Foreign language anxiety plays an essential role in language learning and negatively impacts on the whole learning process. This research aims to explore the Saudi learners' perceptions of speaking anxiety in language classrooms and provide some effective and helpful solutions for reducing it. The sample of this study involved 10 Saudi female students, studying their foundation year at the English Language Institute (ELI), King Abdulaziz University. Their ages range between 18 to 20 years old. To reach a richer insight and better understanding of the research phenomenon, a qualitative approach was conducted. For gathering data, ten semistructured interviews with ten Saudi female students from levels 102, 103, and 104 were used and then thematically analyzed using Nvivo 10 software. The qualitative data found that Saudi female students do feel worried and anxious in foreign language classrooms when speaking the foreign language. However, they showed a positive attitude and a willingness to improve their English speaking proficiency level as a way of reducing anxiety by watching English movies, using English internet sites, traveling abroad and talking to native speakers, doing more presentations, practice reading English books and joining English institutes during summer vacation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of web blogs as a supplementary tool for teaching English. It focuses on studying the effectiveness of using blog exchanges for enhancing the Saudi female university students' English writing, especially the vocabulary usage. The participants of the current study were thirty-seven Saudi female preparatory year students from the English Language Institute (ELI) at King Abdulaziz University (KAU). Their ages ranged between 18 to 20 years of age. All participants were studying level 103 of the Oxford Headway Plus curriculum, at the third quarter of the academic year 2015-2016. The study hypothesized that there is a positive impact of using web blogs as a supplementary tool in improving the students' writing skill, especially the use of vocabulary. This research reports on an experimental design study using a quantitative approach. The study also used blog entries and pre/post-tests as primary data collection methods. The pre-test and post-test consisted of 50 vocabulary scale test items. They were taken to measure the differences in participants' writing performance after 7 weeks of intervention. A paired-sample t-test was utilized for statistical analysis to determine if there were any improvements in the students' writing performance. The findings indicated an improvement in the students' writing performance after using the blog entries. In addition, the research experiment contributed to the extension of their vocabulary knowledge.

The aim of the current study is to investigate the Saudi English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ preferences for corrective feedback on written assignments. This mixed-method study used a closed-ended Likert scale questionnaire that was adopted and adapted to suit the participants under investigation. Additionally, an open-ended question was used to gain more insight. Both instruments were completed by 114 Saudi female EFL learners whose ages ranged from 12 to 13 years old and who were studying in the seventh grade at a private school in Jeddah. The instruments were given to the learners after 6 weeks of implementing three different types of feedback on written assignments. The quantitative part of the study was descriptively analysed using SPSS to find the learners’ preferences in corrective feedback, and a one-way ANOVA was used to find the differences between learners’ preferences among groups. The qualitative part of the study was thematically categorised and manually analysed using Excel. The findings revealed that the learners’ preferences did not vary according to the type of corrective feedback. However, the vast majority of learners preferred having constructive feedback on how to correct their mistakes. Additionally, learners preferred the use of electronic devices to receive corrective feedback. This study suggests that teachers consider learners’ preferences on corrective feedback so that they can incorporate these into their teaching plans.

Since oral participation is one of the most observable phenomena in language classes, it has been noticed that students often suffer from a considerable level of anxiety in EFL classrooms. Although numerous studies have tackled this issue, particular attention to Saudi learners' perspectives of the main causes of speaking anxiety is needed. Therefore, this research aims to explore the main causes of speaking anxiety that Saudi EFL learners encounter in their language classrooms. The sample of this study involved 126 ELI Saudi female students studying their foundation year at King Abdulaziza University and whose ages range between 18 to 20 years old. To reach a better and clear understanding of the research phenomenon, a mixed-method approach was used. For gathering data, two instruments were utilized; a semi-structured interview with ten students from level 102, 103, and 104 and an online based questionnaire with 116 students from level 102 and 103. The quantitative data were analyzed through descriptive statistics, and the qualitative data were thematically analyzed. The qualitative data found that the main causes of speaking anxiety were: Teachers' role in raising or reducing anxiety, lack of vocabulary, the weak educational system at schools, test anxiety, and peer anxiety. On the other hand, the quantitative data categorized speaking anxiety into three main domains: causes related to the classroom atmosphere, causes related to the EFL teachers, and others related to the test.

The possibility of relatively anonymous communication involving no physical proximity means that Internet discussion forums offer opportunities for cross-gender communication that do not necessarily violate Saudi Arabian rules for behavior. This article studies participation in a public discussion forum for expatriate Saudi students. Building on a previous article that established the extent to which participants disclose their gender in the forum, it investigates the extent to which participants take advantage of the opportunity for mixed communication online, their attitudes towards it, and their reactions when it occurs. It analyzes in detail the cross-gender exchanges that occur in the corpus, together with remarks made by participants about this issue, in order to determine the circumstances under which mixed communication is seen as appropriate in this forum.

To promote independent extensive listening, the aim of this study is to investigate Saudi preparatory level students' and their teachers' perception about podcasts' criteria and contents to include in an extensive supplementary listening pack. An exploratory sequential design was adopted to collect data. The results of the focus group thematic analysis helped designing an online close-ended survey. The participants were 120 students and teachers sampled from the four proficiency levels of the English Language Institute (ELI) at King Abdulaziz University (KAU) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The findings of the study revealed that teachers were more familiar with the podcasts than students. Furthermore, all participants had a positive attitude toward using a listening instructional supplementary pack that can include few short authentic podcasts. They recommended using various challenging topics that are related to students' interests and proficiency levels. This study contributes to the literature of integrating podcasts to enhance extensive listening. It recommends designing an extensive listening supplementary pack based on Vandergrift and Goh's (2012) metacognitive approach and testing its suitability for application.

This research explores female EFL instructors’ perceptions of the effect of the professional development provided by the English Language Institute (ELI) at King Abdul-Aziz University (KAU) on their self-efficacy and the type of professional development training that they feel has the greatest effect on their sense of self-efficacy. This research is based on Bandura’s (1977) social cognitive theory and its subset of self-efficacy. In order to achieve its objective, this qualitative study incorporated semi-structured interviews with six EFL female instructors within the ELI at KAU, Saudi Arabia. The study results revealed that the instructors had positive perceptions of the professional development they received at the ELI in terms of enhancing their efficacy beliefs, as it enabled an opportunity for professional enhancement, positively influenced teaching practice to help students’ learning, and developed a positive atmosphere of collegiality and collaboration. Additionally, the participants demonstrated a positive attitude toward the ELI’s mentoring program, as it enabled them to be inspired by an expert in the field, improved their teaching competencies, and created a feeling of professionalism. However, the participants held a conflicting view of the effect of classroom observation on instructors’ self-efficacy. Some believed that observations represent an important professional development tool that helps improve their performance, while others perceived it as a source of efficacy doubt. Based on the research results, this study bridged a gap in the current literature and contributed to knowledge on EFL instructors’ self-efficacy and how it could be influenced by professional development activities.

Studies on the effects of various strategies to improve vocabulary have documented the important role of input and output in terms of long-term retention of lexical items. Nowadays, the world is witnessing a growing interest in wearable devices. Considerable attention has been paid specifically to virtual reality (VR) headsets or smart Goggles and their abilities to engage their users. This paper examined whether virtual reality headsets help (N=20) Saudi female ESP postgraduates enrolled in the Didactic Terminologies in English Course to retain vocabulary related to their field. For six weeks, the students interacted with virtual objects through watching 360 degrees videos related to basic skills in counseling and some cases that require consultation and referral. For example, depression, addiction, suicide, autism, violence, domestic violence, bullying, and impulsive behavior. A pre and a post tests scores were compared by a paired sample t-test to examine the effect of the virtual reality videos on their vocabulary retention. The results showed a highly significant difference between the two tests with a (P< 0.001), and the mean scores between a pre and a post-tests pointed out that an alteration in favor to the post-test where students indicated the most improvement. The results demonstrated that virtual reality videos actually helped the postgraduate students to retain ESP vocabulary and therefore develop their competence level. Future work could investigate the perception of using virtual reality headsets to improve ESP vocabulary.