The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in many educational changes, especially the shift towards the use of technology in all subjects. This longitudinal study was conducted to investigate the effect of learning environments—blended and online, alone and with graded-reading websites/applications—on the reading comprehension of Saudi undergraduates majoring in English during COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, 130 participants were selected (control: male [N = 21], female [N = 54]; or experimental: male [N = 21], female [N = 34]). Although the four gender-based groups were exposed to the same learning environments—first blended and later online, which were either partially or dependent on technology—only the male and female experimental groups were required to use graded-reading websites/applications for approximately 10 months during the COVID-19 school lockdowns. All participants took four tests (pretest, posttest 1, posttest 2, and delayed posttest). Using the SPSS program, the results indicated that the learning environments alone had a limited positive effect on the control groups’ reading comprehension in the short term, which either decreased significantly (male control group) or remained unchanged (female control group) in the long term. There were significant differences between all control groups and experimental groups across all tests (p < 0.000). However, the experimental male group outperformed their male counterpart across all posttests except for the second posttest: experimental male group mean was 15.43 whereas it was 16.19 for the control male group. However, combining learning environments and graded-reading websites/applications yielded gradual positive effects on the reading comprehension of the experimental groups in the short term, which continued into the long term for the male experimental group. The experimental groups outperformed the control groups on at least two out of three posttests. The study concluded that the effect of technology on the reading comprehension of Saudi male and female undergraduates is bounded by the type of specialized technology (i.e., reading websites/applications) and the applied learning environments (i.e., blended and online). Additionally, the study indicated that there is a need to investigate other important factors related to technology used in Saudi institutes, as well as its effects on students’ learning processes in ongoing changes in the education sector in Saudi Arabia.
This study investigates the level of effectiveness that the process genre approach has on increasing and decreasing Saudi advanced EFL undergraduates’ Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency (CAF) in reaction writing. Sixteen level six participants were recruited from the College of Languages and Translation at Al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University. All participants undertook a pre-test and a post-test on reaction writing. After collecting 32 essays, they were analyzed based on 55 indices of CAF, and then a Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test was applied to compare each CAF construct/sub-construct measure’s mean in the pre-test with its mean in the post-test, and between the total mean of all measures for each CAF construct/sub-construct in the pre-test with their total means in the post-test. The findings showed that there were no significant total or partial impacts of the process genre approach on participants’ reaction essay syntactic complexity, lexical density, lexical sophistication, and fluency. However, the results indicated that there were only partial effects of the approach (across some measures) on participants’ reaction essay lexical variation and accuracy. Finally, the study yields several pedagogical implications and recommendations for EFL writing instructors, educators, and researchers.
This study aimed to analyze English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students’ knowledge and perceptions of research method courses in the Department of English Language and Literature, at Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University (IMSIU). It also investigated the problems that students encounter and offered some suggestions for improving these courses. The significance of the study is that such topic has never been investigated before in such context. The study participants were 1,022 students (Levels three, four, five, six and seven) who voluntarily filled out a questionnaire consisting of sections on four factors/themes: knowledge, perceptions, problems, and suggestions. The collected data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics software to compare the students’ answers, and a one-way analysis of variance test was used to detect the differences between academic levels regarding each theme. The results showed that regardless of the students’ academic levels, all of them agreed on studying and therefore knowing the research basic components; however, regarding the elements constituting each of these basic components, significant differences were found between the five groups. The results also indicated that these students have positive perceptions of the courses even though they encountered some research-related problems such as in knowing all or some research basic components and their specific elements; writing all or some of them; citing, summarizing, and paraphrasing sources; allocating primary and secondary resources; collecting and analyzing data; and consulting research manuals. Finally, all students agreed that it would be helpful if they were assigned individual research supervisors and coauthored an article with them, a research course was taught in all academic levels for a bachelor’s degree, a research club was established, and research seminars were held.
This novel study investigated the impact of English native speaker kids’ reading website on enhancing Saudi EFL university students’ complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF) in narrative writing. The rationale for this study is the scant literature in the area of estimating narrative writing in terms of CAF. The quasi-experimental method was adopted in this study through a pre-/ post-test in narrative writing. Eleven level three participants were recruited from in this study. Instruments of the study included a pre-post-test in narrative writing, and the CAF measures. A Wilcoxon signed-Rank and Mann Whitney were used in the analysis. The study results found no significant differences at 0.05 level regarding the post administration of syntactic complexity ratios except (CP/T, CP/C, and CN/C) whose results were significant. The sub-constructs of lexical density and lexical variation were enhanced partially, and as a whole, whereas there was no increase/decrease regarding lexical sophistication. For accuracy measure, the results were significant in all ratios at 0.05 level except (EFC/C, and EFTC/S ratios). Concerning fluency measures, the results were insignificant at 0.05 in all ratios except (MLC ratio). The results of the study and their pedagogical implications were discussed.
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