With the increased anticipation of a university degree as a requirement for workforce entry, the criticism of business leaders, and the general public, it becomes critical for institutions of higher education to know what they are offering students, especially the English language and how well this subject is being presented. Therefore engaging and preparing students for life after school is a great challenge to teachers and institutions. Through the implementation of new tools and practice, this study was designed to explore the teaching-learning challenges of the 21st century at the university ELT classroom. The researcher administered a questionnaire to 171 students and 40 faculty members from three universities in Erbil, Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Statistical Package analyzed the data for Social Science, including Descriptive statistical analyses such as the mean and standard deviation, also Pearson Correlation and ANOVA test to compare the groups' responses. The results showed that learning a second/foreign language collaboration skills while in the classroom inside universities is one of the suitable ways for learning in current time. Also, students in universities have been able to assess their collaboration skills when working via group effectively and positively effect their learning of the English language. Finally, the students have tried to develop their skills by using technology as a tool for learning; this is showing as finding in this study that the availability of tools or technology devices positively and effective factor for students to learn second/foreign language and skills in their universities.
Interactive class is the class which consists of different mutual discussions, dialogues and exchanging ideas, it represents sometimes micro –image for the real life situations which began to form a real challenge. One thing is for certain about English learners is that; they will not become proficient speakers of a language unless they have frequent opportunities to use it. Teaching societies started to complain about the traditional methods of teaching which resulted many failures in teaching experiences for not providing the learners with such speaking skills. Such methods were nothing but a kind of wasted sessions of teaching without achieving the intended learning behavioral objectives which are stated for the sake of this process. Consequently, students started showing undesirable behaviors and indifference during the class period, like having negative personality and quit the spirit of initiation and class participation. Therefore, schools are blamed for this knowledge shortages and raising such negative unsuccessful learners and, theorists started thinking deeply in suggesting new techniques of learning and adapting new learning objectives which are more realistic and authentic to cope with the learners needs and improve their scientific and psychological health. Thus, new trends of teaching have been suggested to concentrate on creative and critical thinking. Among these trends was the focus on the excessive teacher-student class interaction and student-student class interaction as one of the new learner-centered method of teaching which keep the student focus inside the teaching in class. (Alison Mackey, 2007:p53)
Reading skill has not been given enough care by the teachers of English language in the classrooms so students are no more good readers. As a result students should be aware of the strategies that they can follow when they start reading in order to make the reading process a fruitful process. One of the reading techniques that help students comprehend what they read is the concept mapping technique of teaching (CM). The researchers conducted a study to investigate the effect of using the indicative concept mapping technique on the students' reading comprehension achievement . Therefore, this study tries to answer the following question: “Is there a statistically significant difference between the mean scores attained by the experimental group and those attained by the control group on reading comprehension on the post-test that can be attributed to the concept mapping technique”? To answer this question, the researchers selected two groups of students randomly to form the experimental and the control groups with (20) students for each group. The two groups set for pre-test to assure that the two groups are equivalent. The experimental group was taught reading comprehension (RC) lessons through the use of indicative concept map technique. On the other hand, the controlling group was taught by the traditional technique of teaching reading comprehension. The findings revealed that there are significant differences between the mean scores attained by the experimental group and those attained by the control group in favor of the experimental group due to the use of Concept mapping technique; therefore, the researchers rejected the null hypothesis and accepted the alternative one which indicates that there is a significant differences between the experimental and the control groups. The researchers recommended in light of the findings that the students should be encouraged to follow the concept mapping technique while reading and to engage students in such activities that allow them to transfer more and more lessons into different types of concept maps.
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