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Environmental criticism has become a fertile and vital field within modern critical studies, and it has increasingly gained visibility in literary and artistic scholarship across various domains of the arts and literature. Literature is an expressive linguistic art that takes shape in diverse artistic forms, from verse to prose, and environmental ideas concerned with the environment, life, and the future of the universe have contributed to forming central themes within literary texts, such as poetry, the novel, the short story, drama, and other literary genres. Children’s literature is considered an important part of the wider field of literature: while it does share the general artistic characteristics of literature as a whole, it adds its own specific artistic features. Influenced by environmental ideas, the range of subjects in children's literature has expanded to include works that implicitly focus on developing environmental awareness and its continuous presence in the mind of the child reader.

This study aims at examining two children picture books: When the War Ends, by Fāṭima Sharaf al-Dīn (2024), and When the Whale Sneezed, by Maryam Tarḥīni (2022). The ecocritical reading of the two texts follows the theoretical framework proposed by Lawrence Buell in his pioneering work The Environmental Imagination (1995). These two stories were selected based on their being two modern texts that represent environmental awareness and its forms through both language and image. Fāṭima Sharaf al-Dīn’s story focuses on war as a type of pollution and on loss as one of the consequences of wars, together with the idea of renewing life in a different form by growing a flower for every person lost to the war. Maryam Tarḥīni’s story addresses the issue of marine pollution and the dumping of waste into seas and oceans, as well as its dangers for marine creatures, embodied in the figure of the whale.

Cats are and have always been a constant presence in the Arabic culture: from Ancient Egypt to the pre-Islamic era, in the Islamic tradition and even in proverbs, cats have always played a conspicuous role. The traditional Arabic significance of cats is also clearly reflected in contemporary Arabic children’s literature, and a large number of tales for children are featuring cats in a variety of roles. However, how are cats portrayed and what do they stand for in these stories? Scope of this paper is the representation of cats and their symbolism in contemporary Arabic children’s literature. A brief introduction covers the role of cats in the Arabic culture in very general terms, followed by an overview of the genre of contemporary Arabic children’s literature that accounts for its mostly educational, didactic character and its latest trends. The central part of this paper presents and analyses a number of Arabic picture books, authored by Arabic writers and illustrated by Arabic artists, where cats are protagonists, either as embodiments of human traits or as companions of human beings. The stories are discussed in terms of their symbolism and their themes.

Climate change has been attracting increasing attention as one of the most significant consequences of the anthropogenic global warming and fictional narratives have increasingly been involved in engaging human imagination on the topic of climate change. Climate fiction, or cli-fi, is the umbrella term that designates fiction with climate change as its main theme. Climate fiction has been primarily published in English so far and narratives specifically problematising anthropogenic climate change are still quite rare in the Arabic literary landscape. In this regard, the novel 2022 by the Lebanese author Ghassān Shibārū constitutes an interesting case, given that it is authored in Arabic but displays several of the characteristics typical of the cli-fi genre. This paper aims at providing an analysis of Shibārū’s novel 2022 as representative of Arabic climate fiction. The main features of the climate fiction genre and its relationship to the scholarship of ecocriticism are first outlined. An overview of the environment as a theme in Arabic literature and Arabic literary studies then follows. The paper subsequently presents the concept of ecological literacy, which constitutes the theoretical framework for the analysis of the characters in the novel. After a synopsis of the plot, the characters are analysed and discussed and the novel itself is examined as instance of climate fiction as intended by the Anglophone definition of the genre. The authors argue that the purpose of the novel is didactic, since, rather than narrating a fictional story, the novel exploits a fictional story in order to spread awareness of global warming and climate change.

Machine translation, and specifically Google Translate, is becoming a favourite tool for language learners. As it is freely available across a variety of platforms for both desktop and mobile devices, students tend to rely on it excessively for solving their course assignments, which is ultimately detrimental to their language learning. However, the functionalities of machine translation can be exploited proactively within the curriculum and activities involving its use can be included in a course in order to increase language awareness and ultimately language learning. This paper is a contribution to the research field of machine translation in language pedagogy and reports the results of an empirical study conducted on students of an Arabic beginners course at a Swedish University. The study aimed at making the most of the students’ attitude of relying on Google Translate, while at the same time taking advantage of GT’s capabilities and limitations as a tool for language learning. A brief introduction covers machine translation and the reasons for GT inconsistencies with translating Arabic. This paper then presents two assignments given to the students at two separate moments of the term, accounting for their scope and execution. An analysis of the results follows, highlighting the students’ performance and reflections on the advantages and disadvantages of GT. 

Machine translation, and specifically Google Translate, is becoming a favourite tool for language learners. As it is freely available across a variety of platforms for both desktop and mobile devices, students tend to rely on it excessively for solving their course assignments, which is ultimately detrimental to their language learning. However, the functionalities of machine translation can be exploited proactively within the curriculum and activities involving its use can be included in a course in order to increase language awareness and ultimately language learning. This paper is a contribution to the research field of machine translation in language pedagogy and reports the results of an empirical study conducted on students of an Arabic beginners course at a Swedish University. The study aimed at making the most of the students’ attitude of relying on Google Translate, while at the same time taking advantage of GT’s capabilities and limitations as a tool for language learning. A brief introduction covers machine translation and the reasons for GT inconsistencies with translating Arabic. This paper then presents two assignments given to the students at two separate moments of the term, accounting for their scope and execution. An analysis of the results follows, highlighting the students’ performance and reflections on the advantages and disadvantages of GT.

During the first two decades of the 21st century an increasing amount of narratives termed as Arabic dystopian fiction appeared on the Arabic literary scene, with a greater part authored by Egyptian writers. However, what characterises/marks a work as a dystopia? This paper investigates the dystopian nature of a selection of Egyptian literary works within the frame of the dystopian narrative tradition. The article begins by introducing the features of the traditional literary dystopias as they will be used in the analysis. It then gives a brief overview of the development of the genre in the Arabic literature. The discussion that follows highlights common elements and identifies specific themes in six Egyptian novels selected for the analysis, thereby highlighting differences and similarities between them and the traditional Western dystopias. The article calls for a categorisation of Arabic dystopian narrative that takes into consideration social, political, historical and cultural factors specific for the Arabic in general, and Egyptian in particular, literary field. 

This paper intends to contribute to the research field of vocabulary learning from an Arabic language acquisition perspective. After a brief introduction, the paper deals first with some linguistic, Arabic-specific considerations within the vocabulary teaching theoretical framework and then presents a research project, the scope of which is the monitoring of students’ vocabulary proficiency in two subsequent terms, where vocabulary instruction differed in focus on teaching methods. Specifically, the paper outlines the frequency ranges of the words taught during the course, accounts for the methods chosen to measure the students’ vocabulary proficiency and compares and discusses the results.