This paper argues that in addition to teaching English, English Foundation Programmes should also help new students become involved in the new teaching environment by ensuring a transition from the previous learning experience and integration into the new context. The study also argues that the process of transition and integration contributes to creating an environment in which English can be used communicatively outside the language classroom, in institutions which teach English as a foreign language (EFL). The study follows the college impact approach to understand the influence of students' previous education and their understanding of the new learning environment on their college studies. An open question questionnaire was used to collect data from 199 students studying in three higher education establishments in the Sultanate of Oman. The data was analysed qualitatively, using a coding system. The study finds that the participants were influenced by their previous learning experience and suffered unfamiliarity with, as well as misconceptions of, the new learning situation, which indicates that the purpose of the FP should be, in addition to teaching English, helping students overcome these problems. The process of students’ transition and integration could provide a golden opportunity for using English communicatively.
Keywords: Foundation Programmes, new students, involvement, transition, integration, communicative use.
Introduction
Foundation programmes (FPs) are very common in countries where English as a foreign language is the medium of instruction in higher education establishments. In Oman, English is seen as a resource for national development because of its rule in the global economy, science and technology. The Government supports, politically, economically, and legislatively, English Language teaching in general and tertiary education. In general education, pupils aged between 7-16 are taught English not as a medium of instruction but as a compulsory foreign language. For various reasons such as the limited and rare exposure to English as well as the quality of instruction they receive at this stage (Al-Issa, 2005), students’ competency in English is far below the level that is needed in tertiary education in which English is the medium of instruction for science majors in such fields as medicine, business or engineering (Al-Issa, 2005; and Flowerdew, 1993). Arts specialisations such as history, Arabic and geography are taught in Arabic.
In order to enhance these students’ language proficiency, the establishments which provide tertiary education, such as; universities; colleges of technology; colleges of administration and business studies; and institutions of health studies all have a special English language teaching programme named the Foundation Year Programme (FYP or FP). The overall aim of the FP is to provide learners with the level and type of English e.g. listening/speaking, reading/ writing; EGP, EAP or ESP (Flowerdew, 1993; Kormos et al, 2002 and Al-Husseini, 2004) that they need to pursue academic specialisations in which subjects are taught in English. FP “is designed for access by students whose English Language ability is very basic” (Kobeil, 2005). It “aims to improve the students’ linguistic competence” (Al-Jamoussi and Al-Bedwawi, 2005) in order “to meet their immediate academic needs and prospective labor market requirements” (Al-Hinai, 2005). “The FP is a bridging year between the secondary school and the new specialisations in which English is the medium of instruction” (Al-Jamoussi and Al-Bedwawi, 2005). Although FPs are structured mainly around language needs, they also typically include subjects such as mathematics, computer skills, learning skills, and thinking skills (Ryan, 2005) to facilitate the students’ adaptation and integration into the academic institution.
Fulfilling students' language needs as explained above is a visible role of the FPs that is addressed and expressed obviously in the programmes' documentations. In addition to the language needs, as this study argues, FP students have transitional and integration needs which are not mentioned in the programme policies. In my view, fulfilling such needs represents the invisible role of FP. General education graduates who join institutions of higher education face learning environments different from the ones that they are used to in terms of, for example; deep-learning as opposed to surface-learning at school (Eizenberg, 1988 and Ramsden, 1988); methodology, autonomy of learners; teacher-student relationships, and student-student relationships. Students often fail to understand why they need to change to the new learning approach (Bradbeer, 1999).
In addition, creating an environment in which students can use communicatively the language they learn in the classroom is a challenging issue for the FP. Al-Husseini (2004, p.175) finds that “students need more opportunities to practice English and use it communicatively inside and outside the language classroom”. Al-Issa (2005, p. 8) asserts that the students “might have learned a great deal about the rules and the system of English. However, the scarce application of these rules in genuine interactive situations results in failure to use the language communicatively”.
This paper argues that the students’ transitional needs and adaptation needs contribute to creating an environment that provides students with opportunities to use communicatively the language they learn in the classroom. EFL teachers now, although using a communicative approach in ELT, need a solution to increase EFL learners' exposure to, and use of the target knowledge, both inside and outside the classroom (Chen, 2005). If conducted properly, assisting students to adapt to the new learning context should help them apply their English competence in real-life (Swan, 1985) communicative situations.
This paper has a two-fold task. First, it tries to find out the students' transition and integration needs. Then it tries to discover the features these needs may contain for developing a communicative environment. Therefore, the study tries to find answers to these three main questions;
1) What are the transition needs and integration needs of students learning in FP?
2) How does the language learned in the FP influence future study?
3) What are the communicative opportunities, provided by students’ transition and integration needs that students studying in the FP can use?
The answers to these questions, although addressing the Omani context, should be applicable to similar EFL contexts where learners have similar transitional and integration problems.
Literature Review
College has a significant impact on students (Donaldson and Graham, 1999). There are four main areas where the study of college impacts, namely: 1) students' background/pre-enrolment characteristics; 2) the structural/organisational characteristics of the institution; 3) interaction with faculty and peers, and 4) interaction with the institution's academic systems (Pascarella, 1985, p. 640).
The learners' understanding of the current learning context is influenced by their previous learning (Yang and Lucus, 2003; Kasworm, 2003 and Breen and Littlejohn, 2000). They see the current learning context through "the window screen of their past learning experiences" (Belzer, 2004 p 55). This relationship between present and past learning experience determines the students' attitude towards the new learning context. This may range from comfort, to hesitation, to confrontation (Belzer, 2004).
Studying learners' past learning experiences in order to make them explicit to teachers, educators and specialists is important. "Instead of looking through the window screens, learners need encouragement to look with a conscious and critical eye at the screens themselves" (Belzer 2004 p 56). This can be achieved by explicit classroom practice where teachers explain to the learners the relationship between understanding their prior educational experience and the purpose of the new learning experience which aims at developing them academically by improving their language skills and abilities (Belzer, 2004). Learners should be provided with opportunities to express and assess their prior conceptions, goals and plans, as a point of departure for new learning (Breen and Littlejohn, 2000).
The institution's organizational features have significant effects on students' academic integration and the level of interaction between the learner and the teachers’ and other personnel (Pascarella, 1985; Donaldson and Graham, 1999 and Schultz, 1998). More than 70% of what students learn in college comes from extra-curricular activities. Research finds that 40% of students believe that the activities they do out of class provided the most significant learning experiences (Moffatt, 1989), and 90% of students think that extracurricular experience contributed to their maturation in college (Kuh, 1989). Some experiences include; excursions, meeting people in the local community, interaction with organisations, being involved in societies, volunteering, talking with teachers and students outside the classroom, involvement in research, and living on or off campus (McCormick et al, 2005 and Kuh, 1993). Active involvement in out-of-classroom activities also helps teachers to acquaint themselves with students, become more able to understand students’ problems and help them to solve them (Zepeda and Ponticell, 1997).
There are some gaps between teachers and learners’ beliefs and conceptions (Yang and Lucus, 2003, and Kasworm, 2003). Students, like teachers, have their own understanding of the school cultural values (Keefe and Howard, 1997), aims and objectives of major learning tasks (Stefani et al ,1997 and Eisenberg, 1988), teachers' teaching abilities, importance of language, teaching material, teachers’ preparation and the ethnic background of the teachers (Yang and Lucus, 2003). Students' perceptions which are sometimes more influential than the reality (Keefe and Howard, 1997), affect their learning goals (Eisenberg, 1988) and motivation, the teachers' assessment practice (Stefani et al, 1997) and cooperation between the students and teachers (Brown et al, 2000). Students’ opinions are not always built on true understanding. Brown et al (2000) find that students' belief of the teacher's credibility is influenced by their perception of the teacher's race and gender.
Being new, a student may or may not be able to practice autonomy in terms of thinking and operating, according to his/her principles, rather than imitating or following others (Breen and Littlejohn, 2000). In addition, students have little idea of the requirements of the new learning environment, such as: efficient time-management skills; assignment quality expectations, etc. nor do they know the level of support they can get from faculty or their peers (Trueman and Hartely, 1996; Stefani et al, 1997).
Success in this new culture requires understanding the value of the new learning environment and obtaining an in-class comforting relationship with the teachers, which should take place at the early stages of joining the college (Kasworm, 2003). Success could be increased through an organized and ongoing advising process which aims at helping students achieve the educational, personal and job-related goals, by using all faculty resources (Schultz, 1998). When given the correct information, students become able to make the appropriate decisions about their academic lives (Schultz, 1998).
Methodology
This study follows the college impact approach, which emphasizes the role of the learning environment, in terms of the interaction between the learner and the institution, in accounting for the learning and personal development of the learner (Kuh, 1993). Studies applying such an approach include Kuh (1993), Pascarella (1985), Pascarella and Terenzini (1991) and Baxter Magolda (1992).
Learners' involvement in understanding and improving teaching and learning has been emphasised in educational research, as in: Fullan (1991); McCallum et al (2000); Breen and Littlejohn (2000); Kormos et al (2002), and Al-Husseini (2004). Learners are seen "as participators in social and educational processes rather than as passive recipients or outcomes of such process" (McCallum et al, 2000 p. 276). Their views are valuable in higher education improvement, and complement other participants' views, e.g. teachers, principals and planners (Hill, 1995).
This research involves 199 students at Nizwa University, Ibra College of Technology and Sur College of Applied Sciences, Sultanate of Oman. The three institutions have FPs in which new students are enrolled in order to achieve the level of English that is required in the academic specialisations. The institutions are located in three different cities. Nizwa University is a private establishment, while the others are all funded and managed by the government.
The participants were selected randomly to represent students who were still in the FPs as well as those who had finished and started their specialisation studies. The participants were both male and female. This variation in learning experience, I assume, provides cross-sectional opinions which should enrich the data.
An open-question questionnaire was used for data collection. An open-question questionnaire minimizes participants' irrational fear of criticism (Stefani et al, 1997). It gives the participants freedom to say what they want and however they want to say it. This, consequently, provides the researcher with more useful information compared to closed-questions, although the latter are easier to collate and analyse. Responses to open-questions are most likely to reflect accurately what the respondent wants to say (Nunan, 1992). A questionnaire was preferred to interviews in order to involve a large number of students shich would have been practically impossible to interview (Kormos et al, 2002). The questionnaire also gives privacy to participants, especially when identity is not required and the researcher's direct interaction is minimized, thereby encouraging participants to express themselves freely (Robson, 1993).
The data were analysed qualitatively, using the coding system (Robson, 1993). The issues; e.g. teachers, other students, classroom activities, social activities, etc. that the students were asked to write about in the questionnaire, were used as codes for identifying particular responses. The information the respondents provided was combined into categories. This facilitated a simple description of data (Robson, 1993). All the responses of one category were copied onto a master paper. This minimized possible information loss (Robson, 1993) and ensured that all students' views provided in the questionnaires were accounted for.
Analysis
This is an analysis of the participants' answers to the questionnaire. The data were used to answer the following questions:
1) To what extent does learning in college/university differ from the participants' previous learning experience, as they perceived it?
2) To what extent does specialisation learning differ from or seem similar to FP learning, as perceived by the participants?
3) How does the language learned in the FP influence future study?
(The answers to these questions will help to construct an idea about students’ transition and integration needs which will be used to find out an answer to the fourth question):
4) What opportunities do students’ transition and integration needs have for using English language communicatively on the college/university campus?
Any statement in this section put between quotation marks is quoted from the students' responses.
The participants described the learning in the colleges and the university as a new experience that differs from their previous learning experience at school: "I find the university completely different from the high school in terms of the teachers, students, activities etc." The differences between learning at university and high school, as students perceived it, include: physical structure of the learning environment; the regulations and academic life; the teachers; other students; the teaching content and methodology; the medium of instruction; teacher-students and student-student relationships and approach to communication, assessment, and extra curricular activities.
Students’ past learning experience enhances their misunderstanding of the new academic context (Yang and Lucus, 2003; Kasworm, 2003 and Belzer, 2004). The time issue for example, is one of factors that plays an important role. This is why one of the students wrote that out-of-class activities, "add more load on students" and another suggested that "students should not be given homework but left to study on their on pace". Students’ perception of teachers at institutions of higher education is another area that is influenced by their past learning experience; "teachers at school deal with us as students and human beings. There is a language of communication. At college, teachers look at us as students only, therefore they teach us and that’s it". Some students thought that "the college has very good teachers but some of them need too much time to understand the students".
In addition, the students know part of the reality of the new educational context. They, for different reasons, have either a damaged picture of another part of the reality or it is completely absent from their knowledge. This is noticeable in students’ understanding of the study in the FP and the specialisations. There is some discrepancy in their understanding of the differences and similarities between the study in FP and in the specialisations. FP graduates all agreed that "learning in FP is different from learning in the academic specialisation". On the other hand, some students who were still in the FP thought that "there is a difference", others thought "studying in the specialisation… is not going to be different from studying in the foundation in terms of teachers, students, or exams".
This misunderstanding of the learning situation can be contributed to two reasons. First, the required information is not provided by the institution. For example, the foundation student who said, "we know nothing about the kinds of specialisations available, and the study in the specialisations" has not been provided with information about these issues. This is why they asserted that they "need a precise induction into the specialisations". Lacking such important information is not helpful for the students. A student explained that "because I was placed in a specialisation that I do not like (selected engineering but placed in IT) I am going to quit and look for a job". Educators' role is to help learners participate meaningfully in the practices of the learning context they selected themselves (Fenwick, 2000).
Second, students misinterpreted the reality. The student who said, "the schools have regulations which are applied strictly, while the college which focuses on self-management does not have regulations which leads to students each behaving as he/she likes without any responsibility" did not realize that the college, which teaches self-management and autonomy, has concurrent regulations and rules.
Misleading sources of information (e.g. peers, society) also play an important role in hiding the true reality from students. Some new students can not practice autonomy in thinking according to their own needs, rather than copying others (Breen and Littlejohn, 2000). A student of this kind wrote, "I want to change this college because some students told me that it is not a good college". A student explained, "I am happy with being a student in the college but when it comes to the society’s view of the college, I am not proud of the college". Therefore, students' motivation and self-esteem can be influenced by the misleading information coming from peer or society.
Students also have their own understanding of the context (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987; Woods, 1996; Keefe and Howard, 1997; Stefani et al, 1997 and Eisenberg, 1988) which they did not base on any facts. Some students think that "the teachers in the specialisations are more qualified than FP teachers". The reality could be different e.g. teachers in both areas are equally qualified.
Students need a high level of English in order to be successful in the specialisations; "to be successful in learning in the specialisation, the student needs to know English very well". "The language level must be high because all the studies are in English". Students in the specialisation classroom use English therefore in the FP they need more activities which help them develop the required skills; "in terms of the classroom activities, they are fewer in the FP than the specialization where we do more presentations and research and have more discussions". "In college students send homework to teachers by email". Students also need to use English communicatively in the three institutions involved in this study; "there is a need for a good level of English to communicate with teachers, students and to find information in books". Lower command of English leads to difficulties in student-teacher communication, especially with non-Arabic speaking teachers; "teachers in college, although, they have higher qualifications than school teachers, are not able to transfer knowledge to students. We have a problem of understanding. This is because the language of teaching is English which we are not familiar with, but this will be solved by time when we become competent in English".
Discussion
The study finds that the participants have transition and integration needs which should contribute to creating an educational environment in which students can use English communicatively. In non-English speaking countries, using English outside the language classroom has to be a created activity because it does not exist out there the way it does in native countries. EFL learners use their mother tongue in the real world (Chen, 2005) unless special factors, for example, in this study transition and integration, encourage them to communicate in English.
To help new students with little or no experience of higher education confront the various difficulties they face in the new educational context (Hilton and Pollard, 2005; Willmot and Lloyd, 2002) the FP should, in addition to teaching students the language they need in the specialisation, create the environment which embeds learners in the new culture (Wilson, 1992) by ensuring transition (Hill, 1995) and affording integration (Pascarella, 1985). First, learners should be helped to transit from being school learners to college learners. They should be helped to understand the difference between their previous learning at school and the requirements and demands of the new context (Belzer, 2004; Fenwick, 2000). Second, students should be helped to value the new learning situation (Kasworm, 2003). New recruits usually have little information about the requirements of the new learning and are unable to predict their academic behaviour (Trueman and Hartely, 1996; Stefani et al, 1997). They should be helped to understand the requirements of learning in the FP, and while in the FP should be helped to develop a clear picture about academic studies: the available specialisations, the requirement for joining these specialisations, class and out-of-class activities. This can be achieved through induction and socialisation activities.
The induction should be a multi-functional, long-term process (Willmot and Lloyd, 2002) that helps students’ perceptions change throughout their studies (Hill, 1995) and helps students achieve their personal goals and the institution objectives by using all the available facilities and means including in-class and out-of-class activities (Schultz, 1998; Hilton and Pollard, 2005). Socialisation is important because the impact of college is more significant for students who actively participate in the college environment (Donaldson and Graham, 1999). Out-of-class activities that contribute to students’ involvement and the development of a communicative use of English within the institution or in the wider social environment include excursions, meeting people in the local community; interacting with organisations; participating in societies; volunteering; talking with teachers and students outside the classroom; doing research, and living on or off campus (McCormick et al, 2005; Kuh, 1993).
Induction and social programmes in which English is the medium of communication will surely help students exchange ideas and information communicatively outside the language classroom. Students noticed the need for English in everyday communication in higher education as a student explained; “at university we need both Arabic and English to communicate with others”.
Students need written and spoken information which introduces them at enrolment to the learning environment and the language programme, and then introduces them to the specialisations. For example, the students expressed the need to know; "the different specialisations [available]"; 'the different sub-divisions in the specialisation"; "the number of years of study"; "How to learn" and "how the specialisation is going to affect a student's career". Discussing and finding answers to these questions, which are relevant and interesting to students, help them apply the linguistic competence, that they learned inside the classroom, for “genuine communication” (Nunan, 1987, p.137) and exchange of information in real-life (Swan, 1985) for a purpose that is driven by a kind of desire (Harmer, 1982).
A student asking a faculty member about the types of specialisations available in a certain department or college, a teacher talking to new students about the assessment system; or a student delivering a speech in front of other students, explaining the aims of a students' organisation or activity group, is purposeful and initiated by the desire to transmit a certain type of information to the interlocutor or audience. There is also the existence of an information-gap (Harmer, 1982; Swan, 1985) between the speaker/writer and listener/speaker. The transmission of information takes place in the form of initiation or elicitation. That means that communication happens either because someone tells others some information that they need, or someone asks another person to tell him/her a piece of information that he/she needs. For example, in a campus tour at the beginning of the year the guide who tells (in English) the new students the location of the various facilities on campus transmits to the new students information that they need in order to familiarize themselves with the physical structure of the college/university. The tour may involve a type of discussion in which students raise questions, for example about how to borrow a book from the library, or whether the material in the self-access centre can be borrowed. This tour may be "characterized by the uneven distribution of information, the negotiation of meaning, topic nomination and negotiation by more than one speaker and the right of interlocutors to decide whether to contribute to an interaction or not" (Nunan, 1987, p.137) all of which feature communicative interchange. In addition, using English for such purposes and in such situations is for the content rather than the form (Harmer, 1982). It is also without language teachers' intervention which sometimes characterized classroom language use, where teachers intervene to correct students' mistakes or to tell them they made pronunciation errors (Harmer, 1982).
What should be clarified is that having transition and integration needs does not imply automatic English communication, unless English, rather than native language is used. Social activities in which Arabic is used do not help students apply their English communicatively. A student described these activities as "useless because they are in Arabic and we learn in English, so they do not help us with our learning objective".
Conclusion
In addition to teaching students the required English, FP should also enhance new students' involvement in the new learning environment (Wilson, 1992) by ensuring transition (Hill, 1995) and affording integration (Pascarella, 1985). Students should be helped to remove the obstacles that they bring to the college through previous experience, and that hinder them from achieving their academic goals. Integration is important because; "individuals learn as they participate, by interacting with the community (with its history, assumptions and cultural values, rules and patterns of relationship), the tools at hand (including objectives, technology, languages and images), and the moment's activity (its purposes, norms, and practical challenges)" (Fenwick, 2000 p. 253). To achieve this target, new students should be familiarized with the requirements of learning in the FP. While still in the FP, students should be introduced to the specialisations by a systematic and on-going induction process. The induction and socialisation programmes which help students achieve transition and integration contribute in creating an educational environment in which students can use English for genuine communication (Nunan, 1987). Students can practice the linguistic knowledge (Canale and Swain, 1980) they have learned in the language classroom in a social context (Ellis, 1996) where the focus shifts from form to content without teacher’s intervention (Harmer, 1982).
The findings of this study, I think, are applicable to comparable EFL contexts. In Asia, for example China, Japan, Korea and Bangladesh, learners now have a great need to listen, speak, read and write for practical purpose (Shih, 1999). The search for communicative opportunities outside the language classroom has been emphasised in a number of studies for example, Jones (1995), Shih (1999), Chen (2005) and Rahman (2005). Hopefully, this study helps specialists in such contexts look at their students' transition and integration needs for possible factors which will enhance the communicative use of English outside the language classroom.
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