Browsing by Author "Hiouani, Amira Sarra"
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Item Between english for specific purposes ESP and general english GE(Université De Larbi Ben M’hidi Oum EL Bouaghi, 2022) Rahmani, Abdeldjalil; Zerroug, Youcef; Hiouani, Amira SarraThe need for English for Specific Purposes has arisen in Algeria due to globalization. Students must be exposed to English in the academic and professional spheres, so Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) is a necessity. Teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is a branch of English Language Teaching (ELT) that focuses on teaching specific groups of language learners, who are determined by undergoing Needs Analysis (NA). Our study is aimed at understanding the needs of first-year students in using English for specific purposes in the faculties of Economics, Biology, and Mathematics at Larbi Ben M'hidi University. ESP seems to suffer from a number of issues within the Algerian education system, including low standards and a tendency to neglect the teachers' professional needs to cope with the actual requirements. This may be because the term has been drained of its meaning, or due to the "application and elaboration" of it. Such a problem requires a research design in order to be solved. This study focuses attention on ESP teacher quality within the University of Larbi Ben M'hidi as a critical component in improving English language education across the institution. The aim is to explore the main issues and difficulties that teachers and learners may encounter in an ESP teaching situation, and put forward recommendations to improve ESP teaching in this particular field. To carry out the present research, a mixed-methods approach was relied on to collect the necessary data in the target settings. A quantitative questionnaire was distributed to first year students in order to draw an insight about their needs, lacks, wants, and their satisfaction with the English courses they take. In addition, semi-structured interviews were undertaken with teachers who were supposed to know more about students' needs, lacks, and wants regarding the English language. Accordingly, in light of the outcomes obtained, the course is neither aligned with ESP standards, nor does it follow the principles of current ELT. The fact that general English teachers are intended to teach ESP in a "learner-centred" environment exposes enormous difficulties and issues to properly attain an ESP teaching/learning goal. Furthermore, despite the global awareness of the importance of ESP, teachers seem to rely on teaching General English within ESP fields. Therefore, we suggest some efficient strategies and practices to be implemented in ESP classrooms at the target faculties. These strategies aim to raise awareness of the importance of Needs Analysis in ESP courses, and to put emphasis on the process of designing ESP courses that fulfil the students' needs in order to improve the ESP situation within Larbi Ben M'hidi University.Item Investigating EFL students perceptions of the impact of mental health on their academic performance: the case of third year LMD students of english at Larbi Ben M’hidi University(University of Oum El Bouaghi, 2023) Drici, Djoumana; Hiouani, Amira SarraThe Current study investigates the perceived impact of mental health on the academic performance of students of English at Larbi Ben M'hidi University. The main aim of this study is to scrutinize the factors contributing to mental health issues in EFL classrooms and to examine how these issues possibly influence students' academic performance. A sample of 63 third year LMD students of English took part in this study. A survey, through which the data was collected, was administered in order to reach the aim and to test the proposed hypotheses. The questionnaire covered a wide range of questions that tackled the most commonly recognised mental health issues, namely stress and anxiety, cognitive functioning, as well as academic performance. The findings reveal that students' academic performance will perceptibly increase if they receive help and instruction on how to successfully manage their mental health. This sheds light on the availability and efficiency of support services as well as the prevalence of mental health issues in the chosen setting. The results obtained could potentially further assist in the construction of plans and solutions to help students take care of their mental health and enhance their academic performance. In conclusion, addressing the mental health needs and issues of the EFL students is crucial and essential for their academic success and general wellbeing, and by putting forward effective interventions and offering sufficient support, the Algerian university can create a healthy and supportive environment that promotes good mental health and raises students' academic performance.Item Investigating EFL teachers perceptions towards the use of educational games and songs as aids to teach english grammar: the case of Ain Beida primary schools(University of Oum El Bouaghi, 2023) Yahi, Wiam; Benchikh, Anfal; Hiouani, Amira SarraThe aim of the present study is to examine Algerian EFL primary school teachers' perceptions of the possible effectiveness of using educational games and songs in teaching English language grammar. The study, further, aims to explore the benefits that games and songs can potentially bring to the EFL classroom and to discover the usefulness of these tools in making primary school pupils learn grammar rules in an effective and amusing way. To achieve the aforementioned aims, a descriptive study was conducted in which data was collected using a questionnaire addressed to EFL primary school teachers. The sample comprised ten teachers, each among whom taught at three different primary schools in the city of AinBeida and surrounding villages. The results reveal that educational games and songs are believed to have an influential role in the teaching-learning process, in the sense that they reinforce grammar and improve students' ability to understand grammar rules in a relaxed and relatively easy manner even though their use seems to be quite restricted due to an apparent lack of resources. It is subsequently concluded that educational games and songs ought to be carefully selected by EFL teachers and they should essentially be suitable for the learners' age and needs. It is recommended that if given a chance, teachers should not entirely rely on games and songs to teach grammar because overusing them may have an undesirable reversed impact on pupils notwithstanding.Item Investigating the correlation between students metacognitive awareness and their listening proficiency: the case of first year LMD students of english at Larbi Ben M’hidi University(University of Oum El Bouaghi, 2023) Abdelali, Nardjess; Hiouani, Amira Sarra; Zidani, AbirThis research is carried out to examine the relationship betweenstudents' metacognitive awareness and listening proficiency in the Algerian EFL context.Its main objective is to evaluate the extent to which metacognitive awareness influences second-language learners' listening proficiency. Accordingly, a correlational study was utilized in order to examine the research hypotheses. A sample of 51 first-year second-language learners participated in this study. Listening proficiency was measured through a British Council Listening Proficiency Test while metacognitive awareness was assessed using a Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire through which the data were collected. The results obtained revealed a weak positive relationship between students' metacognitive awareness and listening proficiency scores, indicating that the application of the metacognitive awareness strategies while listening does not necessarily lead to the improvement of listening proficiency. However, students' listening skills can be improved through the increase of their metacognitive awareness apropos their listening practice. To sum up, the development of metacognitive skills is recommended to strengthen students' listening proficiency, with students actively participating in self-monitoring and reflection, and teachers incorporating metacognitive training in language learning.Item Social media for learning exploring the role of students’ online collaborative practices in the development of their productivity(Université De Larbi Ben M’hidi Oum EL Bouaghi, 2022) Kouachi, Romaissa; Hamel, Lina Rayane; Hiouani, Amira SarraFacebook is considered to be one of the most popular platforms for online social networking among university students, who are attracted to such spaces more than any time before. At first glance, the use of social media platforms seems to be a waste of time; however, it is believed to help students develop important knowledge and social skills. It provides various opportunities for students to, flexibly, interact beyond classroom walls. The ever-growing popularity of such spaces launches the debate among educators, who view these online tools as a clear opportunity to develop innovative ways of teaching and learning. The current study brings together the areas of collaborative learning and their academic performance. It attempts to find out whether undergraduate students at the Department of English at Larbi Ben M'Hidi University use Facebook effectively as a learning environment that could support their educational matters in the form of collaboration with one another. Therefore, in an attempt to address this issue, data were collected with qualitative and quantitative methods. At the outset, an observation took place throughout the entire period of our research in an attempt to understand what type of content students usually share and interact with, how they interact, and, most importantly, how they collaborate within a virtual space, and the result showed that Facebook is the most powerful educational strategy, which students learn in groups for achieving collaboration and common goals. Amid our observation, we conducted questionnaires that were submitted to undergraduate students at the Department of English. The results reveal that students believe social media platforms, particularly Facebook, to be an essential environment to support their educational matters. It provides students with promising opportunities to interact, share academic content, and boost their productivity inside and outside the classroom.Item Sociolinguistics meets education fostering dialect awareness among EFL learners for better production of standard codes(university of Oum El Bouaghi, 2016) Hiouani, Amira Sarra; Melgani, HarounThe inescapability of sociolinguistic variation as a systematic occurrence has long been acknowledged by contemporary linguists. Nonetheless, the undemanding notion of incorporating sociolinguistic diversity teaching programmes involving standard and non-standard employment of spoken language into english as a foreign Language (EFL) classes was only approached by handful researchers. In essence, the present investigation aims at highlighting the prominence of integrating a range of dialect awareness activities into the EFL curricula of algerian universities. In pursuance of this aim, first year LMD students at Larbi Ben M'Hidi university were selected as the target population of the study. Two of eight pre-arranged groups were settled on to form the experimental and control groups. The former underwent a sequence of observation sessions that took place prior to the pre-test and subsequent to the post-test. It was only after the pre-observation got to an end that the quasi-experiment was executed and was essentially one in which both groups were pre- and post-tested with dissimilar treatments in the midst of the two tests; namely, students in the experimental group undertook a series of dialect awareness activities and instructions about their application in contexts while the control group ones were merely exposed to authentic spoken language. The results obtained from the quantitative examination of the gathered data reveal that the integration of dialect awareness activities had a significant impact on raising the students' recognition about dialect variation which, in turn, substantially affected their academic oral production. On account of these findings, a number of pedagogical implications are given to teachers, students and course designers, with reference to the restraints that obstructed this work from being more elaborate.Item Students' attitudes towards formal and informal ways of leaning vocabulary(Université De Larbi Ben M’hidi Oum EL Bouaghi, 2022) Bensid, Hanna; Habbaz, Hind; Hiouani, Amira Sarraocabulary is one of the most difficult and complex aspects of learning a foreign language. It is a challenging aspect that requires significant effort from students and requires specific strategies that teachers can provide to achieve a decent level of learning. Significantly, this research aimed to investigate students' attitudes towards formal and informal ways of vocabulary learning. This study drew upon a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods. Both questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were employed to collect data. Statistical tests and thematic analysis were employed to analyse the data. In this study, the participants were students in the Department of English at Larbi Ben M'hidi University; Oum El Bouaghi. For the questionnaire, thirty male and female students took part. Additionally, and ten male and female students participated in a set of semi structured interviews. The findings of this study display that informal methods can improve EFL students' vocabulary knowledge and reveal the EFL learners' positive attitudes towards the use of social networks as a supplementary tool to enhance their vocabulary knowledge. In general, the findings indicated that students have positive attitudes towards the use of formal and informal ways of learning as well as the notion of integrating social networks into the educational system, which is deemed extremely beneficial and effective for improving vocabulary. Accordingly, incorporating informal methods, especially ones that integrate social media platforms, into EFL classrooms is recommended in order to enhance the students' vocabulary competence. It is also suggested that teachers and students be aware of, and serious about, the importance of using both formal and informal strategies for vocabulary enhancement.