Abstract—The present study highlights the main challenges faced by EFL student teachers (STs) of the Department of English - College of Basic Education - University of Sulaimani during their teaching practice. To investigate the challenges, a closed-ended questionnaire is designed which consists of 20 items focusing on a variety of relevant issues of practicum experience. The questionnaire is given to 50 EFL STs and the collected data is statistically analyzed. The study hypothesizes that EFL STs might have serious challenges in their teaching at basic schools, which could be related to the lack of motivation of basic school students, shortage of practicum period, supervisors’ evaluation, and lack of teaching technology. These challenges are proved true after the analysis of the data. Based on the conclusions of this current study, it is recommended that Kurdish EFL STs should be familiarized with different aspects of teaching profession. To this end, the university stakeholders should design a specialized program for ST practicum and create a strong link with basic school programs. The conclusions and recommendations could be taken into consideration by the STs, university teaching staff, and basic school principals to overcome the challenges and improve the practicum process. Thus, the study could have potentially significant implications for the senior administrators of the Department of English, College of Basic Education deanery, and the University of Sulaimani presidency for addressing the main challenges of practicum faced by EFL STs.
Iraqi Kurdistan Region has started implementing the Bologna Process in some universities as part of the higher education institutions’ reform to meet the needs of the new century and enable graduates to compete and enter the local and international labour market. From this perspective, the current study aims at investigating the Kurdish EFL university students’ perceptions on implementation of the Bologna Process and the challenges they face. For this purpose, a questionnaire was distributed and taken 245 students of sixth semester at the departments of English from four different universities. The collected data were analyzed using IBM, SPSS. The result revealed that crowed classes prevent the students them from taking an active participation the learning process; This means the student-centered approach is not applied in this context. Moreover, the mobility action line has not been achieved so far since the majority of the students did not participate in any exchange programs with the universities of the European Higher Education Area. Finally, the study suggests some solutions such as establishing and developing cooperation among departments of English at Iraqi Kurdistan Region universities. Curricula reform, providing instructors with training to apply the student-centre approach in a way that matches the Bologna Process action lines.
The current study highlights different types of meaning, conceptual and associative meaning in particular, and their role(s) in some selected English and Kurdish commercial advertisements. It aims at detecting and evaluating the capability of Kurdish EFL university students in comprehending (or decoding) these advertisements. The material to be investigated is the texts that accompany the pictorial element(s) of some English and Kurdish ads. The ads are carefully selected to represent different fields: lottery, food, technological devices, telecommunication system, healthcare, etc. The study assumes that advertising is determined by two essential features, namely universal and national; both have serious impact on the persuasive character of the ads. Moreover, it is hypothesized that the language used to support the pictorial elements of an ad, unless well-selected to affect and promote people's desire, might have negative consequences on marketing it. The study also hypothesizes that the students comprehend Kurdish ads easily comparing with the English ones. To investigate the hypotheses five samples of ads in each language are selected and analyzed according to well-defined criteria based on Leech's types of meaning; and a test is designed to evaluate the students' comprehension in which the students are asked to write their own understanding on the texts found in the ads. The study concludes that in each text different types of meaning are available and the type that supports conveying the hidden message is the associative meaning rather than conceptual one. Moreover, the study concludes that because of their lack of most aspects of English culture, the level of students' comprehension of Kurdish ads is higher than the English ones.
The study is based on the assumption that the current curricula in the Iraqi Kurdistan Universities (henceforth IKU) were not satisfactorily compatible with the scientific, technological and industrial needs of the Region’s markets. These curricula neither help students to develop their skills nor assist them in thinking creatively. Therefore, the new curricula are supposed to educate undergraduates to increase their capabilities in research, information dissemination and learning a second/foreign language. The Academic Debate and Critical Thinking (ADCT) course was added to all freshmen programs in order to prepare them for university life and make them proficient cadre for their future occupation. This course helps students to be critical thinkers and effective communicators. Since the new version of this course has been implemented for four years, this study attempts to evaluate the course and find out how it is taught, how effective it is, what topics are studied, what activities are used, what types of assessment are employed and what are the main challenges that teachers and students face in dealing with this course. The sample of the study are the teachers of ADCT and the first year students in the English departments in both Colleges of Basic Education at Salahaddin University-Erbil and the University of Sulaimani in the academic year 2017-2018. Two questionnaires were prepared using Google Form. The students’ responses revealed that debating is focused on, general social problems are debated, academic posters are used more, and group work is dominating class activities. As for teachers’ responses, they think that the objectives of the course are clear and achievable, discussion and debating are mostly used, and the assessment system suggested by the textbook is used accurately except for poster design which some teachers do not teach.
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