This study examines the effectiveness of using YouTube videos in teaching the speaking skills among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students in Jordan. The study sample comprised 80 students attending Oral Skills classes in the English Language and Literature Department at a private university in Jordan. The participants were equally divided into a control group and an experimental group of 40 students each. The experimental group was taught through the use of YouTube videos, while the control group was taught the speaking skills using the traditional approach. A pre-test and a post-test were administered to the two groups. Four TEFL experts were asked to rate the participants’ performance using the IELTS speaking band descriptors, which consist of four main categories: fluency & coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range & accuracy, and pronunciation. The findings showed that the performance of the two groups was improved. However, compared to the traditional group, the experimental group demonstrated a relatively better improvement. The results also showed significant progress in the speaking performance of the students subjected to the YouTube experiment. Of all the four constructs under investigation, pronunciation and fluency & coherence were the most noticeably advanced in the performance of the YouTube experimental group. The present study recommends that YouTube videos be embedded into the EFL classroom to improve students' speaking skills.

Purpose This study aims to depict and probe into the building tension, stress and depression to which Jordanian university students have been vulnerable after the compulsory shift to online learning and their prolonged use of digital tools. Design/methodology/approach The researchers used a five-construct questionnaire, namely, use of digital tools in e-learning, sleeping habits, social interaction, psychological reactions and academic performance, to elicit the responses of university students in Jordan concerning the psychological impact of COVID-19’s e-learning digital tools on their well-being. In total, 775 university-level students representing Jordanian public and private universities were asked to fill in the questionnaire, and their responses were statistically analyzed. Findings The results showed that the prolonged use of digital tools, lack of face-to-face interaction and heavy load of assignments have led to anxiety, change of sleeping habit, distraction and a stress-building environment, perhaps resulting in depression. This was aggravated by COVID-19’s strict regulatory measures of social distancing, lockdowns, health threats and eroding family income. The prolonged and escalating social, psychological, loss of affection and worsening economic conditions have increased the number of psychological disorders and a drop in students’ academic performance. Practical implications This study is useful for educational leaders and policymakers, providing guidance and insights on how higher education institutions can support students’ mental health and psychological well-being, especially in times of crisis. Consequently, the higher education sector should be prepared to function more efficiently and effectively in future emergency situations. Originality/value While different studies have investigated the impact of COVID-19 on the education sector globally, little attention has been given to developing countries in the Middle East. By focusing on the Jordanian example, the present study will fill a gap in the research endeavors addressing the prolonged use of e-learning digital tools.

The purpose of this study is to shed light on Young Adult literature (YAL) in Jordan. Eleven English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers and 62 EFL students in Jordanian public schools participated in this research to first measure their awareness of the YAL and to evaluate the academic benefits of integrating English YA literature into the Jordanian public school curricula. A group of EFL instructors and EFL learners were interviewed using a semi-structured guide. The instructors' interview questions focused on demographics, definitions of YA literature, age classification of YAL, benefits, and challenges of using YA novel in Jordanian English curricula. Questions for the learners centered on demographics, definition and age classification of YAL, and the use of YA novels in the EFL classroom. The study revealed that EFL teachers' reliance on the official curriculum tends to remove innovation and creativity from their teaching and limit their opportunities to adapt the curricula to the competence and interest of their EFL students. The research also revealed that EFL students who read English YA novels developed necessary competencies in both the English language and daily life experiences. The results showed that most EFL teachers in this research paper asserted that English YA novels positively affected EFL students in Jordan. This effect led to increased motivation and engagement in EFL classrooms.   Received: 27 January 2021 / Accepted: 8 April 2021 / Published: 10 May 2021

It is widely known that exceptional circumstances inevitably call for the use of matching procedures. As there has been a change in face-to-face teaching methods, there have also been parallel changes in student evaluation and assessment plans or strategies during the COVID-19 era. This study investigates how COVID-19 affected online testing in higher education institutions in Jordan. For this purpose, the researchers developed a five-construct Likert-type questionnaire with 20 items and distributed it to a sample of 426 university instructors. The constructs were the internet and technology, technical and logistic issues, types of questions, test design, and students’ awareness. The results showed that the Internet and technology are essential to guarantee the successful performance of online testing. The study also showed that this type of testing affected the test design and types of questions in a way to eliminate or at least reduce the spread of online cheating. The study recommends that higher education institutions provide instructors with on-the-job training, not only in e-learning techniques and procedures but also in preparing and conducting online exams.

Code-switching has been primarily investigated in a variety of sociocultural contexts, especially in foreign and second language settings. The majority of code-switching instances, whether in teacherinitiated activities or teacher-student interaction, seem to suggest that these interactions reflect a sophisticated language use and serve a variety of pedagogical purposes. This study aims to find out the main functions and roles of code-switching among EFL high school teachers and students in Jordan. For this purpose, classroom observation and a questionnaire were used as instruments. Two EFL teachers were regularly observed, and notes of their code-switching behaviour over four weeks were taken, examined, classified, and finally analysed. A questionnaire was used for 330 students from two secondary schools in Jordan. The students were asked to fill in a Likert-type questionnaire. From the classroom observation, the results showed that teachers codeswitch for several reasons including affective function, giving instructions and directions, and linguistic incompetence. The questionnaire administered to students showed that students codeswitch for non-linguistuc purposes such as maintaining rapport and interpersonal relationships as well as keeping the line of communication without interruption to avoid any sort of conflict or misunderstanding. This study concludes by recommending that teachers should improve students' English language skills in non-linguistic domains such as the affective and interpersonal ones.

This phenomenological study investigated educators’ lived experiences of teaching online in higher institutions in Malaysia. Data, which was generated through semi-structured interviews with 20 lecturers from three universities in the country, was analysed based on the thematic analysis approach guided by the Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK)-self-efficacy framework. The findings revealed that after a year of teaching online, the potential of technology has been acknowledged by the educators after some trials and constraints were addressed. The domains related to Technology Content Knowledge (TCK), Technology Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK), and TPACK were evident in the findings. However, Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) was not given emphasis, hence this manuscript argues that educators need to be constantly reminded of the significance of PCK. The findings discussed in this manuscript can be a helpful guide for educators when there is a need for them to teach online.

The aim of this research is two-fold; first, to explore the most frequent COVID-19 inspired words in medical news reporting contexts, and second, to classify them into different categories. This paper adopts a corpus-based approach to build a lemmatized academic word list (AWL) inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic. Factiva was used to retrieve the pandemic-related articles published in News Rx from January 1 - October 31, 2020. A total number of 18,249,093-word corpus was compiled. The corpus linguistic software program Wordsmith (WS-6) (Scott, 2012) was used to generate a word list based on the complied corpus. Subsequent to compiling, lemmatizing, and analyzing the AWL, six categories were identified, namely, acronyms and abbreviation, diseases, COVID-19, biology, medicine, and scientific disciplines, all of which are of essential use for media workers, ESP learners of journalism, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and allied health sciences. Building such a discipline-specific glossary will be of special pedagogical value for health journalists, textbook writers and curriculum designers, instructors, and ESP learners in the health sciences field. One of the major contributions of this research is establishing lemmas of a large set of AWL. This set can be utilized by news media workers, health communication specialists, and ESP learners. Lemmatization will ensure rapid dissemination of the word list and its integration in the linguistic system through derivation and other word-formation processes.

No abstract