INVESTIGATING FACTORS INFLUENCING THE DEVELOPMENT OF UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS’ ENGLISH-SPEAKING SKILLS AT PAAET, KUWAIT (Published)
The study aims to identify the difficulties encountered by EFL undergraduate students with their English-speaking skills in the English department at the College of Basic Education, Public Authority of Applied Education and Training (PAAET). The study was conducted using the descriptive approach which contained a questionnaire comprising 27 items applied to a sample of 420 female students. The results found that students encountered moderate difficulties among the five factors. Students ranked the factors according to which contributed to the development of their English-speaking skills the most in the following order: preference of native speakers as teachers, followed by English language proficiency, teaching methodologies, environmental influences, and emotional influences. The results also indicated that there is a significant relationship between the factors that influence the development of English-speaking skills and demographic variables such as year of study, major GPA, and grade in conversation class.
Keywords: Code Switching, Code-Mixing, L1, L2, Mother Tongue Interference
Identification of Cross-linguistic Factors Affecting Interlanguage System Progress of Saudi Learners of EFL (Published)
This paper aims to identify EFL teachers’ perceptions of the cross-linguistic factors affecting the interlanguage system progress of Saudi learners of EFL at Najran University. A purposive sample of twenty-six (26) English language teachers at Najran university representing the main participants in this paper. The paper revealed that the main cross-linguistic factors affecting interlanguage system progress of Saudi learners of EFL were attributed to the status of English as a foreign language in KSA which doesn’t allow learners ample exposure to communicative language settings, besides the teaching practices that fail in providing authentic learning atmosphere assisting the progress of learners’ interlanguage system, and the interference of learners’ mother tongue that negatively affects the progress of their interlanguage system
Keywords: Cross-linguistic factors, Interlanguage system, Mother Tongue Interference, Saudi learners