ESPMENA - English for Specific Purposes in the Middle East and North Africa

Knowledge Construction Practices in Geographical and Environmental Research

Ahmed H. I. Elfaig — 2022-02-27

This article focuses on Knowledge construction in Geographical and Environmental Sciences. The main purpose of the paper is to examine how knowledge is constructed in texts produced in these enquiry domains. The paper depends on randomly selected published and unpublished materials such as thesis, dissertations and articles that depended on qualitative knowledge elicited from domain expert and secondary sources supported by quantitative methods from the field. 40 samples were randomly selected including master's theses, Ph.D. theses and published articles. The result showed that in 79.3% of the selected academic materials the knowledge had been constructed in the form of knowledge base format in heuristic form and knowledge modeling paradigm. It also indicated that the knowledge had been made in rules format espoused rule of thumb including parameters, variables, numerical values, tables, diagram, correlation coefficient, significance level, and fuzzy logic and certainty factors. Results also showed that 20.7% of the knowledge had been constructed in declarative forms and 57% used certainty factor (P). The paper further showed that the constructed knowledge had been translated and transformed in form of structure rules and models which can be graphically illustrated. The study concluded that constructed knowledge had been widely verified and validated, with space for disputed.

Teaching Writing as Genre at Tertiary Level in the Middle East and North Africa

El-Sadig Ezza — 2022-02-27

This paper investigates some challenges in writing English as a foreign language in the Arab world, and proposes genre-based solutions to them. For the most part, these challenges are given impetus by the use of a writing syllabus that does not reflect recent developments into the linguistic theory such as contrastive rhetoric, discourse analysis, genre analysis, etc. In this connection, the paper advocates the view that learners’ writing problems can best be addressed by the adoption of the genre approach to writing because, unlike the existing structure-oriented curriculum, it introduces writing as a communicative activity rather than an exercise in the English grammar. An examination of the writing courses in four Arab universities has revealed that most of these courses are a mere exercise in the lexico-grammatical structure of English; which is argued to provide lip service to writing education at tertiary level.

Merits and Demerits of Open Access Publishing

Omer Hassan Abdelrahman — 2022-02-27

This article discusses the merits and demerits of open access (OA) publishing. It highlights various aspects of this emerging mode of scholarly publishing, including the OA nature, types, growth and impact. The article also highlights the implication of OA publishing for copyright issues and how creative commons licenses are used to deal with this issue. The focus of the article is to outline and discuss the different advantages and benefits of open access publishing, and how authors and researchers can benefit from publishing their intellectual works via OA channels.

Writing in the Humanities: Challenges and Opportunities

Fadwa Abdulrahman Ali Taha — 2022-02-27

Writing is the most important tool of academic communication. It is the medium we need to write dissertations, conference presentations, book chapters, and journal articles, to mention but a few. All these activities attest that writing is central to the academic and professional development of faculty members. However, research findings reveal that it abounds life-long doubts, false starts, frustrations, procrastinations and the feeling that we are not yet ready to write. In this connection, the purpose of this paper is four-fold: to highlight the writing challenges in the humanities; to give insight into the scholarly writing conventions in the humanities; to unfold the methodological decisions made by researchers in the humanities; and to assess the reliability of scientific evidence in the humanities.

Review of Discipline-Specific Phrases in selected Theses in Geography

Abdel Hamid Balla El Nour — 2022-02-27

This paper aimed to show the extent to which the state of academic writing as represented by some selected, useful phrases has been frequent in geography research at the University of Khartoum. It applied the statistical analytical, and the descriptive approaches to fifteen Ph.D. and master degrees written during the period 2000-2016. Major findings are depicted: the quality of the theses in the academic writing domain varies i.e. some are categorized as poor, some are excellent and others are in between. The paper recommends that research councils should develop good databases in academic writing along with capacity building initiatives to enhance both instructional practices and writing competence among supervisors and research students respectively.