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1 – 10 of 772Many students are found facing difficulties in learning English due to plenty of reasons: known and unknown ones. In order to overcome such an issue, the instructors have to…
Abstract
Purpose
Many students are found facing difficulties in learning English due to plenty of reasons: known and unknown ones. In order to overcome such an issue, the instructors have to explore for effective techniques of teaching English to motivate learners by any means. Technology in general and informatics in particular can be thought of as innovative tool of pedagogy in the current teaching-learning environment. The present proposal of research aims at creating innovative approaches, which attract learners' interest and catch their attention for better outputs.
Design/methodology/approach
Following subsections have been discussed keeping the significance in view. Setting of the study: The present study was conducted at King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah-Saudi Arabia, which is one of the Saudi Arabian universities; however, it has opened up new avenues for the pedagogues, teachers of English and researchers to conduct studies in various allied fields. In order to have a representative sample of students' population, the participants were chosen from the “preparatory year”. Material and tools: This study used a questionnaire (Appendix) and a test to evaluate performances of the two groups: controlled and experimental. In order to further strengthen the findings, semi structured interview was conducted for a few select students from the student-sample. Since the questionnaire was adapted, the statistical validity and reliability was not considered to be essential; however, content/face validity was ensured by consulting 10 experts in the field of education/methods of teaching.
Findings
Based on the analysis of data gathered from the test performances of the two groups of students, it was found that there existed a significant difference in the test scores. The questionnaire responses also proved that infographics can be proved to be an interesting tool of education in general and English language teaching in particular. However, it has been noticed from the gathered data that not many teachers are comfortable using multimedia or infographics for different reasons. The results of the present study are in line with the study by Rezaei and Sayadian (2015) that support the idea of infographics that would help English teachers to develop understanding and insights to design among the learners. They further contend that the infographic instruction offers choices for the utilization of collaborative activities. In addition, the infographics enhance students' performance as a whole as also supported by Alrwele (2017).
Research limitations/implications
The study was conducted on a small sample which might affect the generalization of the outcomes. It was carried out with special reference to teaching of vocabulary and reading.
Practical implications
There can be many recommendations for different stakeholders. For teachers, it is recommended that they should know about the significance of infographs for catching the attention of students. They should know how to design interesting and colorful infographs. The administration/management should facilitate the teachers with the required software or platform to create infographics and integrate in an English language class. In addition, teachers should attend workshops and training courses organized for topics related to the infographs.
Originality/value
The author checked the study for plagiarism (excluding references) and found it to be 93% plagiarism free.
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Noel Scott, Brent Moyle, Ana Cláudia Campos, Liubov Skavronskaya and Biqiang Liu
Jennifer Ball and Muna Kashoob
Most teachers in the Gulf would agree that Arab learners struggle more with reading and writing than listening and speaking. One little considered possible influence on this is…
Abstract
Most teachers in the Gulf would agree that Arab learners struggle more with reading and writing than listening and speaking. One little considered possible influence on this is the particular visual processing requirements of English. This article suggests why visual processing or visual cognition might be a particular difficulty for Arab students reading English. It offers a simple classroom checklist that may assist teachers to notice if visual processing strain could be effecting their student’s attention, motivation and performance.
Thammanard Charernboon and Jayanton Patumanond
Impairments in social cognitions in schizophrenia are increasingly reported in the last decade but only a few studies have come from Asia. The objective of the study was to…
Abstract
Impairments in social cognitions in schizophrenia are increasingly reported in the last decade but only a few studies have come from Asia. The objective of the study was to evaluated emotion perception, theory of mind and social knowledge in people with schizophrenia compared to healthy controls. Participants were 36 clinically stable outpatients with schizophrenia and 36 normal controls with comparable age and level of education. We administered general neurocognition test (the Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination), emotion perception (the Faces Test), theory of mind (the Eyes Test) and social knowledge (the Situational Features Recognition Test; SFRT). Schizophrenia patients displayed obvious impairment in all three social cognition domains i.e. the Faces Test [13.7 (2.9) vs 15.7 (1.9), P=0.001], the Eyes Test [18.9 (4.4) vs 23.5 (4.4), P<0.001] and SFRT [0.85 (0.09) vs 0.9 (0.05), P=0.002]. The performances on three social cognition tests did not correlate with positive symptoms. Only the Faces Test seemed to be related to negative symptoms. The results demonstrated that there are deficits of social cognitions in schizophrenia even in a clinically stable population.
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