Native Speaking Students Research Articles

Errors in the Writing of Indonesian Sounds by Arabic Native Speakers Students at the University of Al Azhar, Cairo

<p>Learning Bahasa Indonesia (bI) for al-Azhar students is new knowledge. Indonesian language is considered a second language(L2) or third (L3) language after Arabic (Ar). Each of the languages being studied has its own system of rules. These differ significantly from one another on phonological, morphological, and syntactic levels. At the phonological level, for example, their mother tongue (B1), namely Arabic, does not have middle or middle cardinal vowels, does not have nasal sounds, such as (ə/<em>elang</em>), (ɛ/<em>nènèk</em>), (ng/<em>datang</em>) as in Indonesian language. This leads to errors and irregularities in the Indonesian language. Later issues include changes, omissions, and replacement of phonemes that should not be used in Indonesian vocabulary. Knowing which phonemes are a stumbling block and make the learning process difficult can help to prevent these defects from happening again. A number of research data were obtained from the results of reading and writing assignments for first semester students at Al-Azhar University, Faculty of Language and Translation in Cairo (FBT-UAC). Furthermore, the learners' changes, omissions, and replacement of phonemes in Indonesian sentences were classified using predetermined criteria. The obtained data were then analyzed using contrastive theory and error analysis. This theory is applied by comparing the phonemes used by learners with standard Indonesian phonemes. The results revealed that the errors that occurred were the emergence of vowel changes, consonant changes, phoneme omission, and the replacement of diphthongs with single phonemes. This error happens as a result of students' inadequate comprehension and lack of sufficient reading practice.</p>

Worlds apart

This paper explores the experiences of sociocultural adjustment of four multilingual international students who speak English as an additional language (EAL) at a Canadian university. International students have been associated with negative images of failure and disruption to higher education on the basis of the hierarchy of cultures that privileges local and western knowledge. Multilingual EAL international students in particular have been broadly characterised as deficient speakers of English considering their non-native proficiency. From this point of view, multilingual international students tend to experience a kind of double deficit as they are compared to both local and native-speaker students. By employing interviews and photographs, this paper seeks to understand and represent the experiences of sociocultural adjustment of the four students and provides an emic, balanced account of each student’s journey which also takes into account the ways in which the students exercised agency. Findings demonstrate the complexity of the international student experience and the importance of meaningful social interaction for multilingual international students to feel included in their communities. Photographs depict experiences from the students’ perspectives which the students considered representative of positive sociocultural adjustment, but also of challenges in the same domain. This paper concludes with insights related to improving the sociocultural adjustment experiences of multilingual international students.

Gender Differences in the Usage of Speech Act of Promise among Moroccan Female and Male High School Students

The study aims at examining and analysing speech act of promise used by male and female Moroccan high school students. Research studies conducted on speech acts in different languages and cultures serve to provide an insightful understanding of intercultural communication. They substantially help in reaching over communicative differences among speakers of divergent languages, and accordingly lay the ground for addressing and handling issues that arise from intercultural miscommunication. This article is a research endeavour that seeks to fill the void that has been mentioned above. The core of this study is on a pragmatic-based analysis of the speech act of promising in Moroccan Arabic. More precisely, it targets identifying and investigating the widely utilized techniques of promise among male and female Moroccan high school students.The data has been collected from questionnaires composed of 19 hypothetical real-life situations in Morocco. The respondents of the research have been Moroccan-Arabic native speaking students studying in three public high schools in Casablanca, Morocco. The sample consists of 60 male students and 60 female students belonging to the three high school levels: common core, first year, and second year of Baccalaureate. The analysis of the data has revealed that Moroccan high school students embark on six strategies while constructing promise utterances, namely, self-repetition, conditional promises that incorporate Al Istithna (exception) promises and if promises, swearing tactic, assurance-based expressions, self-praising attributions, and preferred adjacency pairs technique. Furthermore, the findings of this study have exhibited that there are significant differences in the use of those strategies among male and female Moroccan high school students as they perform the speech act of promising. It has been proven through the distinct use of promising strategies that both genders speak different languages. Unlike male respondents whose language seems to be assertive, adversarial, and strong, female respondents speak a language of support, politeness, cooperation, and social affiliation.

Intensifier-Verb Collocations in Academic English by Chinese Learners Compared to Native-Speaker Students

Abstract It is difficult for L2 English learners in general, and especially Chinese learners of English, to form idiomatic collocations. This article presents a comparison of the use of intensifier-verb collocations in English by native speaker students and Chinese ESL learners, paying particular attention to verbs which collocate with intensifiers. The data consisted of written production from three corpora: two of these are native English corpora: the British Academic Written English (BAWE) Corpus and Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers (MICUSP). The third one is a recently created Chinese Learner English corpus, Ten-thousand English Compositions of Chinese Learners (TECCL). Findings suggest that Chinese learners of English produce significantly more intensifier-verb collocations than native speaker students, but that their English attests a smaller variety of intensifier-verb collocations compared with the native speakers. Moreover, Chinese learners of English use the intensifier-verb collocation types just-verb, only-verb and really-verb very frequently compared with native speaker students. As regards verb collocates, the intensifiers hardly, clearly, well, strongly and deeply collocate with semantically different verbs in native and Chinese learner English. Compared with the patterns in Chinese learner English, the intensifiers in native speaker English collocate with a more stable and restricted set of verb collocates.

Insomnia severity and its correlates among English as a second language (ESL) college students

Objective Little is known about insomnia characteristics among the English as a second language (ESL) student population. This study compared insomnia severity between ESL students and English native-speaking students and identified correlates of insomnia in the ESL population. Participants College students (N = 352) from a private university in the Northeastern United States, including 22.4% (N = 79) ESL students. Methods For this cross-sectional study, participants completed the Insomnia Severity Index and indices of common risk factors of insomnia along with acculturation and language anxiety. Results ESL students reported higher insomnia severity than their US counterparts after controlling for depression, anxiety, and demographics. General anxiety, language anxiety, and cognitive pre-sleep arousal were selected as the strongest predictors of insomnia among the ESL population. Conclusions Findings suggest that ESL college group is vulnerable to greater insomnia, and language anxiety is unique and important correlate of insomnia in this population.

Comparing metacognitive monitoring between native and non-native speaking primary school students

Metacognitive monitoring is a significant predictor of academic achievement and is assumed to be related to language competencies. Hence, it may explain academic performance differences between native and non-native speaking students. We compared metacognitive monitoring (in terms of resolution) between native and non-native speaking fourth graders (~ 10 year olds) in two studies. In Study 1, we matched 30 native and 30 non-native speakers and assessed their monitoring in the context of a paired-associates task, including a recognition test and confidence judgements. Study 1 revealed that recognition and monitoring did not differ between native and non-native speaking children. In Study 2, we matched 36 native and 36 non-native speakers and assessed their monitoring with the same paired-associates task. Additionally, we included a text comprehension task with open-ended questions and confidence judgments. We replicated the findings of Study 1, suggesting that recognition and monitoring do not necessarily differ between native and non-native speakers. However, native speaking students answered more open-ended questions correctly than non-native speaking students did. Nevertheless, the two groups did not differ in monitoring their answers to open-ended questions. Our results indicate that native and non-native speaking children may monitor their metacognitive resolution equally, independent of task performance and characteristics. In conclusion, metacognitive monitoring deficits may not be the primary source of the academic performance differences between native and non-native speaking students.

ICT-SUPPORTED EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS MAJORING IN TRANSLATION STUDIES

In the context of the reformation of the higher education in Ukraine the preparation of translators and interpreters requires new approaches to the process of teaching and learning. It presupposes the implementation of ways and forms aimed at active rather than passive learning, an increased sense of academic autonomy, development of motivation, responsibility and accountability in acquiring profession-specific knowledge, skills, communicative abilities and attitudes as well as interdependence and mutual respect between the academic teacher and the student.
 The authors of the article argue that the language tuition to students majoring in translation studies contributing to the overall development of their professional competence of intercultural mediators can be carried out in the form of extra-curricular activities via information and communication technology tools.
 With respect to the results of the grounded study of current tendencies, achievements and problems, valuable experience and outcomes related to the issue under consideration, the paper reflects on two extra-curricular activities, their stages, aims, objectives and tasks performed; analyses their importance and efficiency in promoting students’ autonomy and responsibility; outlines the role and the functions of information and communication technology tools used.
 The English Speaking Club involves specially arranged meetings intended to provide practising English autonomously outside the classroom context. Participating in conversations with a native speaker students have the opportunity to improve their vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation skills, enrich their background knowledge of traditions and culture of the English-speaking countries as well as overcome psychological barriers while expressing personal views and ideas.
 Translation and Voice Over Recording Studio is organised as a project activity tailored to initiate student translators and interpreters to the real workflow of a project team specialising in translation of different types of audio and video texts in the English language into Ukrainian and their further voice over recording. Performing roles of translators, proofreaders, editors, voice-over artists and sound directors, the participants have the opportunity to practically implement knowledge, skills and communicative abilities obtained while learning profession-specific subjects at the university, developing and improving translation and interpretation skills in particular. Specially selected information and communication technology tools provide the efficient organisation of the Club’s and Studio’s work.

Adversative versus concessive while-clauses in native and learner English texts: A corpus-based systemic functional description

AbstractDespite the commonly reported underuse of linking adverbials of contrast and concession (such as yet, nevertheless) by English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in writing, relatively little is known about the use of structural conjunctions in this regard. The present work uses a corpus approach to investigate the use of while, a polysemous conjunction of contrast and concession, in the writing of Chinese EFL learners as compared with their British native-speaker counterparts. The analysis of while-clauses is informed by clause-complexing and textual descriptions of clause in Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2013). Preference for initial concessive while-clauses by native-speaker students was found, in sharp contrast to the dominant use of final adversative while-clauses by Chinese EFL learners. Analysis of the native-speaker data revealed that initial concessive while-clause is characterized by equivalence or relatedness of topical themes of while-clause and its main clause, confirming the discourse-organizing function of thematic hypotactic clauses. In addition, the pattern of non-human subjects and low-value modal operators (e.g. While this … may …) associated dominantly and exclusively with initial concessive while-clauses in the native corpus serves further evidence of distinctive features of concessive while-clauses. This study adds to a growing body of literature on the SFL approach to second language writing and is among the first to combine corpus-based methodologies and SFL theoretical framework to analyze logico-semantic relations. The study concludes with some pedagogical implications for teaching adversative and concessive while-clauses to EFL learners.

Strategi Komunikasi Dalam Interaksi Dengan Mahasiswa Pertukaran Asing

A communication process can be considered success when the communicant receives and understand the message as what the communicators meant. This effective communication will result in the achievement of a communication goal. However, the effective communication might be difficult to happen when both interlocutors do not have the same native language. It happens because the language barriers may influence the process of understanding the message while the communication happens. To overcome the problem, the communicator applies some communication strategies. This comparative study used observations and interviews to examine the communication strategies used by first- and third-year English students of Universitas Gadjah Mada Indonesia during spoken interactions in English with exchange students from Cheng Du Textile College China. The objective of this study is to observe how the first- and third- year study overcome their communication problem while talking with non-English native speaker students and use the data as inputs to develop the next curriculum. The writer uses Tarone’s communicative strategies to identify the students’ strategies. The result shows that ‘Literal Translation’ is not used by English students while communicating with exchange students, ‘Circumlocution’ and ‘Message Abandonment’ are only used by third year students, ‘Appeal for Assistance’ and ‘Topic Avoidance’ are only used by first year students, third year students’ most used strategies are ‘Mime’ and ‘Word Coinage’, and first year students’ most used strategies are ‘Approximation’ and ‘Mime’.

Politeness Strategies of Disagreement by English Native Speaker Students

This research paper investigates the speech act of disagreement performed by English native speaker students. Particularly, it attempts to examine the politeness strategies used by English native speaker students in realizing disagreement. The data were obtained using Discourse Completion Task consisting of six situations that were completed by twenty students. The results showed that a total of 113 utterances of disagreement were found. The most frequently used strategy was negative politeness (41.6%) since this strategy becomes the most suitable strategy to minimize the imposition of disagreement utterances. The rank is then followed by positive politeness (29.2%), bald on-record (25.7%), and off-record (3.5%).

Determination of the Turkish Language Sounds that Arabic Native Speaker Students Experience Problems With and Proposed

The present study aimed to identify Turkish language sounds that Arabic native speakers experience pronunciation difficulties with when learning Turkish and make various suggestions on how to resolve this problem. Qualitative research method and observation technique were used in the study. The data were collected in 2016 and the second half of 2017. The study population included native Arabic speakers who learned Turkish as a foreign language in Turkey, the study sample included 20 students attending Necmettin Erbakan University Turkish Instruction Application and Research Center (KONDIL) and 15 students attending a private course. It was determined that the students experienced difficulties in pronouncing the following sounds in Turkish alphabet: "ç, e, g, ğ, h, ı, j, k, l, o, ö, p, r, s, ş, t, ü, v, z". It was also determined that it was possible to correct certain pronunciation mistakes in the above-mentioned sounds easily while correction of others took longer. It was found that the educational level of the student before learning Turkish was not effective in the pronunciation of the sounds, speaking a foreign language other than Turkish decreased the number of sounds where the students experienced problems and the gender factor had no impact on pronunciation of the sounds. It was determined that the comparison of the articulation points in the native language of the student and Turkish and practical demonstration of these articulation points and repetition of a large number of sounds resolved the problem to a great extent. It was recommended to focus more on the determined sounds in the instruction of the sounds in Turkish.

“A wise decision”: Pre-modification of discourse-organising nouns in L2 writing

This study investigates an aspect of the use of discourse-organising nouns (DONs), that is, abstract nouns such as decision, fact, problem, and thing, in Swedish advanced students’ academic writing in second language (L2) English. Specifically, the study examines the use of pre-modifiers together with DONs in a corpus of L2 student writing, and in what ways the texts produced by the L2 students resemble or differ from those produced by native-speaker students and expert writers in this respect. A number of significant differences across the writer groups were identified, including variety of usage and the expression of attitude and involvement. In short, the L2 students and, to a lesser extent, the L1 students, were found to use fewer types, and different types, in comparison with the experts, and to use them in different ways, resulting in discourse that can be characterised as imprecise and colloquial. The differences were largest between the L2 student writing and the expert writing, though findings suggest that both student groups can usefully be thought of as learner writers in this respect. The findings reported here contribute to a wider understanding of the characteristics of student writing and students’ academic literacy in a second language.

Teaching Reading Skills to Non-English Native Speaker Students: The Numbered Head Together (NHT) Technique and Students’ Reading Ability in Bengkulu

The purpose of this quantitative study with a quasi-experimental approach was to examine the significant increase and difference of students’ achievement in reading after being taught through the Numbered Head Together (NHT) technique with recount texts for the second grade students at one Junior High School in Bengkulu, Indonesia. The sample of this study was 72 second- grade students divided into two classes: experimental class and control class. The experimental class was treated by being taught through the Numbered Head Together (NHT) technique while the control class was taught using conventional method. To collect the data, pre-test and post-test techniques were used. The result of paired sample t-test showed that there was a significant positive effect of Numbered Head Together (NHT) technique toward the students’ reading ability. Implications of findings and suggestions are discussed.

A functional classification of the introductory it pattern: Investigating academic writing by non-native-speaker and native-speaker students

The introductory it pattern, as in it is important to remember the differences, is a functionally diverse pattern of great importance to academic discourse. However, previous studies have found that using the pattern in an expert-like manner can prove challenging in particular for non-native-speaker students. The present study develops a functional classification in order to investigate what factors may affect the differences in use of the pattern across different groups of students. It maps out the functional distribution of the pattern across three parameters: academic discipline, native-speaker status (non-native-speaker vs. native-speaker students) and level of achievement (lower-graded vs. higher-graded NNS student texts). The study uses data from three corpora of student writing: ALEC, BAWE and MICUSP. The results show that there were differences across all three parameters, suggesting that these variables are all important to take into account in studies of this kind. For example, the non-native-speaker students exhibited an uneven command of the subtleties of the pattern, leading to problems with certain functional categories, such as attitude markers (e.g. it is surprising that) and hedges (e.g. it seems that), which indicates that this would be a fruitful area to focus on in second language instruction.

Transforming cultural conflict in the foreign language classroom: the case of Arabic at Defense Language Institute

This paper considers the impact of global and national political polarisation on perspectives of instructors and learners in Arabic classrooms at Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC) in the United States with particular interest in understanding cultural conflicts that occur between instructors and learners. Instructors and learners at DLIFLC responded to a survey, the qualitative data from which are analysed using discourse analysis, research in intercultural communication, and theories of pedagogy. The analysis indicates that while cultural conflict is part of the language-learning experience, there are communicative strategies to turn moments of discord into assets which often involve the ancillary role of non-native speaking instructors who assist in preventing and mediating conflict between native-speaking instructors and students. The paper begins with a brief literature review that informs our theoretical framework, and a description of the study, followed by an analysis of the data it generated and discussion of their implications for DLIFLC and similarly-situated classrooms.

The Use of This + Noun by Korean EFL Writers: Focusing on Shell Nouns and Nominalization

The study investigated the use of this + noun as a textual device for creating cohesion and constructing stance in corpora of argumentative essays in English written by Korean university students and native speaker students. Focusing on the uses and distributions of shell nouns and nominalizations within the demonstrative construction, the study examined how they differed in the two corpora. In addition, the study identified major patterns of inappropriate use of this + noun by the Korean student writers. Results showed that while the Korean university students made much less use of this + noun for text reference, their use of shell nouns was less successful in creating cohesion and incorporating stance in ways valued in academic writing. Moreover, the limited range of general nouns used in the construction indicates the Korean writers’ use of shell nouns was often habitual rather than strategic. This paper concludes by discussing pedagogical implications of the findings.

Facts and things: Advanced ESL learners’ use of discourse-organising nouns

This study examines the use of discourse-organising nouns (DONs), such as fact, issue, and thing, in a corpus of Swedish advanced students’ academic writing in second language (L2) English, and in what ways texts produced by the L2 students resemble or differ from those produced by advanced native-speaker students and from expert writing in this respect. The L2 student writing was found to approximate the L1 student writing and the expert writing in several ways, including overall frequency of DON usage, but with less variety and more frequent occurrences of semantically vague types and types expressing attitude and involvement.

RESEARCH WRITING: FROM ELUSIVE PEDAGOGY TO EXCLUSIVE PEDAGOGY

Recent years have seen an increased attention being given to thesis and dissertation writing in the ESP literature. Prior (1995) attributes more to a thesis or a dissertation than its rhetorical structure. He lists the factors which influence decisions students make about the form of their text-the research perspective taken up in the study, the purpose of the text, and the extent to which the students have been given advice on the positioning and organisation of their text, etc. For Paltridge (2002), thesis and dissertation writing is a difficult process for native speaker students and often doubly so for non-native speaker students. ESL students may have the level of language proficiency required for admission to their course of study, but not yet the necessary textual knowledge, genre knowledge and social knowledge (Bhatia, 1999) required of them to succeed in this particular setting. Our students need to be presented with the range of thesis options that might be open to them, and consider the reasons why they might make a particular choice. There is no such a thing as “one size fits all” master’s and doctoral thesis. The present paper attempts to look at the pedagogies evolved for teaching research writing.

Online Peer Feedback Between Colombian and New Zealand FL Beginners: A Comparison and Lessons Learned

We report on an exploratory study comparing the performance as online tutors of two groups of beginner eleven-year-old students of English in Colombia and Spanish in New Zealand. The native speaker students of the foreign language the others were learning corrected paragraphs written by their peers. The feedback provided by each group of tutors was analyzed for (1) language corrected, (2) input on errors, and (3) types of feedback provided. We found that both Colombian and New Zealand tutors willingly provided corrections to their peers and used other feedback strategies to foster attention to linguistic form. The Colombian tutors identified a higher number of errors, but the New Zealanders provided more detailed comments. We draw lessons from the exploration.

An Investigation of the Effects of Text Variation on EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension Ability

Early seeds of language variation studies were planted near the beginning of the 1960s under the influence of William Labov who is generally regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics which deals with language variations caused by linguistic and non-linguistic factors. With many other branches of linguistics, studies of language variation were also extended to the field of SLA and thereby studies of interlanguage or L2 learners’ language variation came into fashion. Almost all studies that have been conducted in this area are in association with variation in speech production and development of sociolinguistic competence and there are few studies which were devoted to the influence of linguistic or non-linguistic factors on variation in first and second language comprehension. This study, therefore, attempts to investigate the influence of text variation (in terms of narrative and non-narrative) on EFL learners’ reading comprehension ability. Doing so, 45 Persian native-speaking university students majoring in English translation at Arak university, Iran, were selected from among 67 ones and put into two homogeneous intact experimental and control groups (consisting of 21 and 24 participants, respectively). From a large body of existing texts, three narrative and three non-narrative texts (each between 1373 to 1622 words) with Flesch Reading Ease Original Research Article British Journal of Education, Society & Behavioural Science, 4(6): 691-707, 2014 692 scores ranged from 66.83 to 73.90 were selected and used as tasks of elicitation. Statistical results, under the influence of existing variation between narratives and nonnarratives, indicated significant difference between the experimental and control groups’ reading comprehension test scores from pretest to post test. Possible reasons for developed variation in reading comprehension ability and implications of the findings for language teaching are discussed.