This study tests the assumption in much of the literature on the second language acquisition of English tense and aspect morphophonology (e.g. bare verbs, V-ing, V-ed) that once speakers are beyond intermediate levels of proficiency, both distribution and interpretation of these forms are represented in a target-like way in their mental grammars. Three groups of advanced non-native speakers (whose L1s were Chinese, Japanese and the verb-raising languages Arabic, French, German and Spanish) were compared with native speakers on an acceptability judgement task requiring informants to judge the appropriateness of sentences involving different verb forms to contexts which privileged specific interpretations. The results suggest an effect of the persistent influence of parametric differences between languages such that where parametrised grammatical properties are not activated in the L1, they are not available for the construction of representations in the L2.
Communication skills are extremely important for the tourism industry; they form an integral part of most tourism activities. Using English, as the international lingua franca, is an essential part of these skills, especially for international tourism. Saudi Vision 2030 places a high importance on international tourism as a driving force for economic growth. Since the inception of the Saudi Vision 2030, the tourism industry in Saudi Arabia, along with its workforce, has been growing substantially. Therefore, designing English language teaching materials for the tourism industry workforce in Saudi Arabia is a necessity. The current study firstly aimed to analyze the English language communicative needs of the Saudi tourism workforce, and then propose an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) model for teaching English based on their needs. A nation-wide survey was designed and distributed to sixty-two male and fifteen female workers serving in the Saudi tourism industry to determine their English language communicative needs. Listening and speaking were found to be highly important to their profession, in particular understanding instructions and requirements and providing details about touristic attractions. Reading and vocabulary were found more important than writing and grammatical accuracy. The study concludes with a proposal of an ESP teaching model to meet the English language communicative needs of the tourism workforce in Saudi Arabia.
According to the Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English 1999 by Biber et al. (p. 266) generic article uses are more than twice as common in academic English than in conversation or fiction. This is an area that English for Academic Purpose (EPA) textbooks and teachers would need to target more than general English teaching. This paper is therefore a contribution towards better understanding of what linguistic facts about generics teachers and textbooks of EAP might need to cover in order to deal with them satisfactorily, particularly for learners with Arabic or Malay as L1. This paper is also significant as it is the first to compare the expression of generic meanings by noun phrases in three typologically quite different languages: the Germanic language English, the Semitic language Arabic and the Austronesian language Malay. The contrast between the three languages is substantial in that they have different settings according to the nominal mapping parameter (NMP), which captures some widespread generalizations about the occurrence of mass and countable nouns and articles in the languages of the world. As a part of a bigger project that investigates the acquisition and interpretation of generic reference by speakers of these languages, this article is descriptive and comparative in nature. The main finding is that the rules for mapping forms to generic meanings are more complex in English than in Malay or Arabic, in that English marks the difference between NP level and S level genericity and between established and non-established categories.
Peer collaboration in small groups has increasingly been recognized as an instructional technique that promotes interactive skills, socialization, learning and achievement across a range of subjects and disciplines. The study aims to measure Saudi female EFL learners’ attitudes toward the effectiveness of cooperative learning (CL) and its impact on their social and academic skills. In the present study, the researchers utilized a quantitative research tool to collect data from the participants. A 25-item Likert-scale opinionnaire was designed with closed-ended statements to measure five variables laid down by Johnson et al. tabulated into five sections. The survey was administered to 100 Saudi female EFL learners at undergraduate level to measure their attitudes toward the effectiveness of CL. The findings of the study indicate that CL enhances EFL learners’ social skills, maximizes inter-group relations, mastery of the course content and academic achievement. It further develops EFL learners’ individual and group accountability, leadership qualities and decision-making power. It is assumed that EFL learners’ cognitive faculties can be activated and optimum results can be obtained if this interactive strategy is implemented in a structured pattern with a properly designed rubric focusing on the five essential components of CL.
The study in hand is a gender-based comparative analyses of Saudi freshmen regarding the effectiveness of native and non-native English language teachers (NELTs & NNELTs hence after). Relevant research studies have been consulted to develop a questionnaire to generate data. Relevant steps have been followed to determine its face validity and reliability. It was a quantitative study and the participants responded to a two-point selfdeveloped questionnaire. Independent-samples T-test has been run to test the hypotheses set for this study and collect descriptive data to answer the research questions. The data have reported that female participants of this survey favored NNELTs more as compared to the male participants but the difference in their perceptions for majority of items in all three categories of the questionnaire was not statistically significant. Null hypotheses have been partially rejected as majority of the questionnaire items do not report statistically significant differences along gender lines. The results also reveal that the participants of this survey have preferred NELTs the most for teaching and assessment skills, professional attitudes and professional skills. The results have also indicated that NNELTs have been favored in teaching and assessing grammar and reading, providing relaxed atmosphere, using innovative strategies, motivating their students to learn, behaving in a more responsible manner, responding to their students questions better, understanding their students' learning difficulties, understanding their students' learning styles and preparing their students for independent learning. The findings of this empirical survey seem to suggest that both groups of English language teachers have their own strengths which bear positive overbearing in effectiveness ELT.
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