The Essence of Foreign Language Learning in Today’s Globalizing World: Benefits and Hindrances

This paper highlights the essence of foreign language learning in today’s globalizing world as well as underscores its benefits and hindrances. It emphasizes that foreign language does collectively bind us together as human beings predicated upon our irresistible interdependence in various ways. Rationally speaking, being knowledgeable of a second or foreign language is extremely pertinent because it provides numerous life time opportunities. Yielding the dividends of studying abroad, employment, personal development, security, political and economic benefits among others make foreign language learning absolutely beneficial. Consequently, this paper sees foreign language conversance as a key that could unlock the door of your life and it must not be ignored. However, despite its overarching benefits, foreign language learning is continually constrained with the challenges of complexity, ignorance of its importance, learner-native speaker gaps, weak policies and inadequate support. Some of these challenges are related to the constructs of motivational beliefs and strategies which are vital to foreign language learning because learners must believe in themselves, value tasks and use appropriate strategies if they are to succeed. Finally, it recommends a collective concerted effort against monolingualism, but supports the formulation of salient policies and programs including the inclusion of foreign languages in the curricula, increased financial and moral supports, and early teaching of foreign languages to kids. Key words: foreign language, language benefits and barriers, motivational beliefs, language learning strategies, globalizing world

Aligning Expansion and Quality in Higher Education: An Imperative to Liberia’s Economic Growth and Development

This paper highlights and discusses the need for aligning expansion and quality of higher education in Liberia.  It emphasizes that such initiative is inevitable to the sustainable economic growth and sociopolitical development of the country. Because with better education, Liberia as a country is sure to achieve political stability, create wealth and sustain growth. Honestly speaking, the existence of higher education institutions will make little or no impact on the nation’s national development agenda in the absence of quality as the ability to undertake initiatives and be innovative largely depends on the quality of knowledge acquired. Like other countries, this paper notes that Liberia’s higher education subsector continues to expand in various ways, intended to satisfy the access demand by the growing population. Consequently, there has been a tremendous increase from 3 to 30 tertiary institutions in the country. Capitalizing on Functionalist theorists’ view on HE expansion that universities can go a long way towards solving societal problems through development and use of new knowledge, this paper acquiesces, but underscores that ensuring quality is very vital in the fulfillment of HE purposes. It argues that balancing HE expansion and quality is not an option, but an obligation, noting that HE is not a cosmetic or a window-dressing endeavor, but one that ought to imbue every necessary ingredient encompassing value, excellence and quality. Furthermore, as experienced by some other nations, this paper is optimistic that Liberia’s sustainable economy growth and development would be immensely impacted based on increased enrollments and successful graduation of more Liberians from colleges and universities. Finally, in order to align HE expansion and quality, it recommends for establishment of legal framework and quality management and enhancement body, prioritization of higher education, proportionate provision of subsidies to private institutions, establishment of professional development center for administrators and teaching staff as well as their incorporation in bilateral and multilateral partnership programs for capacity building, improving the welfare of staff, furnishing of libraries and laboratories,  synchronizing and updating the curriculum, and the need for concerted efforts to deal with quality challenges in Liberia’s higher education subsector. Key words: expansion, higher education, quality, economic growth and developmen

Student Academic Performance: The Role of Motivation, Strategies, and Perceived Factors Hindering Liberian Junior and Senior High School Students Learning

The nature of motivation and learning strategy use is vital to improving student learning outcomes. This study was intended to explore the motivational beliefs and learning strategy use by Liberian junior and senior high school students in connection with their academic performance. It also solicited students’ self-reports about presumed factors hindering their learning. Utilizing a cross-sectional quantitative research design, 323 participants took part in the study from 2 counties. Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) was adapted and 12 potential learning hindrances were identified and used as instruments. Data analyses were conducted using SPSS 17.0. The results showed the motivational belief component of extrinsic goal orientation as the most preferred belief and test anxiety was the least possessed belief. Rehearsal strategies were found to be the most frequently used, while help seeking was reported to be the least strategy considered. The result also showed significant relationships between the two constructs. In addition, the study found some learning hindrances. A number of conclusions as well as some practical recommendations for action relative to the improvement of student performance have been advanced

Student Academic Performance: The Role of Motivation, Strategies, and Perceived Factors Hindering Liberian Junior and Senior High School Students Learning

The nature of motivation and learning strategy use is vital to improving student learning outcomes. This study was intended to explore the motivational beliefs and learning strategy use by Liberian junior and senior high school students in connection with their academic performance. It also solicited students' self-reports about presumed factors hindering their learning. Utilizing a cross-sectional quantitative research design, 323 participants took part in the study from 2 counties. Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) was adapted and 12 potential learning hindrances were identified and used as instruments. Data analyses were conducted using SPSS 17.0. The results showed the motivational belief component of extrinsic goal orientation as the most preferred belief and test anxiety was the least possessed belief. Rehearsal strategies were found to be the most frequently used, while help seeking was reported to be the least strategy considered. The result also showed significant relationships between the two constructs. In addition, the study found some learning hindrances. A number of conclusions as well as some practical recommendations for action relative to the improvement of student performance have been advanced

Profile Aggregation and Policy Evaluation for Adaptive Internet Services

Mobile and ubiquitous computing emphasize the need for highly adaptive delivery of Internet services. While several systems and even products exist that guarantee shallow or deep adaptation, they are usually based on profile information and customer relationship management modules stored and operating at the service provider. On the contrary, in this paper we assume that profile information, including user personal data and preferences, device capabilities, network bandwidth, location and other contextual information, as well as policy rules that can dynamically change this data, are provided by different sources. We describe a formal framework for aggregating this information and for solving conflicts between policy rules. We provide both a theoretical study of the properties of our techniques and a practical evaluation study obtained through a prototype implementation