The morpho-syntax of question particles in Standard Arabic.

Unlike wh-question questions in Standard Arabic (SA), which received much attention in the past decades in different approaches within generative grammar, question particles (yes-no questions) in SA have not yet been studied thoroughly in minimalist syntax, and less attention has been paid to them. There is a need to analyze SA question articles and explore their syntactic behavior within minimalism. The reason why this topic has been selected for study is that SA question particles have not been investigated in detail yet in Chomsky's Phase Theory; it has not been analyzed how question particles are derived and represented morpho-syntactically in a clause structure.

Students' intrinsic motivation in EFL academic writing: Topic-based interest in focus.

Writing as a productive skill is extremely challenging for EFL students. To promote their writing effectiveness, students' intrinsic motivation must be enhanced by allowing them to self-assign writing topics or write about topics of interest. Therefore, this study describes how EFL students become motivated by self-assigning their writing topics and identifies students' attitudes and writing skills in topic-based interest in the EFL writing context.

Enhancing EFL students' critical thinking skills using a technology-mediated self-study approach: EFL graduates and labor market in perspective.

This research project bridges the gap between Saudi Vision 2030 and labor market needs by strengthening English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students' critical thinking skills. The increasing unemployment rates may not be due to insufficient vacancies in the labor market, but graduates' lack of the general abilities deemed vital to meet the labor market needs. With employability in mind, this study reiterates that graduates should ideally be advanced specialists, critical researchers, creative initiators, and active communicators to be more competitive and contribute to the prosperity of their nation.

The syntax of wh-questions in unaccusative and (Un)ergative structures in Mehri language: A Phase-based approach.

The Mehri Language is an endangered language spoken in eastern Yemen, a sub-group of the Semitic language family, and a Southern Arabic language. The syntax of Mehri wh-questions has not been explored within minimalism; hence, there is a morpho-syntactic need to provide a modern analysis of wh-questions in order to show how the interrogative structures can be derived. This study aims to examine the syntax of the wh-question movement in Mehri's unaccusative/ergative and unergative structures and answer the following questions within Chomsky's (2000 and 2008) Phase-based Theory: (i) Does the Mehri language allow fronting of wh-phrases to [Spec-CP]? And (ii) how can wh-movement in Mehri unaccusative and (un)ergative structures be accounted for? This work presents a novel analysis of wh-question movement in unaccusative/ergative and unergative structures in Mehri; it demonstrates that the source head C triggers the movement of wh-adjunct and wh-subject phrases.

Strengthening English language undergraduates' presentation skills: A blackboard-mediated intervention program.

Studies and reports indicate that some graduates struggle to find jobs, in part because they lack the key presentation skills and competencies the labor market needs. Thus, this research investigated the effectiveness of a Blackboard-mediated intervention program in strengthening English as a foreign language (EFL) students' presentation skills. The research followed a quasi-experimental (time series) design, delivering workshops on presentation skills and collecting data from the students (N = 30) using a set of instruments: a pre-and post-assessment checklist and semi-structured interviews.