Reading is one of language learning skills which has a great significance for the role it plays in the second language acquisition (SLA) process. The aim of this paper was to examine the extent to which the CAREY (Computer-Assisted Reading Yemen) program affects the Yemeni EFL students' reading attitude towards reading English materials. To achieve this objective, the data was collected from pre-and post-questionnaires of reading attitude. Additionally, the data was collected based on an interview and an observation. 20 students selected purposively from level one of an English proficiency course, Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Ibb University, Yemen in this study. All participants answered the pre-and post-reading questionnaires, and five of them were further interviewed. The study used both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the data including descriptive statistics of the responses from the questionnaires and thematic analysis of responses from the interviews. The results revealed that all participants showed their positive attitudes toward reading English materials especially after they joined the class of reading via CAREY program. In addition, it was found that CAREY program positively affected the participants' attitudes towards reading English materials.
This paper investigated the ways in which the Arab international students realize requests with special reference to politeness strategies as patterned by Blum-Kulka (1989). The aim was to pragmatically analyze the most preferred request strategies and the types of external modifications by those speakers in the process of making requests in the academic setting at the School of Language Studies and Linguistics (PPBL), National University of Malaysia (UKM), Malaysia. To achieve this, the data was collected and recorded from two observed situations in which the two Arab students were involved in conversations, thus, making requests with two Malaysian employees. It was analyzed based on the model of request strategies by Blum-Kulka (1982) using the frequency of occurrences of such request strategies and external modifications. The results revealed that the speakers most preferred the use of conventional direct requests followed by the conventionally indirect requests and the non-the conventionally indirect requests respectively. Moreover, it was found that the use of reasons and positive politeness expressions used as external modifications made the requests smother and mitigated their effect in such situations.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.