RSS Quarterly Journal | Volume 10 Issue 4 | December 2008

The Impact of English as an International Language (EIL) upon Arabic in Saudi Arabia

The study investigated college students’ views of the status of English and Arabic in Saudi Arabia in the 21st century, and their attitudes towards using English and Arabic as a medium of instruction at the university level. Findings showed that 96% of the participants consider English a superior language, being an international language, and the language of science and technology, research, electronic databases and technical terminology.

Creating and Authentic EFL Learning Environment to Enhance Student Motivation to Study English

English in Taiwan, just like the majority of countries in Asia, is treated as a subject for study rather than as a living language to be spoken in daily conversation. Therefore, the EFL classroom context is very different from a natural ESL learning environment. The lack of a surrounding community of English speakers outside the classroom increases the challenge for EFL instructors (Parker, 1995).

Teaching Listening Speaking Skills to Thai Students with Low English Proficiency

his study aimed at exploring the results of an intervention designed to improve the listening-speaking skills of students with low English proficiency for 60 hours over three weeks. These twenty-eight students were randomly selected from the lowest group in English ability among the first year students at Thammasat University, Thailand.

Rethinking the Objectives of Teaching English in Asia

Language teaching methodology has been changing over a period of time. The teacher-centered approach is gradually giving way to learner-centered approach. However, even today in many classrooms, the teacher remains a donor of knowledge and corrector of learner errors.

One Page Plus, One More Character

This paper reports the advantages of adopting an innovative teaching method for literary learning in which the researchers integrated two activities into their literature class – “One Page Plus” and “One More Character” – in order to develop students’ awareness toward the literary themes of the stories read in class and motivate students to appreciate literature.

Speech Acts: A Contrastive Study of Speech Acts in Urdi and English

Language is considered to be a product of social contact. Language or linguistic acts that intend to influence the reality are generally known as ‘Speech Acts’. The idea of Speech Acts finds its roots in the Philosophy of Language. Models of communication often give it very little function.

An Acoustic Analysis of Pitch Range in the Production of Native and NonNative Speakers of English

This paper investigated Saudi EFL learners’ pitch range, and compared it to that of native speakers. 52 female students read sentences, and their production was analysed through pitch tracks and spectrograms. The F0 of the vowels for all tokens was measured in Hz at midpoint.

Collaborative Teaching in an ESP Program

This paper investigates collaborative teaching in an English-for-specific-purposes (ESP) class in Taiwan and reports the findings of the ESP course via a comparative study. Forty science students were assigned to an experimental class taught by both a language teacher and a physics professor and another forty to a control class taught by the language teacher alone.

Language Learning Strategies Used by Students at Different Proficiency Levels

This study is designed to determine: (1) whether a statistically significant difference exists in the extent of language learning strategy use between higher proficiency and lower proficiency EFL students; (2) the strength of the effect of language learning strategy use on English proficiency.

A Call for New Benchmarks at Saudi Language and Translation Schools

Since the year 2000, Saudi universities have cancelled all admission tests and have adopted an open admission policy that depends on high school GPA only. Many high school graduates in Saudi Arabia, especially females, show a great interest in joining colleges of languages and translation and admission to those colleges has been highly competitive.

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