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Dr. RANDA M. SAFYEDDIN ABDELSHAFY KHARBOUSH :: Theses : |
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| Title | THE EFFECT OF USING DRAMA TECHNIQUES IN DEVELOPING SOME COMMUNICATIVE SKILLS OF PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS OF ENGLISH |
| Type | MSc |
| Supervisors | Sadek, Rita.C. Kandil, Aziz A. |
| Year | 1989 |
| Abstract | No one can deny the decisive role played by the teacher in foreign language teaching and learning.The foreign language teacher must be prepared in such a way as to help him/her perform his/her duties adequately. There is a common complaint among educationalists in Egypt that teachers of English as a foreign language are suffering from a lack of proficiency, required as one of the most important elements of the input in programs of teachers' training. The teacher of English as a foreign language must be competent so as to act as a model. The present system of teachers' education is based on fragmented and unrelated courses, while most of the qualifications needed by the teachers are neglected. The present study is intended to investigate the effect of using drama techniques on developing communicative skills of prospective teachers of English. These techniques are commonly used in foreign language classes for developing communicative competence, especially in relation to oral language skills. The present researcher uses those techniques for developing some vocal supra-segmental features of the language; the use of voice quality, non-standard intonation patterns, nonverbal communicative skills; posture, body movement, gestures, eye contact, and facial expressions. These communicative skills are thought to be essential and of vital importance for the prospective teachers of English to act as models in the English language classroom. The research instruments were developed by the researcher. They include a pilot questionnaire that was administered to the prospective teachers because their viewpoints were instrumental in the shaping of the experimental study. There is also a scale for measuring their development in the target skills. There is also an observation checklist that was used for evaluating their teaching performance during peer teaching sessions as well as during teaching practice for the aim of registering any development in the required communicative skills. The sessions of peer teaching were videotaped to be observed, analyzed, and criticized objectively. Drama techniques form an opportunity for the prospective teachers to use and practice their stored English in a meaningful context. They are hardly ever exposed to the natural use of English in real-life situations, so they cannot fulfill their urge for communicating in English. Without practice in going from thought to expression, from competence to performance, prospective teachers never really learn to use the language because language is essentially communication, and communication involves the exchange of thoughts and feelings with someone else. Drama techniques lead to the necessary bodily and emotional involvement, which results in the motivation to make meanings and intentions clear in the target language. This enterprise leads to competence in the language. Further, the prospective teachers have the opportunity to gain the necessary skills to carry the full communicative burden later in real acts of communication. In addition to the various advantages of drama techniques, it is cheap; all that is required is a teacher familiar with them, copies of the plays, and some Learners. It is also an extendable system; capable of working within any kind of academic calendar, and subject to local, prefectural, or national organizations as desired. Results indicated that prospective teachers who experienced drama techniques achieved considerable development in the aimed communicative skills. There was obvious progress in their general level of English after the experiment, particularly in voice quality, the use of non-standard intonation patterns, the use of body movement, gestures, and facial expressions. Although errors might occasionally creep into their speech, additional practice expressing their own thoughts by means of the target language was the essential factor, if they were ever to gain the fluency necessary to communicate with their students later. Perfect language is an abstraction at best, and the prospective teachers tried to eliminate their own errors as they had more contact with the language. They were willing to exert a genuine effort to the use of English exclusively. The experiment provided the prospective teachers with the opportunity to develop their individual talents and personalities. The techniques used were aimed at fostering a sense of responsibility and sociability, which rounded out the personalities of the prospective teachers and made them active and creative. A genuine openness on their part in regards to their studies and the courage to develop their own individual and independent approach would help lead them towards the goal of development. They learned to work in groups and cooperate. The process of self-discovery achieved by means of drama techniques, sharpened their awareness of their own psyche, an introspective phenomenon of change and development. The sympathies that developed between the researcher and the prospective teachers, and the fact that they shared in some of the logistical problems of the teaching process provided a way for them to relate. They began to realize the professional hazards and consequences of being a teacher. The prospective teachers developed their capacity to deploy their knowledge of English rapidly and sensitively to meet the demands of changing situations and to convert thoughts and ideas into language for the spur of the moment for genuine communication rather than merely language-like behavior. Repeated correction of any expression used within a meaningful context strengthened their respect and appreciation of the language and promoted a developed feeling for language. |
| Keywords | Education, Teaching English as a Foreign language, Prospective Teachers of English, Communicative Skills, Drama Techniques, oral language, paralinguistics |
| University | Benha University |
| Country | Egypt |
| Full Paper | - |
| Title | AN ANALYTICAL STUDY OF SOCIOLINGUISTIC TRANSFER FROM ARABIC TO ENGLISH AMONG THE STUDENTS OF FACULTY OF EDUCATION |
| Type | PhD |
| Supervisors | Sadek, Rita C. |
| Year | 1998 |
| Abstract | The failure of the audio-lingual method to foster real communication skills caused language instruction specialists to search for more effective ways to teach foreign languages. This search led to the development of the communicative approach in Britain in the 1970s, which has spread in many parts of the world, Including Egypt, focusing on actively developing the competence of understanding and communicating meaning. According to Canale (1983) and Canale & Swain (1980), communicative competence includes at least four elements, among which is sociolinguistic competence; i.e. the ability to use the language appropriately in different social contexts. Although there are various ways to organize syllabi on a communicative language teaching basis, meaning and context are always central to the learning experience. “This method; communicative method, as its name implies, transforms the traditional non-communicative, teacher-centered classroom into an innovative, communicative, student-centered classroom. “ Oxford (1989). The teacher's role is enriched as he /she becomes more of an advisor, manager, resource person, facilitator, and co- communicator. In this new role, it has become vital for the teacher to have an even better understanding of the learners and the learning strategies they employ. With this in mind, a good deal of research is being done on the interlanguage of learners in a variety of situations. There is a large body of research that claims that transfer plays an important role in shaping interlanguage. The present researcher finds it more logical to start studying such phenomenon; transfer, where the will-be teachers are in mind because classroom discourse represents the main oral input available to the language Learner in the foreign language contexts. There is overwhelming evidence that language transfer is indeed a real and central phenomenon that must be considered in any full account of the foreign language acquisition process. In the face of increasing quantities of foreign language data, researchers have begun to once again focus their attention on language transfer, realizing that “ the baby had been mercilessly thrown out with the bathwater”. The pendulum in recent years has begun to settle, with language transfer being investigated as a phenomenon of importance in and of itself. It has been claimed that language transfer is not only a psycholinguistic process but is often a sociolinguistic process as well, frequently of cultural identity. The current study presents evidence that pragmatic transfer exists in the order, frequency, and content of the linguistic patterns of the Egyptian students’ requests. A pragmatic transfer is the transfer of native language socio-cultural communicative competence in performing foreign language speech acts, where the speaker is trying to achieve a particular function of language. Requests, as speech acts, are interesting from a sociolinguistic point of view because they involve delicate interpersonal interaction and they are important for foreign language educators and others involved in cross-cultural communication. The present research examines the similarities and differences in the realization patterns of the speech Act of requesting between native Egyptian speakers of Arabic and American speakers of English as an analytical approach for tracing sociolinguistic pragmatic transfer. The subjects of this study were 60 native Egyptian Arabic speaking University undergraduate students studying at Benha faculty of education and 60 Native American English speaking undergraduate students at Texas A&M University. The Egyptian subjects were studying English as a foreign language in the English Department to be teachers of English as a foreign language. the data was collected by a controlled elicitation procedure called Discourse Completion Test (DCT). The data were then categorized based on the coding system developed by the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (Blum Kulka, House & Kasper 1989). In order to analyze the differences between Arabic as a native language, English as a native language, and English as a foreign language in the realization of linguistic patterns of request, a statistical analysis was performed with request patterns as a dependent variable and language as a grouping variable. Another analysis was performed where frequencies of different components of requestive speech acts were compared between Arabic as a native language, English as a native language, and English as a foreign language. The analysis revealed that there are considerably significant differences between Arabic as a native language and English as a native language, as well as between Arabic as a native language and English as a foreign language. For example, the analysis revealed that Egyptian Arabic subjects are considerably more direct when making requests compared to American subjects. The results also showed that the Egyptian subjects used considerably more alerters, supportive moves, and internal modifiers compared to American subjects. It is suggested that in some languages, like Arabic, speakers may compensate for the level of directness in the requestive speech acts by using more supportive move, alerters and internal modifiers. These differences in requestive speech act realization patterns may cause some cross-cultural communication problems for learners of English as a foreign language. The current study provides evidence that pragmatic transfer from the Arabic language influences the English language of the Egyptian students which warrants further exploration of pragmatic transfer in other areas besides requests. In this sense, the 30 has some pedagogical implications for teaching English as a foreign language. In particular, there appears to be a need to assist Egyptian-speaking learners of English in developing cross-cultural and cross-linguistic awareness concerning the appropriateness of language as well as its correctness. |
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| University | Texas A& M/Benha Univesity |
| Country | USA/Egypt |
| Full Paper | - |
