Listening Comprehension as a Complex Skill and the Sub-Skills Involved in the Process of Speech Perception

The skill of listening comprehension (LC) has been studied and discussed by many scholars, who have made it quite clear that it is one of the most influential and important skills that we depend on in learning and communication. However, many language teachers and course designers belittle it as a passive skill among the other three universally understood skills; and if any concentration is given to it, it is far from being sufficient for real improvement. Teachers rarely depend on any objective observation of what the process of speech perception really involves. Not only this. but what is mentioned in most of the discussions related to this issue underestimates the importance of the skills (or sub-skills) involved in LC (i.e. what the listener is expected to do as he listens). This paper is intended to draw attention to the various skills (or sub-skills) of LC. They are those decisions made at the higher levels of LC, they relate to the listeneris ability to make certain judgments about the whole input or to reply to it. The following taxonomy is based on a survey made of the LC sub-skills in the literature

The effect of staff development and policies on the performance of immigration personnel in northern Nigerian borders

Border management has become a central issue in the contemporary global arena. Globalization has led to increasing flows of people, goods and services across regional borders. The porosity of borders in Nigeria which is loosely patrolled, resulted in massive influx of illegal immigrant and many other form of organized border criminal activities especially in north-eastern regions. Several initiatives on coordinated border management had been made both at regional and continental level with the purpose to address the issues related to border management. Yet there are growing number of concerns on how border will be managed effectively. Border management means the administration of borders, concerns with rules, procedures, processes, and techniques regulating the activities and traffic across defined border zones. The main objective of this study is to investigate the challenges and find out lasting solutions to the problems militating against the performance of border management personnel in Nigeria immigration service. The study unit of analysis is zone C of north-eastern Nigerian borders. Mixed-method of data collection was employed in this research of both quantitative and qualitative techniques, as a better means of problems solving than either method, where by number of questionnaires was distributed in the field. On the qualitative aspect an in-depth interview of face to face was employed to the study target population. The study empirically tested 4 hypotheses from the quantitative point of view in which 3 are supported and only 1 is not supported. The result indicated that there is significance relationship between organizational policies, infrastructural facilities and staff welfare to staff performance, while staff development has no significant effect to staff performance. Furthermore, result from the qualitative findings reveal that shortage of manpower, lack of training and re-training programme, inadequate provision of infrastructural facilities and lack of recruitment process based on merit and competency as well as porosity of borders impinge the realization of performance of personnel. The study concludes that government should put effective institutional framework that will immensely help in improving performance of Nigeria Immigration Service which would serve as panacea to border management crises bordering north-eastern Nigeria and the country at large

Performance of Border Management Personnel and Its Security Implications in Northern Nigerian Borders: A Pilot Study for Reliability and Validity of Instruments

Border management has become a central issue in the contemporary global arena. In spite the presence of agencies responsible of border patrol, yet there is still growing number of challenges on how border will be managed effectively in Nigeria. The objective of this study is examine the validity and the reliability of measurement instruments of staff development, organization policy and funding of staff welfare that influence the quality performance of border management personnel in Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS). The study employed survey approach in collection of data via 71 usable questionnaires in Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS). The validation and reliability of all constructs is determined for the acceptability of instruments using SPSS version 8, Cronbach’s Alpha indicated that all the items are valid and reliable in conducting the study. Keywords: Border Management, Illegal Immigrant, Porosity of Border, Border Personnel, Nigeria Immigration Service

The Relationship Between Staff Development, Organizational Policy, Staff Welfare to Personnel Performance

Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) is one of the most important agency tight with the responsibility of Border management, Although the agency perform many functions other than patrolling borders ranging from issuance of e- passport and visa as well as checking travellers document. The organization played a significance role in controlling movement of illegal immigrants and other organised criminal activities in border zones. As border management become a central issue of concern in the contemporary global arena. In spite of the existence of many agencies of border management, still it is confronted with a lot of challenges as a result of increasing flows of people, goods and services across regional borders. The porosity of Nigerian borders coupled with manpower challenges that can properly mount the border affect the economic growth in the country. Massive influx of illegal immigrants with proliferation light arms and many form of contraband goods organized criminal activities, affect national security and economic development in Nigeria especially in the north/eastern part of the country as focal area of this study considerable number of questionnaires was distributed in the field and the data was analysed quantitatively using PLS Statistical package. In the conclusion this study suggestions would be given more concern of investigating a proper way to improve the performance of personnel in Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) in order to achieve the purpose of this study. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n4p28

Intellectual capital performance and board characteristics of GCC banks

This paper examines the relationship between board of directors’ characteristics (educational level diversity, nationality diversity, board interlocking, board size and number of independent directors) and intellectual capital performance in a sample of 147 banks in Gulf Cooperation council (GCC) countries for the period 2008-2010. The results show that IC performance of GCC listed banks is low.In contrast to our expectation, the number of independent directors has a significant negative relationship with IC performance of GCC listed banks. All other variables are not associated with IC performance

Conceptual analysis of e-recruitment: The role of web-site usability and organizational attraction of personnel in Nigeria

E-recruitment is interchangeably used as the practice of recruitment by means of cyber space. E-recruitment has been described as online recruitment, internet recruiting or cyber space recruiting using electronic web-based practice to advertise job vacancies online. As a result of rapid increased of technology advancement, the level of utilizing internet and electronic mails in conducting business activities in organizations had evident globally.The aims of this study are to examine the importance of e-recruitment in facilitating organizational process of selecting quality and competence employees.The impact of globalization on today’s tight and competitive labour market, available vacancies most be fill with qualified candidates as a major roles played by human resource managers.In the same vein, organizations realised that proper management of men, money, method, machinery etc, resulted to higher degree of productivity when suitable qualified people are recruited. In view of the above discussion therefore, this study is carried out to investigate the problems and provide the possible solution to organization on how to attract large pools number of applicants in recruitment process

Corporate governance, bank specific characteristics, banking industry characteristics,and intellectual capital (IC) performance of banks in Arab Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries

This paper examines the level of intellectual capital (IC) performance of listed banks in Arab Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries using VAIC methodology and investigates the hypothesis ed impact of several corporate governance variables, bank specific characteristics and banking industry characteristics on IC performance.We extend previous research on determinants of IC performance by considering domestic and foreign strategic institutional ownership, bank specific characteristics and banking industry characteristics.Our findings show that board size, number of independent directors, family ownership and domestic strategic institutional ownership have significant relationship with IC performance. In addition, our study provides evidence that except for bank inter nationality, bank specific characteristics and banking industry characteristics play important roles in determining IC performance among GCC banks

THEORETICAL CALCULATIONS OF SOME NEW N-(?,?-UNSATURATED ACYL)SULFONAMIDES AND INVESTIGATION ON CORRELATIONS WITH THOSE EXPERIMENTAL VALUES

Bu çalışmada, üç N-(?,?-Doymamış açil) molekülü (3) ve yedi adet Sülfonamid (2) ile N-(?,?- doymamış açil)benzotriazol (1) ve N-( ?,?-doymamış Karboksiamid(4) ile sülfonilbenzotriazol reaktantlarının(5) (Tablo 1) , belirli teorik hesaplamaları Gaussian09 programı [1] kullanılarak DFT metod ile B3LYP/6-311++g(d,p) seviyesinde hesaplanmıştır. Elde edilen teorik sonuçların önceden elde edilen deneysel verilerle karşılaştırılmaları yapılmıştır. [2]In this study, certain theoretical properties of three N-(?,?-Unsaturated acyl)sulphonamides (3) and seven reactants; Sulfonamides(2) with N-(?,?-unsaturated acyl)benzotriazoles(1) and ?,?- unsaturated carboxamides(4) with sulfonylbenzotriazoles(5) (Table 1) , calculated in Gaussian09 program [1] using DFT method at B3LYP/6-311++g(d,p) level of theory. The theoretical data was then compared with that of certain experimental results [2

Note taking in English lectures: A study of Omani EFL university students

Note Taking (NT), also Note-Taking or Note-Making, while listening (or from lectures) is one of the most widespread and frequent activities among students at universities and colleges in any field of study. In EFL classes, in spite of the common use of NT from lectures, this skill is sometimes regarded as passive and secondary to learning. This study is an investigation of some aspects related to the way Omani EFL university students at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) take notes during lectures delivered in English as well as the effectiveness of these notes, i.e. the usefulness of these notes in capturing the important information in lectures. Training in NT is also addressed in this study. Two groups of students were involved in this study: an experimental and a control group. The former group was involved in an intensive two-hour NT workshop after which their notes of a lecture were compared with previous notes taken before the workshop to study the changes in the NT strategies used. In contrast, the control group did not participate in the NT training; their notes were merely compared with those of the experimental group to study the NT strategies used by the two groups. This investigation involves the study of both qualitative and quantitative data taken from the students' lecture notes. In addition to studying the sample's notes, interviews and questionnaires were used to learn about the students' experience in NI and their opinions and attitudes regarding their NI skills by questioning their purpose of NI, the methods they use to take notes, and the factors they believe affect NT. Results indicate that the sample's lecture notes are effective reproductions of the important information in the lectures they attended, for a good number of students were able to record more than 'one-third' of the important information units in the lectures which is what Hartley and Cameron (1967), among others, consider a 'reasonable' and 'generous' amount to expect to find in lecture notes. Also, simple training in NT was found to help students improve their NT strategies and habits

Note takingg in English lectures: A study of Omani EFL university students

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