Readers reading practices of EFL Yemeni students: recommendations for the 21st century

This paper investigates the reading practices of forty-five second year EFL Yemeni undergraduate students using the Four Resources Model of multiliteracy practices. The Four Resources Model of multiliteracy practices organizes reading practices into four key practices: code breaking, text participating, text uses and text analysing levels. Quantitative and qualitative methods, designed based on the Four Resources Model constructs, were used to collect data from a sample of students studying English as a Foreign Language at a university in Yemen. Quantitative data was collected through a questionnaire, while qualitative data was gathered using semi-structured interviews guided by the research objectives. The findings reveal that Yemeni students were medium users of the code breaker and text user practices whereas the meaning making and text analysis practices were reported to be used in low usage. On the whole, these early findings suggest that the reading practices and reading abilities of the Yemeni students are still limited even at the tertiary level and have not developed fully with regard to reading in English. This paper reports in detail, the use of the Four Resources Model as a tool to determine reading efficacy while examining the aforementioned findings. Discussion is put forward on the implications for teaching of reading and its approaches in a Yemeni context, especially in view of the students‟ reading needs at the tertiary level in Yemen

A Case Study of EFL Teachers’ Perceptions and Practices in Written Corrective Feedback

Based on a mixed-method approach, this interpretive exploratory case study aimed to identify English as Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ perceptions and practices in Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) in the Saudi context. The study analysed quantitative data gathered from an anonymous custom designed 15-question online survey and qualitative data from an open-ended question (at the end of the online survey) and semi-structured interviews. Participants were one hundred and eighty-four English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers (n =184) who responded to the online survey (113 females and 71 males) and 7 participants who responded to the semi-structured interview (5 males and 2 females). The study findings indicated no significant differences between male and female teachers in considering “time” as the main factor in following a particular strategy for written corrective feedback (93%). The results from the semi-structured interviews highlighted the need for further research in written corrective feedback in the Saudi context to address serious issues related to the teachers’ work-load. Some recommendations were identified for further research in written corrective feedback

Removal of As(III) and As(V) from water using green, silica-based ceramic hollow fibre membranes via direct contact membrane distillation

Arsenite [As(III)] and arsenate [As(V)] removal by direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) using novel hydrophobic green, silica-based ceramic hollow fibre membranes derived from agricultural rice husk was investigated in this work. The green ceramic hollow fibre membranes were prepared from amorphous (ASHFM) and crystalline (CSHFM) silica-based rice husk ash and modified to be hydrophobic via immersion fluoroalkylsilane (FAS) grafting of 1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorodecyltriethoxysilane. Superhydrophobic contact angle values up to 157° and 161° were obtained for ASHFM and CSHFM, respectively. Remarkably, the membrane surface morphology mimicked a look-alike lotus-leaf structure with decrement in pore size after grafting via the silane agent for both membranes. The effect of arsenic pH (3–11), arsenic concentration (1–1000 ppm) and feed temperature (50–80 °C) were studied and it was found that feed temperature had a significant effect on the permeate flux. The hydrophobic CSHFM, with a flux of 50.4 kg m−2 h−1 for As(III) and 51.3 kg m−2 h−1 for As(V), was found to be the best of the tested membranes. In fact, this membrane can reject arsenic to the maximum contaminant level (MCL) limit of 10 ppb under any conditions, and no swelling mechanism of the membranes was observed after testing for 4 hours

Characterization of amorphous silica and crystalline silica from rice husk ash on water filtration application

The presence of water pollution which consists of heavy metals, fecal and others has produced a major problem. These can lead the water to the toxicity and the impurity of water will be disrupted. Therefore, it would not be safe to drinks and could be threatening to live health. In addition, the current market now is dealing with high-cost production to develop ceramic membranes and has been using expensive material to make the filtration system works. In order to challenge the issue, the preparation of ceramic water filtration at low-cost production and using an effectively silica from natural waste rice husk was evaluated. Rice husk was fired at 700ºC and 1000ºC respectively and produced rice husk ash which mutated to amorphous and crystalline silica. Five samples were fabricated after been mixed with the compositions of rice husk ash, kaolin clay, and wheat flour, used at 40:40:20 ratios by weight respectively. The fabrications of the ceramic membrane were conducted by using dry pressing. The samples then were dried in the oven at 60ᵒC for 1 hour followed by sintering at 1000ᵒC respectively. These samples (OO, C1, C2, N1, and N2) were tagged based on unwashed and washed material with the chemical. The properties of silica which are the microstructure and pore size, from rice husk ash were obtained by using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) and x-ray diffractometer (XRD). Effect of silica content in ceramic filtration membrane was investigated and characterized in term of porosity, density, water absorption, membrane hardness, pore size, flow rate, the turbidity of water (before and after filtration) and pH value. From the result, sample C2 was the best option to support the objective by 98.60% silica content, 64.82% of porosity, 1.1433 mg/cm3 of density, 40.59% of water absorption, 171.0 Hv of hardness, 0.177 l/hr of flowrate and pH of 7.62 of water after filtration. In general, the quality of the ceramic filter membrane is reliant on the raw material, while the flow rate and water clarity are dependent on the pore size of the filter membrane

English Speaking and Listening Assessment Project - Baseline. Bangladesh

This study seeks to understand the current practices of English Language Teaching (ELT) and assessment at the secondary school level in Bangladesh, with specific focus on speaking and listening skills. The study draws upon prior research on general ELT practices, English language proficiencies and exploration of assessment practices, in Bangladesh. The study aims to provide some baseline evidence about the way speaking and listening are taught currently, whether these skills are assessed informally, and if so, how this is done. The study addresses two research questions: 1. How ready are English Language Teachers in government-funded secondary schools in Bangladesh to implement continuous assessment of speaking and listening skills? 2. Are there identifiable contextual factors that promote or inhibit the development of effective assessment of listening and speaking in English? These were assessed with a mixed-methods design, drawing upon prior quantitative research and new qualitative fieldwork in 22 secondary schools across three divisions (Dhaka, Sylhet and Chittagong). At the suggestion of DESHE, the sample also included 2 of the ‘highest performing’ schools from Dhaka city. There are some signs of readiness for effective school-based assessment of speaking and listening skills: teachers, students and community members alike are enthusiastic for a greater emphasis on speaking and listening skills, which are highly valued. Teachers and students are now speaking mostly in English and most teachers also attempt to organise some student talk in pairs or groups, at least briefly. Yet several factors limit students’ opportunities to develop skills at the level of CEFR A1 or A2. Firstly, teachers generally do not yet have sufficient confidence, understanding or competence to introduce effective teaching or assessment practices at CEFR A1-A2. In English lessons, students generally make short, predictable utterances or recite texts. No lessons were observed in which students had an opportunity to develop or demonstrate language functions at CEFR A1-A2. Secondly, teachers acknowledge a washback effect from final examinations, agreeing that inclusion of marks for speaking and listening would ensure teachers and students took these skills more seriously during lesson time. Thirdly, almost two thirds of secondary students achieve no CEFR level, suggesting many enter and some leave secondary education with limited communicative English language skills. One possible contributor to this may be that almost half (43%) of the ELT population are only at the target level for students (CEFR A2) themselves, whilst approximately one in ten teachers (12%) do not achieve the student target (being at A1 or below). Fourthly, the Bangladesh curriculum student competency statements are generic and broad, providing little support to the development of teaching or assessment practices. The introduction and development of effective teaching and assessment strategies at CEFR A1-A2 requires a profound shift in teachers’ understanding and practice. We recommend that: 1. Future sector wide programmes provide sustained support to the develop teachers' competence in teaching and assessment of speaking and listening skills at CEFR A1-A2 2. Options are explored for introducing assessment of these skills in terminal examinations 3. Mechanisms are identified for improving teachers own speaking and listening skills 4. Student competency statements within the Bangladesh curriculum are revised to provide more guidance to teachers and students

Teacher Written Feedback In Efl Yemeni Context: A Qualitative Case Study Of Students' Reactions And Utilisations

Maklum balas bertulis guru merupakan input daripada seseorang pembaca kepada seseorang penulis, dengan maklumat yang disediakan kepada penulis untuk rujukan.� Teacher written feedback is the input from a reader to a writer with the effect of providing information to the writer for revision

Knowledge Rich Natural Language Queries over Structured Biological Databases

Increasingly, keyword, natural language and NoSQL queries are being used for information retrieval from traditional as well as non-traditional databases such as web, document, image, GIS, legal, and health databases. While their popularity are undeniable for obvious reasons, their engineering is far from simple. In most part, semantics and intent preserving mapping of a well understood natural language query expressed over a structured database schema to a structured query language is still a difficult task, and research to tame the complexity is intense. In this paper, we propose a multi-level knowledge-based middleware to facilitate such mappings that separate the conceptual level from the physical level. We augment these multi-level abstractions with a concept reasoner and a query strategy engine to dynamically link arbitrary natural language querying to well defined structured queries. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach by presenting a Datalog based prototype system, called BioSmart, that can compute responses to arbitrary natural language queries over arbitrary databases once a syntactic classification of the natural language query is made

Foreign Language Anxiety in Listening and Speaking English in a Thai EFL Classroom

This current research study is an exploratory study which has the aim to investigate language anxiety experienced by students majoring in English for International Communication (EIC) at the college in a university in the southern part of Thailand. This study adopted an interpretive methodology that used a sequential mixed methods approach for data collection. There were 42 students participating in the quantitative study whilst 6 students in qualitative study. The data, both quantitative and qualitative, were collected through questionnaire, diary and semi-structured interview. Data were analysed quantitatively using SPSS descriptive statistics and Factor Analysis while the thematic analysis was used as qualitative method. The findings revealed that all participants experienced language anxiety in class. Their sources of anxiety mostly were from the students themselves. Diary writing activity—one of the research instruments—had a very positive effect as it enabled students to deal with their anxiety and improved the situation

An automatically built named entity lexicon for Arabic

We have successfully adapted and extended the automatic Multilingual, Interoperable Named Entity Lexicon approach to Arabic, using Arabic WordNet (AWN) and Arabic Wikipedia (AWK). First, we extract AWN’s instantiable nouns and identify the corresponding categories and hyponym subcategories in AWK. Then, we exploit Wikipedia inter-lingual links to locate correspondences between articles in ten different languages in order to identify Named Entities (NEs). We apply keyword search on AWK abstracts to provide for Arabic articles that do not have a correspondence in any of the other languages. In addition, we perform a post-processing step to fetch further NEs from AWK not reachable through AWN. Finally, we investigate diacritization using matching with geonames databases, MADA-TOKAN tools and different heuristics for restoring vowel marks of Arabic NEs. Using this methodology, we have extracted approximately 45,000 Arabic NEs and built, to the best of our knowledge, the largest, most mature and well-structured Arabic NE lexical resource to date. We have stored and organised this lexicon following the Lexical Markup Framework (LMF) ISO standard. We conduct a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the lexicon against a manually annotated gold standard and achieve precision scores from 95.83% (with 66.13% recall) to 99.31% (with 61.45% recall) according to different values of a threshold