scholarly journals The Effect of Explicit Instruction of Requests on Saudi EFL learners using a pre-test, post-test Approach

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Israa A Qari

The aim of the current study is to test whether explicit instruction of various L2 request forms can be a useful measure in developing Saudi learners’ linguistic and pragmatic competences. This study is based on the results obtained from a previous research investigating interlanguage requests. The findings in that study suggested that the second language learners were not aware of some of the request strategies which were exclusively employed by the British English native speakers. The aim and the question of this study is to find out whether explicit instruction of request strategies will be effective in helping Saudi EFL learners gain linguistic knowledge and achieve pragmatic appropriateness in making requests in L2. Thirty female foundation year students participated in this study. They were all EFL learners studying at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The group underwent three phases of instruction: pre-test, instruction/intervention, and post-test. The first and last phases consisted of written questionnaires which were distributed right before and after the instruction phase. The results showed that in the third phase, the students demonstrated great progress in their understanding of request forms in L2. Their improvement was manifested by the learners’ acknowledgement of these forms as proper employment of request strategies in English, recognition of request function names, ability to assign correct functions to linguistic realizations and their overall understanding of the appropriate use of these forms dictated by the weightiness of different request situations.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-127
Author(s):  
Israa A Qari

The aim of the current study is to test whether explicit instruction of various L2 request forms can be a useful measure in developing Saudi learners’ linguistic and pragmatic competences. This study is based on the results obtained from a previous research investigating interlanguage requests. The findings in that study suggested that the second language learners were not aware of some of the request strategies which were exclusively employed by the British English native speakers. The aim and the question of this study is to find out whether explicit instruction of request strategies will be effective in helping Saudi EFL learners gain linguistic knowledge and achieve pragmatic appropriateness in making requests in L2. Thirty female foundation year students participated in this study. They were all EFL learners studying at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The group underwent three phases of instruction: pre-test, instruction/intervention, and post-test. The first and last phases consisted of written questionnaires which were distributed right before and after the instruction phase. The results showed that in the third phase, the students demonstrated great progress in their understanding of request forms in L2. Their improvement was manifested by the learners’ acknowledgement of these forms as proper employment of request strategies in English, recognition of request function names, ability to assign correct functions to linguistic realizations and their overall understanding of the appropriate use of these forms dictated by the weightiness of different request situations.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elahe Sadeghi ◽  
Akbar Afghari ◽  
Gholam-Reza Zarei

<p>Reading comprehension has been the main concern for second language learners and researchers. Today with rising interests towards Vygotskyan Sociocultural Theory (SCT), attempts have been made to insert Vygotskyan approach into Foreign/Second Language classrooms emphasizing the role of scaffolding and meaningful interactions to promote learners’ comprehension. Having this on mind, the current study used shadow-reading as a means of meaning internalization to see if it affects on reading comprehension. To this end, 52 junior EFL learners from two universities were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. A pretest of reading comprehension including 4 reading passages with 20 Multiple Choice items was administered to the learners to see if they were at the similar level of reading comprehension. During 10 sessions, the learners were provided with shadow-reading strategy in which they were required to listen and repeat the passage in a well-disciplined imitative task and, then summarize what they had comprehended from the text. A reading comprehension post test was also administered at the end of the semester after 10 sessions of conducting shadowing. The data of the first and the last sessions was analysed. The findings of the study showed that shadow-reading has significantly influenced learners’ comprehension. The results also lent support to Vygotskyan theory in that using shadowing as a means of meaningful imitation and interaction facilitates comprehension among learners. The results also shed light on the way through which instructors try to promote learners’ comprehension. It seems that shadow reading due to its sociocultural traits can be used as an appropriate means of promoting reading comprehension all over the world.</p>


Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Antoni Fernandez Parera

This article investigates the effects that Mindful Conceptual Engagement (MCE) had on the teaching of the Spanish subjunctive on second (L2) and heritage language learners (HL) of Spanish. A total of 26 university-level undergraduate students participated in the study; 12 were advanced L2 students and 14 were intermediate HL students. The methodology used was MCE, which is based on the principles of Concept-Based Instruction (Negueruela 2003; Negueruela and Lantolf 2006). MCE has its origins in Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and it proposes that the creation and manipulation of didactic models by students promotes the internalization of complex grammatical concepts that would otherwise require long grammatical explanations. Models need to be generalizable and informative and can include, for example, flowcharts, pictures, or schemas among others. In the present study, the concept of [±EXPERIENCE] (Bull 1965) was used to teach the variable uses of indicative and subjunctive in adjectival relative clauses (Busco unas tijeras que cortan/corten). Students had to create their own models and use them to complete a series of assignments in class and at home. Production and interpretation exercises were used in pre- and post-test questionnaires to gauge their improvement. Feedback questionnaires were administered three weeks after the intervention to measure the attitudes and perceptions towards the use of didactic models. Results indicate that both groups improved their indicative/subjunctive interpretation and production abilities after MCE. However, statistically significant differences exist between HL and L2 students according to type of task and student group. Feedback questionnaire results also show that MCE was regarded as positive and useful by both groups.


2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derrin Pinto

This cross-sectional study in interlanguage pragmatics analyzes the requests employed by English-speaking learners of L2 Spanish, using data collected from university students at four different levels of language learning. The most common request strategies are first identified in a cross-linguistic analysis of Spanish and English and are then compared to the interlanguage data. The requests of lower-level students are found to be more idiosyncratic and pragmatically ambiguous than those of advanced learners, although not necessarily more direct. Advanced learners show signs of improvement, but still rely largely on L1 request behavior. Learners at all levels display more difficulties in areas in which there is cross-linguistic variation between the L1 and L2.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-214
Author(s):  
Hanna Kivistö-de Souza

Abstract: This study examined to what extent L1 Brazilian Portuguese (BP) EFL learners are aware of L2 phonotactics and whether there would be a relationship between L2 phonotactic awareness and L2 pronunciation accuracy. The language learners were tested regarding their awareness of L2 onset consonant clusters with a lexical decision task presenting nonword stimuli with legal and illegal onset clusters. L2 pronunciation was measured with a Foreign Accent Rating Task. The results showed that L1 BP participants showed a high awareness concerning L2 phonotactics, not differing from L1 English speakers, t(86)=.20, p =.83. Furthermore, high phonotactic awareness was found to be related to higher accuracy in L2 pronunciation (r= -.46, p <.001). The results suggest that phonotactics should be taught in foreign language classrooms since increasing learners’ awareness might be beneficial for the accuracy of their L2 pronunciation.


sjesr ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 268-274
Author(s):  
Dr. Shaukat Ali ◽  
Mr. Saddam Hussain ◽  
Mr. Iftekhar Ali

This study investigates the effect of poems as language teaching materials on the discourse competence of English as a second language learners (ESL) learners. Discourse competence is one of the sub-skills of English speaking skills which has further been divided into two sub-skills called 1) organizing a coherent conversation and 2) then maintaining it. It was a quasi-experimental study consisting of a control group (CG) and an experimental group (EG) from the faculty of social sciences, University of Malakand, Pakistan. They were the students of the third semester and were taught English as a minor course. Before the commencement of the experiment, the students of both groups were subjected to a speaking type pre-test. Immediately after the pre-test, the control group was taught through traditional teaching materials whereas; the treatment group was treated with poems as teaching materials. Moreover, observation field notes were employed to find out the reasons behind the performance of the students of both groups. After a six-week experiment, a post-test similar in nature to the pre-test was dispensed among the groups. The scores of the respondents of both groups were compared by using independent samples t-tests. The outcomes indicated that the learners in the treatment group scored significantly higher on the post-test than the learners in the comparison group. The observation field notes further displayed that the students of the treatment group were actively involved in the language learning process. Moreover, they associated the text of poetry with their, socio-cultural, and personal lives. Additionally, they enjoyed greater autonomy due to ambiguity and universality in the texts of the poems. The study suggests that poems should be utilized as teaching materials in ESL classrooms.


Author(s):  
Selami Aydin ◽  
Emrah Özdemir

Not many studies have been present on the effects of blogging, particularly with respect to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing motivation. Those studies did not focus on the effect of the use of blogs on Turkish EFL learners' writing motivation. Thus, this chapter examines how the use of blogs affects EFL writing motivation among EFL learners in a Turkish EFL learning context. A questionnaire interrogating demographic information, a pre-test and a post-test measuring writing achievement were administered to a group of participants including 48 language learners. According to results, blogging on its own does not increase motivation; however, the process-based writing instruction mainly has positive influences on EFL learners' motivation in both traditional pen-paper and blog environments. Thus, EFL teachers need to know that the use of blogs does not increase motivation among Turkish EFL learners. To increase their motivation level, it is also recommended that teachers should use a writing environment where their students are encouraged to write in the target language.


2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karim Sadeghi

Collocations are one of the areas that produce problems for learners of English as a foreign language. Iranian learners of English are by no means an exception. Teaching experience at schools, private language centers, and universities in Iran suggests that a significant part of EFL learners’ problems with producing the language, especially at lower levels of proficiency, can be traced back to the areas where there is a difference between source- and target-language word partners. As an example, whereas people in English make mistakes, Iranians do mistakes when speaking Farsi (Iran’s official language, also called Persian) or Azari (a Turkic language spoken mainly in the north west of Iran). Accordingly, many beginning EFL learners in Iran are tempted to produce the latter incorrect form rather than its acceptable counterpart in English. This is a comparative study of Farsi (Persian) and English collocations with respect to lexis and grammar. The results of the study, with 76 participants who sat a 60-item Farsi (Persian)- English test of collocations, indicated that learners are most likely to face great obstacles in cases where they negatively transfer their linguistic knowledge of the L1 to an L2 context. The findings of this study have some immediate implications for both language learners and teachers of EFL/ESL, as well as for writers of materials.


1989 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Hawkins

Much of the work on the second language acquisition of restrictive relative clauses has made reference to the similarities between learners' order of diffi culty and Keenan and Comrie's (1977) typologically determined noun phrase accessibility hierarchy for relativisation (AH). There has been little considera tion, however, of whether this 'theory of markedness' (for that is the implica tion of citing the AH in the context of second language learning) actually determines the way that second language learners develop rules for restrictive relative clauses. The present study examines the way that learners of L2 French construct rules for French relativiser morphology from this perspective. It is found that there is no evidence to support the view that learners make use of a theory of markedness like the AH in constructing such rules. Rather, learners appear to construct rules on the basis of the linear ordering of the constituents of restrictive relative clauses in surface configurations. From the evidence it is suggested that 'markedness' in the development of L2 restrictive relative clauses is not a feature of the grammatical component of learners' linguistic knowledge, but is a feature of their L2 processing capacity.


1998 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 63-69
Author(s):  
Hilde Hacquebord

Second-language learners need a vocabulary course that they can apply in content areas. Although many schools opt for a reading curriculum to support weak readers, many L2-readers still have difficulties at the word level. In the reading course Weet wat je Leest (Know what you are reading'), there is a vocabulary course especially for L2-readers. It is designed along the principles of 'natural word acquisition', in which attention to the unknown word and elaboration of its meaning on the basis of the co-text is important. Vocabulary learning strategies are presented in such a way that language learners can deal with it in a cooperative way. Cooperation between language teachers and subject teachers is also very important in this project. The experimental reading/vocabulary course has been implemented in several schools. Only 45 students took part in the vocabulary course, and were able to improve their results with respect to word knowledge. Also the control group improved on word knowledge, be it not to the same extent. In a small-scale study, we observed a number of students in the vocabulary course. It appeared that especially the 'overestimators' in the program among them improved their metalinguistic ability with respect to word knowledge, whereas the control Werestimators' did not; they even had lower scores on the post-test.


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