scholarly journals Features of Disfluent speech by EFL Learners at Taiz University

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 398-409
Author(s):  
Abeer Al-Ghazali
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
English Language ◽  
Speech Sound ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Speech Features ◽  
Faculty Of Education

This paper aims at investigating the features of disfluent speech by EFL learners at Taiz University. Disfluent speech features usually lead to listeners’ negative impressions on the EFL learners’ speech. This paper focuses on repair fluency aspects as fillers, repetitions, restarts and reformulations. Analysing those features contributes to the understanding of the ongoing learner’s needs that should be put into concentration during teaching. The data was collected from 20 level four students of English Language major, Faculty of Education, Taiz University. The participants were asked to narrate the events of a short silent video. The quantitative analysis showed that the participants overused disfluencies such as fillers, prolongations, repetitions, restarts and self-corrections. The mostly present self corrected item was the pronouns. This paper recommends that in order for the EFL learners to make their speech sound more fluent and more natural, they should be firstly introduced to the notion of disfluent speech features, and then they should be trained using some activities that focus on fostering fluency.

scholarly journals Silent Pauses in the Speech of Yemeni EFL Learners

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-48
Author(s):  
Abeer Mohammed Al-Ghazali ◽  
Yasser Alrefaee
Keyword(s):  
Oral Delivery ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Faculty ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Faculty Of Education

Speaking fluently is characterized not only by the speed of oral delivery but also by the absence of non-fluent pauses. This paper aims at investigating the pausing phenomena in the speech of the Yemeni learners of English. It investigated three aspects of silent pauses, the frequency, the placement and the length.  The data were collected from 20 level four students enrolled in the Department English Language, Faculty of Education, Taiz University. The participants were recorded narrating the events of a short silent video immediately after watching it. Data were analyzed quantitatively utilizing the waveform spectrogram software called PRAAT. The findings showed that the Yemeni EFL learners overused non-fluent silent pauses. Additionally, they paused in the middle of the clauses rather than at the clause boundaries. With respect to the mean length of silent pauses, the speech of the EFL learners at Taiz University was full of long silent pauses which took one-third of the total speaking time. Therefore, it is highly suggested that the teachers of English should draw the learners’ attention to the notion of pausing and its effect on speaking fluency in order to lessen or avoid it. Teachers should also vary their activities to help the learners speak fluently without much pausing.

scholarly journals The Effectiveness of Cooperative Learning Activities in Enhancing EFL Learners’ Fluency

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Hassan Alrayah
Keyword(s):  
Cooperative Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Statistical Treatment ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Learning Activities ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Oral Fluency ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Faculty Of Education ◽  
Teaching Learning

This research-paper aims at examining the effectiveness of cooperative learning activities in enhancing EFL learners’ fluency. The researcher has used the descriptive approach, recorded interviews for testing fluency as tools of data collection and the software program SPSS as a tool for the statistical treatment of data. Research sample consists of (48) first year-students, studying English language in the Faculty of Education at Omdurman Islamic University-Sudan. The students were divided into experimental and control groups for the requirement of the research-paper. The program of the experimental group lasted for a whole month in which much practice was conducted through the Cooperative Learning activities for enhancing the experimental group’s fluency. The most important result indicates a statistically significant correlation between the Cooperative Learning activities and the improvement of EFL learners’ oral fluency of speaking. The most important recommendation addresses the concerned authorities to train EFL teachers in the use of Cooperative Learning activities in the teaching/learning process for the purpose of furnishing to generalize their use in the various institutions where English language is studied.

Study of Consonant Pronunciations Errors Committed by EFL Learners

2019 ◽  
pp. 48-56
Author(s):  
Ali Akbar Khansir ◽  
Afsaneh Salehabadi
Keyword(s):  
English Language Learners ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
English Language ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Listening Skill ◽  
English Pronunciation ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Knowledge Of Language

As the topic suggests, the research paper presents Study of Consonant Pronunciations Errors Committed by EFL Learners. Error analysis always tries to resolve language learners’ problems in acquiring second or foreign language setting. Learning to English pronunciation is perhaps as important as learning listening skill, speaking, and spelling. Errors in English pronunciation create several problems for English language learners in their works. In other words, most of the English language errors of pronunciation are due to the lack of knowledge of language learners. However, all the students in our sample are of age group (16-25) at Bushehr language institute and they are all Iranian nationals. In addition, all of them were female learners. An English pronunciation (consonant) test was used to get information about the knowledge of the learners in English pronunciation. Findings of this article indicated that the first and second hypotheses of this article were accepted, but the third hypothesis was rejected. However, the findings of this paper showed that the Iranian EFL students have problem to pronounce English sounds correctly.

Tertiary English-majored Students’ Perceptions toward the Role of Pronunciation in English Language Learning and their Practicing Strategies

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 264-279
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
English Language Learning ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
The University

Accurate pronunciation has a vital role in English language learning as it can help learners to avoid misunderstanding in communication. However, EFL learners in many contexts, especially at the University of Phan Thiet, still encounter many difficulties in pronouncing English correctly. Therefore, this study endeavors to explore English-majored students’ perceptions towards the role of pronunciation in English language learning and examine their pronunciation practicing strategies (PPS). It involved 155 English-majored students at the University of Phan Thiet who answered closed-ended questionnaires and 18 English-majored students who participated in semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed that students strongly believed in the important role of pronunciation in English language learning; however, they sometimes employed PPS for their pronunciation improvement. Furthermore, the results showed that participants tended to use naturalistic practicing strategies and formal practicing strategies with sounds, but they overlooked strategies such as asking for help and cooperating with peers. Such findings could contribute further to the understanding of how students perceive the role of pronunciation and their PPS use in the research’s context and other similar ones. Received 10th June 2019; Revised 12th March 2020; Accepted 12th April 2020

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 Investigating Indonesian EFL learners’ knowledge and use of English causative constructions

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wijaya ◽  
Evelyn Winstin
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Explicit Knowledge ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Sentence Completion ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Causative Constructions ◽  
Functional Aspects ◽  
Improve Instruction ◽  
Causative Construction

Abstract This paper explored Indonesian EFL learners’ explicit knowledge, processing, and use of English periphrastic causative constructions make, have, and get. 20 English L1 speakers and 20 Indonesian intermediate level EFL learners majoring in English Language Education at an Indonesian university took part in this study. Data were collected through a cloze task, a sentence completion task, an interpretation task, and a set of open-ended questions asking learners to provide descriptions about their knowledge of the constructions. Results showed that learners did not always use the first noun strategy to identify the agent in a passive causative construction. Also, their suppliances of the causative verbs in most items did not significantly differ from L1 speakers. However, the syntactic patterns were mostly non-target-like. They demonstrated insufficient explicit knowledge that could enable them to verbalize the formal and functional aspects underlying the constructions. Pedagogical implications along with suggestions to improve instruction are discussed.

Examining the Use of Vocabulary Learning Strategies among EFL Learners in Baghlan University of Afghanistan

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
English Language ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Vocabulary Knowledge ◽  
Social Strategies ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
New Words ◽  
Vocabulary Learning Strategies

Vocabulary learning is one of the problems in language learning skills. Tackling such problems is to provide useful and effective strategies for enhancing students’ VLSs. Therefore, this study aims to survey vocabulary learning strategies (VLSs) utilized among English as a Foreign Language learners (EFL) in Baghlan University of Afghanistan, and to study the high and least frequently used VLSs that contributes to the learners’ vocabulary knowledge. This study utilizes a descriptive quantitative research method with 67 EFL learners who participated in the survey questionnaire adopted from Oxford (1990) taxonomy of VLS from different faculties of Baghlan University. The findings indicated that EFL learners preferably utilize VLSs at a medium level, and the highly used vocabulary learning strategies are the social strategies through which they ask the native speakers, teachers, and classmates for the meanings of new words in English language conversation. Determination, cognitive, and memory strategies are respectively followed by the learners. Whereas, metacognitive strategies are the least used strategies among EFL learners, the reason is that they only focus on the materials related to examination; explore anything about the new words for learning, and rarely think of their improvement in vocabulary learning.

scholarly journals The Role of Learning Resource Centers at the Northern Border University in Increasing the Academic Achievement in English Language Courses

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 139
Author(s):  
Yaser Mohammad Al Sawy
Keyword(s):  
Academic Achievement ◽  
English Language Learners ◽  
English Language ◽  
Strategic Resources ◽  
Northern Border ◽  
Language Courses ◽  
Language Students ◽  
Faculty Of Education ◽  
Constitutive Factor ◽  
The University

The study aims at understanding the relationship between the use of IT applications in the Learning Resources Centers (henceforth, LRCs) at the university and increasing the academic achievement of the English language students at the Faculty of Education and Literature at the Northern Border University? The researcher relied on the research methodology of the field study, which allowed him to collect the views of a random sample of the English language learners at the university to measure and analyze the effectiveness of the use of IT within the LRCs. The study showed that the IT within the LRCs is one of the most important strategic resources at the level of educational institutions and the main factor in the development of its sectors. There is an interest from the Northern Border University on upgrading and supporting the IT infrastructure, especially in education for it is the basis for community development. A high proportion of English Language students at the university are keen on using and applying many of the technological learning media within the LRCs as a constitutive factor in understanding mental processes such as visualization, thinking, learning and creativity which is the first step towards knowledge and innovation.

scholarly journals A Review of Studies on Cognitive and Metacognitive Reading Strategies in Teaching Reading Comprehension for ESL/EFL Learners

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 94
Author(s):  
Aziza M. Ali ◽  
Abu Bakar Razali
Keyword(s):  
English Language Learners ◽  
Reading Comprehension ◽  
Reading Strategies ◽  
English Language ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Written Information ◽  
Efl Teachers ◽  
Correct Reading ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Metacognitive Reading Strategies

Being able to read well is important for English language learners. Through the process of reading, the learner becomes an active participant in producing an interaction with the writer of the text through predicting, analyzing, summarizing and using other types of reading strategies. However, building such a connection between the reader and the written information of the text is complex and for English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL) students, it can be quite difficult for them to apply different types of reading strategies. This article provides a review of literature on 27 studies on the teaching of reading strategies (particularly cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies) for ESL/EFL learners, which reveals that ESL/EFL teachers need to keep updating their teaching methods to meet the ESL/EFL students’ needs, particularly in the use of correct reading strategies. The authors also highlight some of the main issues that prevent ESL/EFL students from improving and developing their reading comprehension. Furthermore, the authors discuss and conclude the article by suggesting to ESL/EFL teachers some teaching strategies to be applied in the reading lesson to improve the ESL/EFL students’ use of reading strategies.

scholarly journals Lexical and semantic errors in the English language teaching in homogenious groups

2021 ◽  
Vol 102 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-149
Author(s):  
G. Akhmetova ◽  
◽  
A. Bizhkenova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
Word Choice ◽  
Homogeneous Groups ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Efl Teacher ◽  
Semantic Errors ◽  
Lexical Competence ◽  
Incorrect Usage

The present research paper discusses the issues of identifying common lexical and semantic mistakes in Kazakh pre-intermediate EFL learners studying in homogeneous groups at university. Words are viewed as powerful tools and when used correctly, words may evoke different feelings and emotions and cause various actions. It’s important to learn how to spot difficult words, correct them timely, and master lexical competence teaching to use the words correctly. The data of the study were collected by learner’s EFL teacher from their final essays. Thirty-one essays were used as the instrument of the study to obtain real language from the participants. The authors of the study hope that the results of the conducted research would contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon of lexical and semantic errors in English language teaching which will help teachers to elaborate the differentiated tasks and ways of explaining new vocabulary preventing students’ misunderstanding. Furthermore, the results of the presented research can serve as guidance and be used in compiling EFL textbooks for Kazakhstani students. As a result, researchers managed to classify lexical and semantic errors in English language teaching, identified frequent errors, and described their causes. The findings of the research illustrate that the participants of the study make errors of word choice and incorrect collocations the most. Moreover, incorrect usage of the preposition and literal translation from L1 are included in the frequent mistakes

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