Empowering new generations with technology through employing blended learning approach to teach English as a Foreign Language has been recently investigated by many researchers in various contexts. This mixed-methods study aimed at examining the effects of the blended learning approach on Jordanian EFL learners' grammar performance. The study also aimed at investigating the attitudes of Jordanian EFL learners toward blended learning. To achieve the objectives of the study, it employed a quasi-experimental design (pre and posttests) followed by qualitative interviews. The participants were divided into two groups: experimental and control groups. Among the 28 students in the sample, those in the experimental blended learning group (n=13) were taught using Moodle while those in the control group (n=15) were taught using conventional methods. All the 13 participants in the experimental group were interviewed. The results of the posttest revealed that students in the experimental group outperformed students in the control group. Furthermore, the qualitative analysis results showed that blended learning had a positive impact on the learners' English grammar performance and that they were strongly satisfied and motivated to learn English using similar methods. It is concluded that blended learning could be used as an effective method of teaching English grammar in EFL settings. It is hoped that these results will help the university, faculty, and students to develop the skills necessary for blended learning.

Empowering new generations with technology through employing blended learning approach to teach English as a Foreign Language has been recently investigated by many researchers in various contexts. This mixed-methods study aimed at examining the effects of the blended learning approach on Jordanian EFL learners' grammar performance. The study also aimed at investigating the attitudes of Jordanian EFL learners toward blended learning. To achieve the objectives of the study, it employed a quasi-experimental design (pre and posttests) followed by qualitative interviews. The participants were divided into two groups: experimental and control groups. Among the 28 students in the sample, those in the experimental blended learning group (n=13) were taught using Moodle while those in the control group (n=15) were taught using conventional methods. All the 13 participants in the experimental group were interviewed. The results of the posttest revealed that students in the experimental group outperformed students in the control group. Furthermore, the qualitative analysis results showed that blended learning had a positive impact on the learners' English grammar performance and that they were strongly satisfied and motivated to learn English using similar methods. It is concluded that blended learning could be used as an effective method of teaching English grammar in EFL settings. It is hoped that these results will help the university, faculty, and students to develop the skills necessary for blended learning.

Most apology studies in the Jordanian context have investigated apologies based on a corpus of elicited data. Rarely have apologies been observed in the natural data; nor have the contextual factors that obligated these apologies been considered. This study is based on a corpus of 1100 naturally occurring apology events, collected through an ethnographic observation. Semi-structured interview was also used to examine the influence of contextual factors (social status, social distance, and severity of offence) on the choice of apology strategies. The respondents for this study were selected via convenient sampling. The naturally occurring apologies were coded using a modified version of the apology strategy typology outlined by Olshtain and Cohen (1983). There are series of findings that are worth noting; the first is that, acknowledging responsibility was the most common apology strategy in Jordanian Arabic. Second, acknowledging responsibility and swearing by God's name, formed the most frequent combination of apology strategies in this language. Third, another strategy that was high on the percentage of occurrence and deserving discussion was the nonapology strategies. Fourth, the selections of apology strategies were influenced by social status more than the degree of the severity of the offence or the social distance. Last but not least, new culture-specific apology strategies were detected in the corpus and elaborated in the paper. The findings of the study will assist material developers in preparing for resource books or modules for teaching and training of language and cultural awareness. The findings can also be used to raise the awareness about the sociocultural rules that govern the use of language functions.

The study investigates the types of speech acts in the status updates posted by young Jordanian Facebookers. The data were elicited from 200 students from two Jordanian universities, Irbid National University and Jadara University. To deal with content analysis data, the researchers created a special scheme based on Searel's taxonomy. Six speech acts were found in students' status updates on Facebook: expressive, assertive, directives, God's invocation, quotation and humor. Also the study findings evidently indicate that the cultural norms and religious background profoundly rooted in all participants can strongly affect their linguistic choices in their native language. It is hoped that the results would help those involved in teaching and learning Arabic as a second/foreign language.

This study is an investigation into the apology strategies adopted by Jordanian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) graduate students in various situational settings. The objective of this study is to highlight the influence of social status and social distance on the choice of apology strategies. Data were collected through Discourse Completion Tasks (DCT) and semi structured interviews. Briefly, the findings revealed that most the students used Illocutionary Force Indicating Device (IFID) and accept responsibility strategies. Other new strategies (arrogance and ignorance, blame something else, swearing) which fall outside the model adopted from Cohen & Olshtain also appeared in the subjects' responses. The newly detected strategies are culture-specific acts that are deeply rooted in the Jordanian society. The findings also showed that the choice of the apology strategy is affected by social status more than social distance.