Inquiry Based Teaching in Literature Classrooms

AbstractNowadays, education is no longer to provide information to students, but rather to prepare learners to become active 21st Century critical thinkers (UNESCO, 1998). The need to communicate is instinctive (Stegmaier, 2011) and from this instinctive need, language developed (Pinker, 1996). Language supports and enhances our thinking and understanding for it permeates the world in which we live. It also plays a vital role in the construction of meaning. Language empowers learners and provides them with an intellectual framework to support their conceptual development and critical thinking. To acquire language, learning through inquiry has emerged as a means that allows for smoother and more effective communication. Teaching language through inquiry is becoming more prevalent. More specifically, teaching English as a second language, language or literature, using inquiry based method facilitates the learners⿿ ability of acquiring the new language. To carry out this ongoing research, data have been collected from language and literature tests that learners sat for after having followed strategies that incorporate inquiry-based techniques. The tests have been designed by the teachers and were carried out during the scholastic year to assess the learners⿿ acquisition of material. The participants are the learners of Grades 10- levels 1 and 5 in the school where the researchers teach. The researchers hypothesized that the participants⿿ performances and their critical thinking skills will improve. The results proved the hypothesis. The researchers recommend that the method be incorporated in literature classrooms

The Influence of Business Ethics on Lebanese University Students: Can Business Ethics Be Learned?

When it comes to business ethics, views diverge and conflict. There are those who believe that ethics can’t be taught but is rather a development, such as Aristotle; and there are those who like Socrates, believe that ethics is knowing what we ought to do, and therefore this knowledge can be learned. In the Lebanese society that faces ethical crises, ethical education becomes important. When business students are taught that “business is business” and business deals are “not a matter of ethics, but of business” in class, it becomes difficult to show them that “good ethics, is good business”. In such conditions ethical education becomes imperative. Teaching ethics means that one believes that people can change, that ethical behavior can be taught. However, is this applicable? Can we teach Hitler or Bernard Madoff ethics or as Orwin (2009) implies “Can we teach pigs to fly?” This paper investigated the effects of learning business ethics on various Lebanese university students who have successfully completed the course’s objectives. The participants were the researcher’s students in two local universities, which caused limitations of the results for they couldn’t be generalized. The results revealed that ethics course(s) did positively affect the students’ behavior

TEACHING BUSINESS ENGLISH FOR ARAB SPEAKERS

Teaching Business English (L2) for target learners whose L1 is Arabic requires certain procedures. Instructors must address problems that their Arabic learners will probably face in acquiring Business communication in L2. This paper will discuss the major problems that learners whose L1 is Arabic face in learning Business English which is L2 and what the role of the instructor is in guiding the learners to overcome these obstacles and acquire the desired skills. Instructors need to address the four problems that their Arab learners are probably going to encounter. These problems are: 1) negative transfer; 2) the difference in writing strategies; 3) prepositional knowledge; and 4) collocational patterns. Thus, instructors have to teach the learners to overcome negative transfer, include practices that guide the learners to overcome the differences in strategies of business communication that exist between L1 and L2 and address the cultural differences between the two main languages

Teachers Bullied by Their Superiors in Schools in Lebanon: An Exploratory Study

Bullying is a dangerous phenomenon because it is a continuous act that causes problems at school, university and even at work. Bullying comes in different forms; and one way of addressing this phenomenon has been through mediation programs that aim for student-peer mediation and that create a safe environments at schools. This present study investigated teachers’ perceptions of teachers being bullied by their superiors or having witnessing other teachers being bullied. It also investigates whether teachers believed measures against bullying were taken on the part of management. 154 professionals participated in the study. According to the surveyed teachers, their superiors don’t bully them. The data gathered indicated that these superiors do not humiliate them in public nor in private. Very few teachers admitted to being humiliated by their superiors (between 6% and 24%). Moreover, some teachers in Lebanon experience bullying and that female superiors were more prone to be the bullies and not much is being done regarding addressing the issue of bullying. An alarming finding is the fact that one teacher admitted to solving bullying incidents through beating the bully. The study reveals that mediation should be implemented in Lebanese schools to teachers as well