in coherence it was (N= 816), in lexical range it was (N= 730) and in grammatical accuracy it was (N=784). The learners made 54% errors in cohesion, 68% errors in coherence, 61% errors in lexical range and 65% errors in grammatical accuracy. Thus Coherence and grammatical accuracy were found most problematic areas in the writing skill of ESL learners. The study suggests changes in the current pedagogical methods, curriculum and syllabus designing.Item The role of self-efficacy in low level learners to improve English language(UMT Lahore, 2015) ZAHEER HUSSAINLanguage acquisition process is generally associated with cognitive or psychological perspectives, which promotes language learning as a mental or emotional process or from sociocultural or critical perspectives. This study adopted a social-psychological perspective on language acquisition that focused on the role of self-efficacy in learning. The study investigated the self-efficacy beliefs of low level learners, the factors affecting self-efficacy beliefs and the role of self-efficacy beliefs in interaction with others in target language. The study interviewed five low-level English language learners (ELLs) from English speaking class regarding their experiences and their self-efficacy beliefs about their ability to use their English. Their views were analyzed qualitatively and five major themes were found: the expectations of English language learners, learning challenges, the participants’ self-assessment of their abilities, interaction with others in target language, and the participants’ learning environment. The results also explored students’ expressions of self-efficacy, and the ways in which their levels of self-efficacy helped or hindered their ability to become successful speakers of English language.Item Lexical inclusion of Urdu items into Pakistani journalistic English(UMT Lahore, 2015) Fraaz MahmudPresent day media has changed considerably due to the speedy progress in the communication resources. In the similar way, the language of media has become global and many languages are being intermingled in order to create more understanding and cover higher number of people. In this project, the main aim of the writer is to explore the phenomenon of lexical inclusion in the general English and then turn it to the journalistic camp of communication. As the research is going to be done to get the knowledge of lexical inclusion, so the main concern of this research is to get knowledge about how and when the words from other languages enter into English. The case here is for the Pakistani Journalistic English (PJE) which is experiencing many words from the native language – Urdu. The overall intention of the writer is to see the behavioral aspects associated with this lexical inclusion. For this purpose, the researcher explored the existing literature on the topic of borrowings and lexical inclusion with a focus to explore the category of Journalism. After a deep overview of the literature, the researcher adopted the primary research option to cover the gaps in the literature. For this purpose, the researcher created a structured questionnaire and circulated it among the respondents. The main characteristic of this research is that it has dealt with the readers and writers separately by allowing them to give their opinion correspondingly in the separate sections in the questionnaire. This is the chief quality of this research that it can be regarded as the pioneer in the journalistic researches of Pakistan as there is hardly any research on the topic of lexical inclusion of the Urdu words in PJE. It is concluded in the research that the writers use such lexical inclusion in order to get more customers as majority of the Pakistani public is not highly educated to read the Oxfordian English and get its meanings fully. On the other hand, the readers also want to get high levels of understanding from the writings in the English. This can be a potential source to get higher number of customers for the English newspapers and viewers for the TV. Moreover, the main reason of this lexical inclusion is purpose based and it is the need of the hour as well, because Pakistan is one of the developing nations and there is a need to get advanced knowledge and research which is being done and published in English language mainly.Item A study of collocation errors found in the writing of learners of English as second language(UMT Lahore, 2015) Ghulam ShabirThis research discovers, classifies and analyzes collocation errors made by second language learners in English composition. The participants’ knowledge of collocation vocabulary in three major fields i.e. education, politics and daily life was checked. The data was collected by using a questionnaire for teachers and by checking the written essays of the students. There were total 195 studentswhile100 teachers of English were consulted in order to seek their professional opinion on the research topic. The compiled data was analyzed in the light of qualitative and quantitative approaches also by utilizing the latest version of SPSS. Results of the study confirm that there are significant collocation errors in the composition of Pakistani learners of English particularly certain gender differences in demonstrating these vocabulary skills are noticeable.Item Developing critical thinking skills in young English language learners(UMT Lahore, 2015) Qurat-ul-ain YousafThe study examines the extent to which critical thinking is promoted in English language teaching in Pakistan. The challenge to develop critical thinking skills in students is of dual nature, as at primary level learners are supposed to do higher order thinking in a foreign language. This though seems difficult, but this is the right time to develop critical thinking skills among the learners. For getting teachers’ responses survey method was employed using a questionnaire on likert scale. Gap analysis between traditional modes of teaching and learning and new interactive modes of teaching and learning was done through pre- activity and post activity by using convenient sampling. The activity of role play was used to teach the lesson. The results from the data gathered from the teachers showed mixed responses. The teachers were divided in opinion regarding critical thinking skills. The data gathered from the students showed that the learners were able to produce more new words in the post -activity as compared to the pre- activity in which some learners were not able to produce a single new word. However the unexpected result in the survey conducted to collect data from teachers is an eye opener. The attitude of teachers should be positive towards the extent to teach English in order to enable the learners to think critically in that language.Item Description and Categorization of Balti Inflectional and Derivational Morphemes(UMT Lahore, 2015) Iftikhar HussainThe current study aims to describe and categorize inflectional and derivational morphemes of Balti Language which is spoken by the people of Baltistan region of Gilgit Baltistan. Balti is one of the less documented languages in Pakistan and no remarkable documentation has been done on Balti morphology particularly on word formations/ morphemes. For this purpose the researcher selected 200 Balti root words (nouns, pronouns and verbs) from the corpus data using both the naturalistic and documented sources. The selected 200 words were analyzed within the paradigm of both inflectional and derivational morphemes descriptively using the qualitative research design. All the possible inflectional and derivational markers were analyzed through different tables and their morph syntactic and phonological constrains were also explained. Moreover, the collected data were analyzed and described in two phases. In the first phase all the inflectional features, e.g. tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender and mood have been analyzed in order to find out total Balti inflectional morphemes. In the second phase word category and amendment of meaning of selected root words have been analyzed with the aim of finding out total Balti derivational morphemes. The study found 24 inflectional morphemes including 3 plural markers, 6 case markers, 1 gender marker, 11 tense markers, 3 mood markers and 6 derivational morphemes including 3 deverbal markers (derivation of nouns from verbs), and 3 denominal markers (derivation of adjectives from nouns).Item Use of Pakistani Newspaper Articles for IELTS Academic Reading(UMT Lahore, 2015) Ghulam AbbasThis research aims at exploring the Band score gain in the Reading module of IELTS Academic resulting from the use of reading activities made by selected Pakistani English newspaper articles in preparatory classes of IELTS Academic Reading for students of Sialkot. The condition of IELTS Academic Reading in Sialkot due to scarcity of appropriate reading input was unsatisfactory which made it hard for the students of Sialkot to gain good band scores in IELTS Academic Reading. Therefore, the researcher gave a set of Reading Activities to local students of IELTS Academic Reading module. The effect of preparation through activities made by Pakistani newspaper articles on score of each participant was also investigated individually. A sample of fifteen students of IELTS Academic was selected for the study. The participants had to take reading classes which were based on these activities for thirty working days, one hour daily. Quantitative research method was used for collection and processing of data. A pre-test was conducted before application of activities on participants and a post-test after to measure the gain in band scores of students. Official IELTS Reading material of Cambridge University Book nine was used as a pre and post-test to estimate score gain in reading comprehension. Lastly, a paired sample t-test was applied through SPSS to figure out the discrepancies between pre-test and post-test output and results were found statistically significant showing that activities from Pakistani newspaper articles helped IELTS Academic Reading students to improve their IELTS Academic Reading band score.