scholarly journals Peer feedback for peer learning and sharing

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-61
Author(s):  
Fawzi Al-Ghazali
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Cultural Awareness ◽  
English Language ◽  
Peer Feedback ◽  
Writing Courses ◽  
Constructive Feedback ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Language Courses ◽  
Arab Students ◽  
Views And Perceptions

Peer feedback is applauded in many writing courses for fostering students’ independence and collaboration and for creating a wider learning environment in which students can benefit from the feedback and diversity of input they get from other peers (Stubbe, 2013). It improves students’ writing skills by developing their use of effective composing processes since they can share ideas while planning, drafting, and revising writing forms (Richards and Schmidt, 2010). It also reduces the anxiety of students who can get constructive feedback on their writing from other peers instead of their teachers (Phillipson, 2007). However, application of peer feedback in writing courses is a complex process since it requires provision of rubrics and guidelines for students to follow; this is in addition to explaining the areas they need to focus on. It also requires having cultural awareness of the level of corrections Arab students can accept. This paper reflects on a practical experiment conducted with a group of undergraduate students for showing how peer feedback is approached and practised by students in English language courses. Students’ views and perceptions about peer feedback are also surveyed showing their appreciation of the level of collaboration peer feedback encourages among them. Nevertheless, the results also show a number of concerns students have about peer feedback.

scholarly journals Exploring the perceptions of Kurdish EFL university students towards culture as the fifth language skill

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-82
Author(s):  
Omar Fouad Ghafor
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Cultural Awareness ◽  
English Language ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Language Skill ◽  
Teaching Culture ◽  
Teaching Learning

Culture has been defined and viewed in different ways. These differences are due to its involvement with various facets of human life. Some of these definitions and viewpoints are related to the process of teaching/learning a language and understanding the habits of the native speakers of the language. In this regard, many linguists consider it the fifth language skill alongside the other four traditional skills that help language learners to master the language better. This paper addresses this issue by exploring the perceptions of Kurdish EFL university students concerning the role of English culture in learning the language. The researcher attempts to achieve this aim by providing a theoretical background about culture and culture as the fifth language skill and utilizing a questionnaire to a sample of senior undergraduate students selected for this purpose. The findings of the study show that cultural awareness has an essential role in the process of English language learning. Hence, culture should always be integrated with the process because it is an inseparable part of language teaching/learning. Teaching culture is as crucial as teaching other aspects and skills of the language.

scholarly journals An Error Analysis of Research Project Abstracts Written by Thai Undergraduate Students

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
Wirada Amnuai
Keyword(s):  
Error Analysis ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Word Choice ◽  
Writing Ability ◽  
Writing Courses ◽  
Sentence Level

Errors in writing are unavoidable while students are trying to develop their writing skills. There have been several studies on identifying writing problems or errors in students’ writing. It is believed that identifying students’ written tasks is an effective tool to explore the difficulties involved in learning language. This helps teachers’ awareness of the serious problems which occur in students’ writing and allows them to pay closer attention to their errors. The aim of the present research study is to pinpoint writing errors in English abstracts written by Thai undergraduate students. Forty abstracts of research projects were collected and analysed. The error analysis was conducted at the sentence level, word level, and mechanics aspect. The five most frequent error types ranking from the most frequent to least frequent were word choice, preposition, sentence construction, singular or plural forms and quotation marks. The findings of the present study have shed light on the students’ writing ability and give an insight into what the problems students face when writing their abstracts. Also, the errors found in the abstracts in the present study have pedagogical implications concerning English language learning, particularly with writing courses. The findings will be helpful for teachers to develop teaching materials to assist their students from committing errors when writing English abstracts and to improve academic writing skills.

scholarly journals UNIVERSITY STUDENTS� NEEDS OF WRITING COURSE MATERIALS: A CASE OF INDONESIA

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Ilham Ilham ◽  
Bachrudin Musthafa ◽  
Fazri Nur Yusuf
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
Private University ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
Teaching Writing ◽  
English Department ◽  
Writing Courses ◽  
Writing Course ◽  
Grammar Knowledge

The aim of this study is to explore the target needs (i.e. necessities, lacks and wants) of the students to inform academic writing courses materials. A case study design was employed as this design to provide in-depth data information. To collect the data, questionnaire and interviews were used. Twenty-three undergraduate students of English department at a private university in Mataram West Nusa Tenggara who take academic writing course in the 2019-2020 academic year participated in the study. The result of the study showed that the students need to learn the types of writing texts, vocabulary and construct sentences into paragraph, have good skills in writing different genres since they are lack of grammar knowledge and vocabularies, and improvement on the aspect of teaching writing. This finding may promise implications for updating the current curriculum and materials as practiced for tertiary level English department students in an attempt to keep up with the latest changes in the methodologies of English language teaching. This study recommends that lecturers and universities should conduct a need analysis regularly and updated the curriculum with such insightful needs.

scholarly journals Grammatical Errors Found in English Writing: A Study from Al-Hussein Bin Talal University

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Khitam Mohameed Alghazo ◽  
Mohamed Khaliefah Alshraideh
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Sentence Structure ◽  
Writing Classes ◽  
Writing Courses ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
Grammatical Errors ◽  
Arab Students ◽  
Verb Tense

This study investigated the frequent grammatical errors, found in the writings of Arab students’ taking English writing courses in AL-Hussein Bin Talal University Learners’ errors were considered positively as the best sources to identify students’ limitations in English writing. Therefore the present study intended to investigate the grammatical errors of Arab students’ writings in English in AL-Hussein Bin Talal University and to see if there are any differences in the grammatical errors according to year of study. To conduct this study data was collected from the writing sessions of writing classes that were taught during the fall semester of 2019. The data was collected, analyzed and categorized from students, all majoring in English Language and Literature and ranging from freshman to seniors. A Grammar test Questionnaire designed by the researchers was distributed to the students in these writing sessions. The results showed that the most frequent grammatical error was with the verb tense on a mean of (3.75), followed by errors in the article on a mean of (3.62), wrong word order on a mean of (3.57), noun ending on a mean of (3.40) and least was sentence structure on a mean of(3.39). The results also showed that the seniors on the grammar test on all its parts did better than the freshmen, juniors and sophomores that are the least problems were found among the seniors.

scholarly journals Teaching English Language Courses for Tourism and Hospitality Purposes (A Study of Graduates Workplace Needs)

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (31) ◽  
pp. 31-48
Author(s):  
Hussam Qaddumi ◽  
◽  
Khaled Masood ◽  
Hassan Qaddumi ◽  
Samir Rammal ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
English Language ◽  
Hotel Management ◽  
Travel And Tourism ◽  
Language Courses ◽  
Language Needs ◽  
Workplace Needs ◽  
Tourism And Hospitality ◽  
Intended Learning Outcomes ◽  
Tourism Services

When taking into account Palestinian tourism sites, mastering language English for instance is a prerequisite for serving and offering tourism services in tourist places such as Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Jericho and Hebron after graduation. In Palestine, English for Specific Purposes especially in hospitality and tourism purposes has not been given much investigation in research. Globally, English language is used as a medium of communication in contexts such as hospitality, travel, and tourism. This study examined how English language is used to prepare tourism and hospitability learners who anticipate serving in Palestinian tourism sites. The data indicated that the learners’ perceptions of the courses offered in English are not consistent with their aspirations and perceived academic English language needs, and their response to how they perceive the importance of English language needs was moderate. Based on these findings, the study suggests restructuring these courses and reconsidering the adopted teaching methods to help learners receive proper instruction geared towards intended learning outcomes and meets their future workplace needs. For future studies, it is recommended that quantitative and qualitative researches are needed to be carried out to analyze the actual needs of undergraduate students to the English language in programs hotel management and tourism.

Ambiguities in English Language Teaching: Designing English for Specific Purposes Courses for a Discipline-Specific Context

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mimi Nahariah Azwani Mohamed
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
English For Specific Purposes ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Language Courses ◽  
Professional Body ◽  
Specific Discipline ◽  
Language Needs

The need for English language teaching to address specific language needs for a discipline has instigated growing demands for English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses in higher education institutions in Malaysia. In the context of a university which focuses on engineering programmes, monitored by an engineering professional body, ESP courses designed and developed for higher education are expected to include learning outcomes which reflect integration between English language and engineering fields. In other words, these English language courses need to address the language needs in the engineering field. Thus, English language educators within this context need to have relevant knowledge and skills to enable them to design and develop appropriate ESP courses. Questions arise in relation to how English language courses developed have addressed this expectation. This paper examines the extent to which this expectation is translated into the ESP courses at one technical university in Malaysia. The findings showcase how this expectation is disseminated to the English language educators. This paper provides insight into the complex process of designing English language courses that could address the language needs of the engineering field. In addition, this paper highlights aspects to consider when designing an ESP course for a specific discipline.

scholarly journals Students’ Perception towards Literature Integration in the English Language Departments at Duhok and Zakho Universities

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 130
Author(s):  
Aveen Mohammed Hasan ◽  
Zaiton Fareeq Hasan
Keyword(s):  
English Language Learners ◽  
Language Development ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Cultural Awareness ◽  
English Language ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Literature Study ◽  
Study Program

This study investigates the students’ perceptions towards literature integration in language learning in the English Language Departments (henceforth ELD) at Duhok and Zakho universities. Knowledge about students’ perceptions will influence their interest and language learning development. Literature is an important part of the syllabus at most ELDs in the Kurdish universities. Although studies have shown the importance of the learners’ perception, no studies have examined the students’ perceptions towards their literature modules in the ELDs at the Kurdish universities. The study is based on the responses of 268 undergraduate students to a questionnaire consisting of close-ended, multiple choices (quantitative data) and open-ended questions (qualitative data). The quantitative data is analyzed using the statistical analysis software (SPSS) and the qualitative using thematic analysis. The majority of the students have positive perceptions towards literature integration in their study program. They show that it contributes to the their language development in general and their vocabulary, speaking and reading skills in particular and novel is selected as the most beneficial literary genre for language development. Additionally, literature contributes to develop the learners’ cultural awareness in general and helps to identify the similarities and differences between the English culture and the learners’ own culture. The study also shows the contribution of literature to the learners’ personal growth in terms of active participation in class activities, increasing their critical thinking and analytical skills and helps them to understand theirs and other people’s experiences. The students are satisfied with the selected literary texts and topics and to some extent with the teaching methods which are mostly teacher led, but they suggest more students’ involvement. However, students face some difficulties, mostly language difficulty, that need to be taken into consideration. Thus, it is recommended that literature should be kept in the ELDs curriculum and teachers and administrators should make students aware of the value of the literature, understand the students needs and work to overcome the problems they encounter in literature study. Generally, knowing the students’ perceptions towards literature classes will be helpful for the researchers, educational policy makers and the language teachers to determine English language learners’ genuine needs, motivation or challenges and issues in relation to the use of literary texts as teaching materials and to develop a suitable teaching approach to use the literary texts.

scholarly journals Students’ Peer Feedback in EFL Writing Class of English Study Program

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 01-16
Author(s):  
William Y. Saptenno ◽  
Threesje R. Souisa
Keyword(s):  
Peer Feedback ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Writing Classroom ◽  
Study Program ◽  
Writing Courses ◽  
Constructive Feedback ◽  
Classroom Activities ◽  
Surface Areas ◽  
Process Feedback ◽  
Giving Feedback

As a part of writing process, feedback in writing place as the significant role and peer feedback is one type of feedback in classroom activities. This study was intended to find out the facts and expectation on peer feedback in writing classroom. A classroom-based research was employed as the research design and the participants were the students in writing 2 and writing 4 courses. Furthermore, Classroom observation, in-depth interview and review of related documents were designed to collect the data. The findings revealed that the application of peer feedback was not properly applied; it was more focused on the surface areas (grammatical errors, spelling and error punctuation) and neglected to the content and organization of writings. It could happen because the students lack of trainings and unavailability of rubric and guidelines provided in the writing classroom activities. For that reason, the students didn’t know the ways to provide meaningful and constructive feedback. They also have negative point of view about the peer feedback in writing courses. The students expected that providing writing rubric containing content and organization aspects precisely in giving feedback and guiding them step by step in taking and giving peer feedback should be considered by the lecturers for better improvement in the future.

British Council’s English for Academic Purposes (EAP) Students’ Manual: A Critical Analysis of the Coursebook Taught at Pakistani Universities for Academic Purposes (EAP) Students’ Manual: A Critical Analysis of the Coursebook Taught at Pakistani Universities

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
English For Academic Purposes ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Teaching Principles

English for Academic Purposes course focusing on the academic language needs of students is a subfield of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). It is a type of specialized course to integrate specific subject matter, language content, and material based on learners’ needs. The study aims to evaluate the British Council’s English for Academic Purposes (EAP) coursebook in terms of content, sequencing, learners’ autonomy, motivation, feedback and focus on language skills. Furthermore, the study tries to provide a general perception of the usefulness and effectiveness of the coursebook for undergraduate students. The EAP Students’ Manual coursebook is used as a primary source for the data collection. The researcher has chosen Nation & Macalister (2010) model of language teaching principles to analyze and discuss the data. The study found the coursebook a useful, effective and an appropriate source of English language learning in terms of the investigated aspects of the book. The findings report that the coursebook provides practice and practical usage in all domains of the academically required English language skills. It helps the students to build language competency and to be more independent learners. In addition, it provides an opportunity to the learners to think in the target language, use the language more practically and learn it in a natural type of environment. The study concludes and suggests that the content needs to be supplemented with English language audios and videos presenting the students relevant documentaries and helping material in order to make the coursebook and the learning process more useful, effective, interesting and motivating. Furthermore, the study recommends that while choosing /designing a coursebook for a certain course, it needs to be evaluated following the various criteria and language-teaching-principles suggested by different language researchers.

Needs Analysis and Teachers' Perceptions: A Study of the English Undergraduate Students

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
English Language ◽  
Needs Analysis ◽  
Learning Needs ◽  
English Learning ◽  
Visual Aids ◽  
Analysis Model ◽  
Classroom Activities ◽  
Teaching Aids

Needs Analysis in the context of language-learning-teaching is an important process to design a certain course and syllabus. It helps course designers to set objectives, choose content, method of instruction, appropriate teaching aids, and classroom activities for different courses. This paper reports the perceptions of the researchers on the English language learning needs of the English undergraduate students of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University Sheringal, Pakistan. The data is based on the researchers’ personal experience and first-hand observation of the population as the researchers have been teaching in the target context for about a decade. Furthermore, the researchers have always been in discussion with their students and colleagues about the target students’ English learning needs, preferred learning styles, motivation in learning English, interest, strengths/weaknesses, and attitude toward English learning in the target setting. Learners’ assignments, exam answer sheets, and presentations have also been used is a source of data collection. A needs analysis model proposed by Hutchinson and Waters (1987) has been applied in order to analyze the data. The results show that the students lack well grammatical sentences, have poor spellings, capitalization problems, limited vocabulary, unaware of collocations, poor/slow reading comprehension, and lack of effective presentation skills. Furthermore, most of the students have a lack of involvement in classroom activities and feel shy about speaking the English language. It was reported that the provision of authentic material, interesting activities, suitable audio-visual aids, relevant texts, language labs, and other logistic arrangements can better help them in learning the English language. The findings demonstrate that the students wished to have a learner-centered-course that helps them excel in their academic life and learning the English language.

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