The purpose of this study was to investigate EFL instructors' knowledge and pedagogical practices of communicative tasks in teaching English speaking skills Assosa University in Focus. The study employed the explanatory sequential method. The data for this study were collected through questionnaires, interviews and observations from a total of 180 students and 26 instructors. Then, the data were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The findings of the study showed the instructors had favorable knowledge about the contribution of communicative tasks to the development of students’ speaking ability, but they lacked confidence to implement task-based speaking because of their students’ poor speaking. As a result, the instructors preferred to use instructor-fronted approaches in the classroom. Such an approach denied the students opportunities of self directed practice during the speaking lessons. Students’ lack of awareness about task-based learning led them not to tell about the meaning of task-based speaking. The conclusion made from the study is that there is a mismatch between the instructors’ knowledge and practices of the speaking-tasks. This seems to have resulted in the students’ inadequate speaking skills development. This study implies that instructors should develop confidence in implementing task based speaking. Moreover, they should support and encourage their students to take part in the speaking classes where they learn better and practice speaking effectively.

This paper looks at lower primary instructor’s competence in English phonics and outcome on phonics instruction and reading skills of pupils. The instrument used for data collection was a a pre- test before a pedagogic workshop on the teaching of phonics to lower primary school instructors in Buea and Yaounde to find out the teachers’ level in phonics and establish whether the teachers had the need for the workshop. Through the use of a five item test, the instrument was administered and data elicited from some primary one and two teachers in said towns in Cameroon. A total number of 43 teachers took the test in Buea while 48 others sat for the test in Yaoundé making a total of 91 teachers. Findings showed some teachers lack of competence in key issues in phonics such as sound blending, sound segmentation and sound identification and counting which will obviously produces a negative learning outcome and impact reading skills of pupils they are teaching.

The purpose of this study was to explore the challenges of teaching and learning of speaking skills in English subject at secondary schools in Tanzania. The study employed qualitative research approach, a case study design with a total of 56 participants. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussion, classroom observation and documentary review. The study findings revealed that there were a number of challenges of teaching and learning of speaking skills. These are linguistic difficulties, mother tongue use, inhibition, teachers’ perceptions and tacit beliefs. Others are limited authentic materials, limited supportive environment, limited oral assessments and low students’ self-motivation. The study concludes and recommends that the actual description of those challenges need to be recognised and understood, thus, they can be alleviated through giving this skill more emphasis and attention. Numerous concerns such as teachers, students, learning environment and assessment regulation should be taken into an account.

The current exploration examined the occurrence of a reversed transfer of core metalinguistic skills, namely phonological awareness, morphological awareness, orthographic knowledge and reading comprehension from English (L2) to Arabic (L1) among thirty university students with reading difficulties. The experiment consisted of a battery of English and Arabic reading tests administered over two-phases: pre- and post-intervention. All participants were placed in two major groups: experimental and control groups. The experimental group exclusively received a reading intervention in English, targeting the main weaknesses demonstrated by the participants during the pre-test stage. At the end of the reading program, all participants sat for the same reading tests. While the control group’s results remained stagnant in both languages, the treatment group’s results revealed a positive improvement in all English skills after the intervention (with strong correlations between phonological awareness and reading comprehension: r =.65*p <,00). As to the Arabic tests’ scores, the results showed a significant development of similar Arabic reading abilities including orthographic knowledge. The findings lend support to the Cognitive Retroactive Hypothesis (Abu Rabia and Shakour, 2014) and challenge the Orthographic Depth Hypothesis which preconditions transfer across typologically different languages. 

Key words: Phonological Awareness, Morphological Awareness, Orthographic Knowledge, Reading Program, Reading Comprehension, Cognitive Retroactive Hypothesis.

Developing speaking skills is one of the most basic aims of mother tongue teaching. One of the important stages in the development of speaking skill is evaluation. When the limited number of measurement tools related to the measurement of speaking skill in the literature are scanned, it is seen that have weaknesses from different aspects and criticisms draw to attention. Uncertainties or deficiencies regarding what the measured feature is or level score represents what draws attention in existing measurement tools. The aim of this study is to develop an effective speaking rubric that can be used in all types of speech, which deals with the features that should be found in the nature of an effective speech separately, gives clear feedback to the students about their performance, and provides a more objective measurement by defining each sub-skill level separately. This study is a survey-designed research aiming to develop an effective speaking rubric with high validity and reliability. The study group of the research consists of a total of 66 Fine Arts Education students studying at a state university in the spring semester of the 2017-2018 academic year and taking Oral Expression course. In the development of an effective speaking rubric, a literature review was conducted, and accordingly, an item pool was created, the opinions of experts in the field were consulted, and pre-test studies were carried out. Consisting of 21 items, the scale was developed as a triple rubric. The items used in the scale describe three different performance levels of the target behavior. In the application, the participants spoke in front of the audience, and the scoring was done by two different Turkish teachers. During the application, the participants spoke in front of the audience, and the scoring was done by two different Turkish teachers. Kappa Fit Analysis and Pearson Product-Moment Correlation test were used in the analysis of the data. As a result of the research, it was seen that the change in the item scores of the participants from both raters was similar, there was a high level of positive correlation between the total scores, and it was concluded that the developed rubric was a valid and reliable measurement tool. The developed scale can also be used in other studies that require the measurement of speaking skills. In addition, it is recommended to use the scale for teachers and academicians in the assessment and evaluation phase of oral lecture courses.

The aim of the study is to examine the opinions of Turkish as a foreign language learners towards learning Turkish with digital materials. For this purpose, case study design was used from qualitative research designs in the study. Data were provided from a study group of 20 people who learned Turkish as a foreign language from different institutions and organizations. The data obtained in the study were analyzed qualitatively and the findings were determined according to the codes obtained. As a result of the research, it was determined that Turkish as a foreign language learners went through different education systems and had different infrastructures. In addition, it was determined that there were positive opinions about the use of information communication systems, digital materials in teaching, media literacy and the use of technology, but no common views were formed.