scholarly journals An Attitudinal Study of English as a Foreign Language in Sukkur Sindh Pakistan

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
Ashfaque Hussain Soomro ◽  
Zaheer Ahmed Bango ◽  
Imran Khan Mahesar
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Foreign Language Learning ◽  
Target Population ◽  
Learning Attitudes ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
Complex Process

<p><em>Foreign language learning is a complex process and is influenced by various factors. The attitude of students towards language learning is a major decisive factor in this process; therefore, the current study was carried out to explore this phenomenon. The students of English Works Program Sukkur, Sindh, Pakistan were the target population for the current study. The said program was initiated by a Karachi based organization which enrolled fifty students for a 240 hours certificate course in English language. The students already had some formal education ranging from Intermediate to Masters level and belonged to different age groups. The aim of this quantitative study was to investigate their language learning attitudes from three aspects: behavioral, cognitive and emotional. For data collection purposes, a questionnaire comprising 30 closed-ended items was adapted from Eshghinejad, (2016), Boonrangsri, Chuaymankhong, Rermyindee, &amp; Vongchittpinyo, (2004) and Gardner (1985). This was followed by descriptive and inferential statistical analysis by using independent sample t-test (SPSS-22). The results show that the students have positive attitudes towards learning English as a foreign language.</em></p><p> </p>

scholarly journals Attitudes and Usage of MALL Among Saudi University EFL Students

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 407
Author(s):  
Turki Rabah Al Mukhallafi
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Foreign Language Learning ◽  
Systematic Sampling ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
Northern Border ◽  
Future Challenges ◽  
Chi Squared ◽  
Learning English

Possessing distinctive features of mobility, portability, and connectivity, mobile technology has inevitably become an integrated part of everyday instructional practices and activities. Foreign language learning, especially English language, could gain substantial benefits from these advances in technology to enhance learning experiences and respond to learners&rsquo; various needs and interests. There is a far-reaching investment in mobile learning projects at many Saudi Arabian universities including King Abdul Aziz University and Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University. Moreover, the Ministry of Higher Education has a long-term plan known as &ldquo;The Afaq Project&rdquo; which is examining the current and future challenges for implementing online learning in all universities. Hence, the current study aims to examine students&rsquo; attitudes towards and their usage of smart phones when learning English as a foreign language. A questionnaire was designed and distributed among first year university students at the Northern Border University in Saudi Arabia. It included 25 items, each with varies in responses. A systematic sampling approach was adopted to choose the participants for this study.The duration of administering the questionnaire was from November 2017 to December 2017 and it was applied to 205 students.The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) program was used for data analysis of the questionnaire responses.The final data were used to test the hypothesis of the research using the Chi-Squared method applied to a frequency table.Results revealed that students have positive attitudes towards using mobiles phones and that they were very interested in learning English by using technology.

Machine Translation for EFL

Relay Journal ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 228-235
Author(s):  
Paul J. Moore ◽  
Phil Murphy ◽  
Luann Pascucci ◽  
Scott Sustenance
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Machine Translation ◽  
English Language ◽  
Foreign Language Learning ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Technical Developments ◽  
English Language Institute ◽  
Changing Role

This paper reports on an ongoing study into the affordances of free online machine translation for students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) at the tertiary level in Japan. The researchers are currently collecting data from a questionnaire, task performance, and interviews with 10-15 EFL learners in an English Language Institute in a university in Japan. The paper provides some background on the changing role of translation in language learning theory and pedagogy, before focusing literature related to technical developments in machine translation technology, and its application to foreign language learning. An overview of the research methodology is provided, along with some insights into potential findings. Findings will be presented in subsequent publications.

scholarly journals Foreign Language Learning Gamification Using Virtual Reality—A Systematic Review of Empirical Research

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 222
Author(s):  
Rafael Darque Pinto ◽  
Bruno Peixoto ◽  
Miguel Melo ◽  
Luciana Cabral ◽  
Maximino Bessa
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Second Language Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Foreign Language Learning ◽  
Traditional Approaches

Virtual reality has shown to have great potential as an educational tool when it comes to new learning methods. With the growth and dissemination of this technology, there is a massive opportunity for teachers to add this technology to their methods of teaching a second/foreign language, since students keep showing a growing interest in new technologies. This systematic review of empirical research aims at understanding whether the use of gaming strategies in virtual reality is beneficial for the learning of a second/foreign language or not. Results show that more than half of the articles proved that virtual reality technologies with gaming strategies can be used to learn a foreign language. It was also found that “learning” was the most evaluated dependent variable among the chosen records, augmented reality was the leading technology used, primary education and lower secondary was the most researched school stages, and the most used language to evaluate the use of gamified technology was by far the English language. Given the lack of directed investigation, it is recommended to use these technologies to support second language learning and not entirely replace traditional approaches. A research agenda is also proposed by the authors.

scholarly journals Listening Skill Requires a Further Look into Second/Foreign Language Learning

2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hossein Bozorgian
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
English Language ◽  
Foreign Language Learning ◽  
Strongly Correlated ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Listening Skill ◽  
Reading History

Current English-as-a-second and foreign-language (ESL/EFL) research has encouraged to treat each communicative macroskill separately due to space constraint, but the interrelationship among these skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) is not paid due attention. This study attempts to examine first the existing relationship among the four dominant skills, second the potential impact of reading background on the overall language proficiency, and finally the relationship between listening and overall language proficiency as listening is considered an overlooked/passive skill in the pedagogy of the second/foreign language classroom. However, the literature in language learning has revealed that listening skill has salient importance in both first and second language learning. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of each of four skills in EFL learning and their existing interrelationships in an EFL setting. The outcome of 701 Iranian applicants undertaking International English Language Testing System (IELTS) in Tehran demonstrates that all communicative macroskills have varied correlations from moderate (reading and writing) to high (listening and reading). The findings also show that the applicants’ reading history assisted them in better performing at high stakes tests, and what is more, listening skill was strongly correlated with the overall language proficiency.

English Major Students' Attitudes towards Movies and Series as Language Learning Resources

2015 ◽  
pp. 276-295
Author(s):  
Buğra Zengin ◽  
Duygu Doğan ◽  
Feryal Çubukçu
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Foreign Language Learning ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
Learning Resources ◽  
Original Language ◽  
English Major ◽  
Students Attitudes ◽  
Low Exposure

This chapter focuses on the attitudes of the fourth-year English Language Teaching (ELT) students towards strategies related to using movies and series as foreign language learning resources. The subjects were teacher candidates (at a state university in the west of Turkey). The current study demonstrates that foreign-language majors are not immune to downsides of a low-exposure EFL setting. The participants also state that only their family members - but not friends - are likely to cause a shift to the dubbed version of movie/series they want to view in the original language and with L2 captions (intralingual captions / in the source language) otherwise. This study suggests that backseat TV systems on buses can provide solutions. The backseat TV systems are welcome by most of the participants, in particular by those whose intercity travelling habits are found to be quite high.

Why don’t “real men” learn languages? Masculinity threat and gender ideology suppress men’s language learning motivation

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Everhart Chaffee ◽  
Nigel Mantou Lou ◽  
Kimberly A. Noels ◽  
Joshua W. Katz
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Gender Ideology ◽  
Foreign Language Learning ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Gender Ideologies ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
Masculinity Threat ◽  
Traditional Masculinity

Large gender disparities in participation still exist across many university subjects and career fields, but few studies have examined factors that account for gender gaps in female-dominated disciplines. We examine one possible cause: threatened masculinity among men who hold traditional gender ideologies. Past research has linked endorsement of traditional gender ideologies to gender-stereotypical occupational choices, and threats to masculinity can lead men to distance themselves from femininity. After confirming that 1,672 undergraduates stereotyped language learning as feminine, we applied a masculinity threat manipulation to investigate 182 men’s disinterest in studying foreign languages, a female-dominated university subject. Men with traditional masculinity ideologies reported less interest in foreign language study and less positive attitudes towards foreign languages following masculinity threat, compared to men whose masculinity was affirmed or who held less traditional masculinity beliefs. Traditional masculine gender roles may lead some men to avoid feminine-typed domains, such as foreign language learning.

The Role of the Future Civil Engineers' Motivation in the Foreign Language Learning

2015 ◽  
Vol 725-726 ◽  
pp. 1646-1652 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Kukushkina
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Foreign Language Learning ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Foreign Language Education ◽  
Technical Students ◽  
The Future ◽  
Civil Engineers

The article is dedicated to the changes happening in the sphere of higher education and concerning the foreign language education of the future civil engineers. The research held studies the main motivational factors for English language learning among the students of the Institute of Civil Engineering. The conclusions made are meant to improve the system of technical students’ foreign language education .

Learning a foreign language by cochlear implant users

2017 ◽  
Vol LXXVIII (1) ◽  
pp. 17-27
Author(s):  
Ewa Domagała-Zyśk ◽  
Agnieszka Kłos-Dacka
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Cochlear Implants ◽  
Hard Of Hearing ◽  
English Language ◽  
Foreign Language Learning ◽  
Independent Learning ◽  
Hearing Impairments ◽  
Communication Techniques ◽  
And Performance

Learning a foreign language is a special challenge for students with hearing impairments as it requires not only developing necessary strategies to learn all language skills in another language, but also overcoming specific perceptual and performance difficulties. The methodology of foreign language teaching to students with hearing impairments describes this process with reference to deaf and hard-of-hearing students of various ages who have various degrees of hearing impairment and who use various communication techniques. However, experiences relating to foreign language learning by people with cochlear implants have not been studied so far. These are students with unique characteristics whose hearing impairments are usually severe or profound and, at the same time, whose functioning is similar to the functioning of hard-of-hearing people thanks to their cochlear implants. It is assumed that their full inclusion in education in mainstream schools and social integration are possible.The article presents the issue of teaching the English language as a foreign language to students with hearing impairments who use cochlear implants (three case studies), especially in the context of the level of independent learning, beliefs concerning foreign language learning, foreign language classroom anxiety or lack of anxiety, and the scope of learning to read, write, speak and listen in a foreign language. In the study, a questionnaire designed by the authors was used as well as the scale FLCAS (Horwitz, Horwitz, Cope, 1986), autonomous scale (Macaskill, Taylor, 2010) and subscale BALLI (Horowitz, 1999).

scholarly journals The use of Self-regulated Language Learning Strategies Among Vietnamese English-majored Freshmen: A Case Study

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tran Quoc Thao ◽  
Nguyen Chau Hoang Long
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
English Language ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Foreign Language Learning ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Language Learning Strategies ◽  
Efl Learners

Self-regulation of learning plays a vital role in improving second/foreign language learning as it can encourage the development of autonomous learners. It is seen that, nevertheless, ESL/EFL learners in different contexts are not fully aware of the importance of self-regulated language learning (SRLL) strategies in their English language learning. The present study, therefore, aims at investigating the use of SRLL strategies by English-majored students at a university in Bac Lieu province, Vietnam. This study involved 100 English-majored freshmen in answering a closed-ended questionnaire. The results showed that students sometimes used SRLL strategies, and they used SRLL strategies for keeping and monitoring records and seeking social assistance more often than for other purposes. The findings imply that students lacked knowledge of how to use SRLL strategies and get engaged in using SRLL strategies. This study recommends that students’ awareness of SRLL strategies should be seriously taken into account in order to facilitate their learner autonomy.

scholarly journals The Importance Of Self-Efficacy And Foreign Language Learning In The 21st Century

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 117-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taghi Jabbarifar
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
English Language ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Cognitive Theory ◽  
Foreign Language Learning ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Social

Two decades have now passed since Bandura (1986) introduced the concept of self-efficacy within the social cognitive theory of human behavior. He defined it as "people's judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances (1986). Much empirical evidence now supports the idea that self-efficacy touches almost every aspect of people's lives including foreign language learning; However, it has apparently received the least attention compared to other cognitive and affective issues. The present article attempts to shed some light on importance of the concept of self-efficacy, the role it can play in foreign language learning and the pedagogical implications it may have for foreign language teachers and the students of English language in the end of the first decade of the twenty first century.

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