A CORRELATIONAL STUDY BETWEEN VOCABULARY MASTERY AND READING COMPREHENSION AT ECONOMIC FACULTY OF ALKHAIRAAT UNIVERSITY

This research is a correlational study with two variables – variable X standing for vocabulary mastery and variable Y standing for reading comprehension. There were three research questions: (1) What is the level of correlation between variable X and variable Y; (2) How significant is the contribution that can be given by variable X toward variable Y; and (3) Is there positive correlation between variable X and variable Y? The sample of this research was fifty students of the first semester at Economic Faculty of Alkhairaat University. The instruments were tests and questionnaire. Through tests, it was found that: (1) The level of correlation between variable X and variable Y was strong; (2) The significant contribution given by variable X toward variable Y was 52.8%, meaning variable X gave much contribution to variable Y; and (3) There was positive correlation between variable X and variable Y since the value of r-counted (0.727) was higher than the value of r-table (0.279). Through questionnaire, 46% respondents agreed that vocabulary took a role in helping them to comprehend English texts, meaning the more vocabulary they have, the better they are in comprehending English texts.

Negotiating Multiple Identities Post-9/11: Hybridity and Transformation in the Reluctant Fundamentalist, Home Boy and Thinner Than Skin

The present thesis seeks to explore and analyse three select representative Pakistani diasporic pieces of fiction: Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), H. M. Naqvi’s Home Boy (2009) and Uzma Aslam Khan’s Thinner Than Skin (2012) written in the backdrop of 9/11. The research focus is on how hybrid identity (of the Pakistani targeted affectees in the novels) is transformed in the background of 9/11/2001 attacks. The novels negotiate diverse and divisive identities resulting in the transformation of individuals. Unlike a wave of fictional themes such as trauma, fear, disillusionment, Islamophobia, Orientalism, and so forth, these three novels attempt to portray the resultant multiple and conflictive identities in the post-9/11 chaotic world. Postcolonial theory, featuring cultural hybridity, has been invoked as a theoretical framework with particular emphasis on theorists like Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961), Edward W. Said’s Orientalism (1978) and Homi K. Bhabha’s The Location of Culture (1994). However, the researcher probes and substantiates the strategy of disengagement and detachment from the U.S., geographically and ideologically. The theorists and a host of fiction writers have argued engagement and reconciliation between the East and the West, whereas the current discourse in the selected texts reiterates disengagement for greater self-reliance and autonomy. Even Frantz Fanon advocates engagement and reconciliation. Cultural hybridity and transitional transformation are the dominant discourses to be argued in the case of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Home Boy and Thinner Than Skin in the post-9/11 sociopolitical and literary milieu.