Language Acquisition

Linguistics in Aid of Teachers of English

The Language Research Center organized a seminar on December 06, 2017 that included a presentation by Dr. Emad Al-Tamari titled "Linguistics in Aid of Teachers of English." His presentation attempted to focus on how “fixing” and “developing” students’ linguistics competence will lead to improving students’ linguistic performance. His session began with some questions about whether our teachers have ever tried to assess their own English, whether they evaluate their students’ English and whether they have thought of linguistics as a tool to help improve their students’ English. Dr. Al-Tamari successfully pinpointed significant problem areas our students have, which he thought our teachers should focus on when teaching English. Dr. Al-Tamari, while defining linguistics, highlighted some pedagogical implications linguistics could have. He quoted Chomsky while focusing on the nature of language and how communication works. He explained Chomsky’s three models namely that of linguistic competence, performance, and language acquisition. Finally, he focused on major areas of linguistics such as phonetics, phonology, syntax, morphology, and semantics. Dr. Al-Tamari recommended that our teachers should assess their students’ English regularly. A teacher, he added, should be a role model for the students when it comes to language use.   The Al-Samer girls’ campus also participated in this seminar online. The presentation was worthwhile, interactive and overall a great success.  Date: 12/6/2017 Source: Mohammad Adil Siddique Multimedia Contribution: Mohammad Sherajul Islam
عربية

TOEFL Training

The English Club hosted an English Hour seminar led by Language Instructor, Hassan Costello. The training session was titled, The 60 TOEFL Structure and Written Expression Skills in 60 Minutes. The seminar covered test-taking strategies, a quick review of practice tests, tips to improving your Academic English, and an in-depth session on the Structure and Written Expression section.  Costello: The TOEFL examination is unique as it forces the students to use multiple skills when answering a single question. No matter whether it’s reading, writing, speaking or listening – all of these are strongly bound by time restrictions. You must be aware of the structure of the test, and focus on achieving the structural requirements within the appropriate time limits. I encourage you to use your power of prediction. The TOEFL test is run on computerized software. Keep in mind there are numerous slides and images that will allow you some extra time for planning and to predict some of the vocabulary of the topic coming up.  Date: 11/11/2015 Source: The Faculty of Languages and Translation
عربية