The quality of any academic essay highly depends on cohesion and coherence since they affect the overall quality and the tone of the writing to a great extent. Conjunctive adverbials are among the types of devices which logically help linking sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into essays. Conjunctive Adverbials ultimately affect the cohesion and coherence of any piece of writing. This paper investigates conjunctive adverbials in essays written by Iraqi Kurd EFL learners at the undergraduate level. It explicitly attempts to discover what specific conjunctive adverbials types are overused, underused, or misused and in what positions in sentences. A learner corpus of 50 complete essays was compiled for this study. The findings showed that the participants tended to use more sequential and additive conjunctive adverbials than adversative and causals. Additionally, the results demonstrated that the learners relied heavily on a limited number of conjunctive adverbials, mainly in the initial position. However, the conjunctive adverbial category affects its place in the sentence.

This study investigates the Iraqi learners’ perceptions of non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) at Komar University, Iraq and explores the extent to which NNESTs can be differentiated in terms of teaching different skills and their English language knowledge. A quantitative questionnaire focusing on NNESTs effectiveness in teaching the target culture, easing the learning process, their own proficiency, and effectiveness of their techniques to teaching different language skills was adopted from Ürkmez (2015) to collect the data of the study. A total of 37 responses were collected among students at Komar University through Google Forms software. The data were subsequently analyzed using tables to understand the data in a better way. The findings of this study reveal that Iraqi students studying at Komar University have a positive attitude toward non-native teachers at Komar University. Indeed, students even show a preference for non-native teachers for learning particular language skills.

This study investigates the Iraqi learners’ perceptions of non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) at Komar University, Iraq and explores the extent to which NNESTs can be differentiated in terms of teaching different skills and their English language knowledge. A quantitative questionnaire focusing on NNESTs effectiveness in teaching the target culture, easing the learning process, their own proficiency, and effectiveness of their techniques to teaching different language skills was adopted from Ürkmez (2015) to collect the data of the study. A total of 37 responses were collected among students at Komar University through Google Forms software. The data were subsequently analyzed using tables to understand the data in a better way. The findings of this study reveal that Iraqi students studying at Komar University have a positive attitude toward non-native teachers at Komar University. Indeed, students even show a preference for non-native teachers for learning particular language skills.

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English language learners use social media platforms for improving their language skills through exchanging ideas, sharing their thoughts, and getting exposed to authentic language. The use of social media by learners might yield positive or adverse effects. This study, therefore, explores the pedagogical consequences of some social media platforms on Iraqi Kurd EFL learners. It Highlights the significant impacts of social media on learning English, vocabulary, and spelling. It explicitly attempts to discover how social media affects English language learning, word choices, and spelling for Kurd EFL learners. A questionnaire is used to randomly collect the study data from 96 Kurdish students studying English at various academic institutions. The data was organized and analyzed by SPSS. It was found that Kurd EFL learners use social media platforms extensively for numerous purposes, improving their English language skills being one of them. The results suggest that social media assists learners in learning and practising new vocabulary; However, it has a negative impact on the students spelling and academic writing skills. Kurd EFL learners use abbreviated forms and unnecessarily shortened forms under the influence of social media.