March 2009 Blog Posts (259)

Videoconferencing for a Segregated Learning Environment

Male and female college students in Saudi Arabia study in a segregated environment. King Saud University (KSU) has 50,000 students in 3 campuses each of which is 35 kms away. Due to increasing student enrollment, all departments for female students are understaffed. Due to latest development in technology, all three campuses were upgraded and are now connected through fibre optics with a LAN. The Olaysha campus hosting women’s colleges of Education, Arts, Administrative Science, Languages, and… Continue

Added by Reima Al-Jarf on March 4, 2009 at 10:44am — No Comments

Academic Needs and Communication Strategies Revealed by Students’ e-mails

E-mail messages from 190 students were analyzed for types of requests, academic needs, reasons for seeking help, communication strategies and cultural differences. The message content revealed no differences between Saudi, Arab and non-Arab students’, nor between male and female students’ requests. Differences were noted in communication strategies. Undergraduate students sought help with assignments and how to improve their English, whereas graduate students requested resources and help with… Continue

Added by Reima Al-Jarf on March 4, 2009 at 10:43am — No Comments

Boosting EFL College Student Writing Achievement

65 EFL freshman students were enrolled in their first writing course in college. Before instruction, they were pretested. Pretest results revealed many writing problems. Then, the students studied Interactions One. Each week, one chapter was covered and the students completed all of the skills, exercises and writing tasks in the chapter and wrote two one-paragraph essays. They were encouraged to write and not to worry about spelling, grammatical, punctuation or capitalization mistakes. While… Continue

Added by Reima Al-Jarf on March 4, 2009 at 10:26am — No Comments

Current practices in reading instruction

The aim of the present study was to examine the amount of reading texts, reading exercises and reading skills covered by reading instructors in ESL college classrooms at each college level. Subjects of the present study consisted of 12 instructors (3 instructors per level) who taught reading in Fall 2000 and Spring 2001. Since students usually mark texts, do exercises and take notes on their textbooks, 3 reading textbooks per instructor were collected from students in levels 1-4. Each book was… Continue

Added by Reima Al-Jarf on March 4, 2009 at 10:16am — No Comments

Blooms Taxonomy and Rubrics

During our eMints class on 2/3/09, we spent a our time reviewing Blooms's Taxonomy. We reviewed printed versions of Blooms's Taxonomy and I shared the Learning in Action version. After discussing Blooms Taxonomy and the associated verbs, we were asked to create our own "rubric" using appropriate verbs from those associated with Blooms Taxonomy.

I relied on… Continue

Added by Glen Westbroek on March 4, 2009 at 9:00am — No Comments

Inventorying Reading/Writing Experiences, Figurative Language Revisions

Entering Activities: Today, students will continue revising their transactive pieces to find evidence. As a sponge, we will do the third step – creating one more piece of evidence to put in the piece.

Anticipatory Set: I will go over today’s lesson with the students and explain to them that we will be looking today at our personal or literary writing piece and making some revisions.

Teaching and Learning: I will review with students, using a graphic organizer, the… Continue

Added by Amanda Addison on March 4, 2009 at 5:30am — 1 Comment

Will this one work?

I hope so!

Added by Doug Ruhman on March 3, 2009 at 9:00pm — No Comments

Kidspiration Mind Map

Tonight in Educational Technology, we went over academic software. Academic software is software designed to assist and support both educators and learners in teaching and learning. While in class tonight, I had the chance to play with a variety of academic software such as Tux Paint, Google Earth, Kidspiration, Comic life and iPhoto. Each different software had its own table for me to use in a pre-planned hands on activity. Each station allowed for an oppurtunity to discover the interaction… Continue

Added by Matthew Davidson on March 3, 2009 at 7:00pm — 1 Comment

Student Remixes!

You asked and we delivered: Check out our new playlist entirely devoted to the work of your students!

Assign a Remix project in your classroom and we’ll feature some of the most poignant and interesting ones in our Student Remixes… Continue

Added by Erika Johansson on March 3, 2009 at 4:45pm — No Comments

Global Themes in Saudi history textbooks

The present study tried to find out whether Saudi history books for grades 4-12 contain global themes; in which grade levels global themes are introduced; the percentage of global themes, local history themes and Islamic history themes; and which global history themes are taught. A checklist of global history themes was developed. Those are: global systems; historical periods; ancient civilizations; world empires; world religions; human immigration; major wars; colonization and liberal… Continue

Added by Reima Al-Jarf on March 3, 2009 at 2:12pm — No Comments

Global Themes in Singaporean Secondary Social Studies Textbooks

This study aimed at finding out whether Singaporean secondary social studies textbooks contain global themes, in which grade level those global themes are introduced, the percentage of global themes in socials studies textbooks at each grade level, and which global themes are emphasized. A checklist consisting of four main global themes was developed. Those are (1) global systems such as cultural, political, economic, ecological, technological, social, educational and healthcare systems,… Continue

Added by Reima Al-Jarf on March 3, 2009 at 2:11pm — No Comments

The Role of Higher Education Institutions in the Arabization Process

Findings of an exploratory study with a sample of students at the colleges of medicine, pharmacy, science, and computer science revealed that English is the language of classroom instruction and most textbooks used in most of the courses at those colleges. Students reported that they do not study the Arabic equivalents of English technical terms in their major area of study. It was noted that students have misconceptions about the Arabization processes. Most of them believe that borrowing and… Continue

Added by Reima Al-Jarf on March 3, 2009 at 2:02pm — No Comments

Women, Gender and National Curricula: Gulf and Saudi Arabia

The article assesses the impact of the national curricula including textbooks, women’s sports, how women are presented in a nationalist curriculum in the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia on women. The article touches upon women’s experiences in the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia, women’s voices, women’s interpretations and understandings of women, gender and national curricula. The historical context is also described.

Prof. Reima Al-jarf

King Saud University

Riyadh, Saudi… Continue

Added by Reima Al-Jarf on March 3, 2009 at 2:01pm — No Comments

Task-based Instruction for EFL Struggling College Writers

65 EFL freshman students were enrolled in a 4-hour writing course. Pretest results showed that the students could not put two words together. The posttest results showed a great improvement in writing ability. The students could write fluently and communicate easily. Spelling, punctuation and capitalization errors significantly decreased. Improvement was noted in essay length, neatness, mechanical correctness and style. Improvement was due to student factors and efficient task management… Continue

Added by Reima Al-Jarf on March 3, 2009 at 2:00pm — No Comments

Effects of Listening Comprehension and Decoding Skills on Spelling Achievement

Thirty six EFL freshman students at the College of Languages and Translation, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia were given a dictation, a listening comprehension test and a decoding test. The purpose of the study was to find out whether EFL freshmen students' spelling ability correlates with their listening comprehension and decoding skills. Data analysis showed that the typical EFL freshman student misspelled 41.5% of the words on the dictation, gave 49.5% correct responses on the… Continue

Added by Reima Al-Jarf on March 3, 2009 at 1:59pm — No Comments

Large Student Enrollments in EFL Programs

Year after year, EFL and translation programs at King Saud University are experiencing significant increases in female freshman student enrollments. This study aims to investigate the effect of female freshman student enrollment figures in EFL programs on student achievement and attitudes, program staffing, classroom instruction, management, assessment, resources and facilities utilization on the basis of female faculty demographic, female faculty teaching load, number of courses and total… Continue

Added by Reima Al-Jarf on March 3, 2009 at 1:58pm — No Comments

Making Connections in Vocabulary Instruction

Vocabulary teaching and learning constitute a major problem for EFL instructors and students. The pretest showed that freshman students at COLT have difficulty in pronouncing, recognizing the meaning of, using and spelling English words. In their first semester, freshman students are required to take a vocabulary course that consists of 50 lessons (2000 words), each consisting of a presentation page and a practice page. To help the students learn, retain, apply and relate word, the… Continue

Added by Reima Al-Jarf on March 3, 2009 at 1:57pm — No Comments

Unemployed female translators: Causes and Solutions

The present study found that 90% of female Saudi translators who graduated between 1990 and 1996 are not working as translators. Although translation jobs are available in hospitals, translation bureaus, and embassies, many graduates find the jobs open for women unsuitable because of working conditions, stringent qualifications, staff policies, salaries and benefits. Others disliked the nature of the work and cited insufficient information about employment opportunities, lack of motivation, and… Continue

Added by Reima Al-Jarf on March 3, 2009 at 1:56pm — No Comments

Analysis of Grammatical Agreement Errors in L1/L2 translation

159 grammatical agreement errors collected from the translation projects of nine Saudi graduating seniors majoring in translation were analyzed. A grammatical agreement error was defined as the incorrect inflection of nouns, verbs, adjectives, anaphoric pronouns, and determiners to show a mismatch in singular, dual, or plural forms or a mismatch in masculine and feminine gender in correspondence with a subject, modified noun or antecedent. There were more disagreeing verbs than pronouns than… Continue

Added by Reima Al-Jarf on March 3, 2009 at 1:55pm — No Comments

Word Order Errors in English-Arabic Translation.

Interlingual data, examined in the present study, consisted of advanced students' deviant use of VSO and SVO structures in the translation of expository texts from English into Arabic. Although English is an SVO language and Arabic has two word orders: VSO (verbal sentences) and SVO (nominal sentences), students seemed to translate imitatively rather than discriminately. Analysis of the syntactic context showed that VSO structures were avoided and SVO structures were overgeneralized in long… Continue

Added by Reima Al-Jarf on March 3, 2009 at 1:54pm — No Comments