Papers by Dr. Hala Dalbani
This study investigates the sources of difficulties that Damascus University learners face in the... more This study investigates the sources of difficulties that Damascus University learners face in their composition writing courses at the Department of English Language and Literature. The research is carried out through a longitudinal study of both the context and the product of writing across a four year EFL writing course. Findings suggest that the writing problems that students face are inherent in the writing pedagogy in current practice at the University. To my mother and father ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This study was made possible by a grant provided by the Syrian Ministry of Higher Education. I wish to record my gratitude to this body. My gratitude is greatly expressed to my supervisor Ms. Jennifer Jarvis from the School of Education for her time, invaluable guidance and support throughout this research. My thanks are due to all Damascus University composition writing lecturers and instructors and to all student informants without whose help and data much of the research carried out in this thesis could not have been made possible. The help given by Miss Amina Jaber from the examinations section at Damascus University in collecting much of the data used in this work is greatly acknowledged. My sincere thanks are due to Mme Akamatsu from the Linguistics and Phonetics department for her help and support and to my ex-supervisor Dr. Patrick Leach whose serious illness led to his early retirement from the department. My thanks are also due to Jacques Le Bot from the Department of Pure and Applied Biology and to Mrs. Jean Orton from the School of Education for their invaluable guidance in the statistical work carried out in this research. I also wish to thank all the friends in Leeds for their encouragement and support. Finally, I owe a particular debt to my husband Mouwaffak and my son Ahmed whose constant support, sacrifice, patience and understanding made the completion of this work possible amid all the difficulties that I faced in the process of completing it. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1. Statement of the problem 1 2. Theoretical Background 3. Objectives and Research Questions 4. Overview of the Whole Work
Gender differences in utilizing a game-based approach within the EFL online classrooms
Heliyon, Feb 1, 2023
Very large public universities, an inadequately developed public sector, and a rapid growth in th... more Very large public universities, an inadequately developed public sector, and a rapid growth in the number of students seeking higher education are some of the challenges facing higher education in Syria today. The government's 'open admission policy' has committed itself to securing 'free access' to higher education to every secondary school graduate. For this policy to continue and be successful and for the country and students to benefit, significant changes are needed, or else, the quality of teaching and learning in such massive contexts where minimal resources are available will continue to recede. Such circumstances besides the technological developments in the world today also make it imperative that the concept of education should be moving towards helping learners acquire the skills of self-directed learning and develop the attitude that learning is a lifelong process. This study shall attempt to look for potential answers to quality education at the department of English language and literature at Damascus University where the number of EFL (English as a foreign language) undergraduate students in 2009 was around 13,000 with a student-lecturer ratio of around 500:1. The answer to quality education in such massive departments might simply lie in approaches to teaching that promote
Syria
Springer eBooks, 2018
Sustainability, Oct 18, 2022
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
This research seeks to extend our current knowledge in the area of distant English language learn... more This research seeks to extend our current knowledge in the area of distant English language learning by exploring the language learning strategies used by students at the Syrian Virtual University (SVU). Hurd et al (2001) maintain that for learners to successfully complete a distance language program, they need to maintain their motivation and to develop a series of strategies and skills that will enable them to work individually. Few studies explored the language learning strategies employed in the virtual mode of learning. The objective of this paper is to make a first hand evaluation of the type and frequency of language learning strategies utilized by SVU learners to enhance their learning. This study will also examine whether there exists a relationship between increased linguistic proficiency and greater strategy use. Points of intersection between learners' and teachers' perceptions regarding the use of language learning strategies will also be explored. An adapted version of Hurd's (2000) inventory of language learning strategies of distant learners at the Open University was used as the instrument for collecting data. Results suggest that Syrian students do use a number of language learning strategies. However, they show distinct preferences for the mechanical and productive rather than the reflective type of skills. Findings also reveal the existence of a relationship between the use of some language learning strategies and learners' linguistic proficiency. A major finding of this study is the high accord between the strategies students reported using highly frequently and those which teachers reported regarding as highly important. Results may be used in the future to inform pedagogy and hence the outcomes from this research may be significant in a country where the learning of English in recent years has become an important educational requirement.
Gender differences in utilizing a game-based approach within the EFL online classrooms
Heliyon
This research seeks to extend our current knowledge in the area of distant English language learn... more This research seeks to extend our current knowledge in the area of distant English language learning by exploring the language learning strategies used by students at the Syrian Virtual University (SVU). Hurd et al (2001) maintain that for learners to successfully complete a distance language program, they need to maintain their motivation and to develop a series of strategies and skills that will enable them to work individually. Few studies explored the language learning strategies employed in the virtual mode of learning. The objective of this paper is to make a first hand evaluation of the type and frequency of language learning strategies utilized by SVU learners to enhance their learning. This study will also examine whether there exists a relationship between increased linguistic proficiency and greater strategy use. Points of intersection between learners' and teachers' perceptions regarding the use of language learning strategies will also be explored. An adapted version of Hurd's (2000) inventory of language learning strategies of distant learners at the Open University was used as the instrument for collecting data. Results suggest that Syrian students do use a number of language learning strategies. However, they show distinct preferences for the mechanical and productive rather than the reflective type of skills. Findings also reveal the existence of a relationship between the use of some language learning strategies and learners' linguistic proficiency. A major finding of this study is the high accord between the strategies students reported using highly frequently and those which teachers reported regarding as highly important. Results may be used in the future to inform pedagogy and hence the outcomes from this research may be significant in a country where the learning of English in recent years has become an important educational requirement.
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Sustainability
With higher education moving more towards online education and wider adoption of more flexible mo... more With higher education moving more towards online education and wider adoption of more flexible models of teaching, especially during and after COVID-19, faculty members at a small private university in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia made their first attempts at flipping. Given the lack of studies that examined the transitional period that instructors go through in their initial attempts to flip, this study explored the perceptions of instructors making the transition, where traditional teacher-centered approaches to teaching have prevailed. Their insights can be detrimental to its successful delivery and continued use. To achieve its objective, this research paper investigated the initial perceptions of the requirements of flipping from thirty-seven female faculty members across six different colleges. This study employed a qualitative synthesis of quantitative and qualitative data elicited from interviews, surveys, and self-reflection reports, concluding that instructors transitioning...
This study investigates the sources of difficulties that Damascus University learners face in the... more This study investigates the sources of difficulties that Damascus University learners face in their composition writing courses at the Department of English Language and Literature. The research is carried out through a longitudinal study of both the context and the product of writing across a four year EFL writing course. Findings suggest that the writing problems that students face are inherent in the writing pedagogy in current practice at the University. To my mother and father ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This study was made possible by a grant provided by the Syrian Ministry of Higher Education. I wish to record my gratitude to this body. My gratitude is greatly expressed to my supervisor Ms. Jennifer Jarvis from the School of Education for her time, invaluable guidance and support throughout this research. My thanks are due to all Damascus University composition writing lecturers and instructors and to all student informants without whose help and data much of the research carried out in this thesis could not have been made possible. The help given by Miss Amina Jaber from the examinations section at Damascus University in collecting much of the data used in this work is greatly acknowledged. My sincere thanks are due to Mme Akamatsu from the Linguistics and Phonetics department for her help and support and to my ex-supervisor Dr. Patrick Leach whose serious illness led to his early retirement from the department. My thanks are also due to Jacques Le Bot from the Department of Pure and Applied Biology and to Mrs. Jean Orton from the School of Education for their invaluable guidance in the statistical work carried out in this research. I also wish to thank all the friends in Leeds for their encouragement and support. Finally, I owe a particular debt to my husband Mouwaffak and my son Ahmed whose constant support, sacrifice, patience and understanding made the completion of this work possible amid all the difficulties that I faced in the process of completing it. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1. Statement of the problem 1 2. Theoretical Background 3. Objectives and Research Questions 4. Overview of the Whole Work
This study investigates the sources of difficulties that Damascus University learners face in the... more This study investigates the sources of difficulties that Damascus University learners face in their composition writing courses at the Department of English Language and Literature. The research is carried out through a longitudinal study of both the context and the product of writing across a four year EFL writing course. Findings suggest that the writing problems that students face are inherent in the writing pedagogy in current practice at the University. Most studies in ESL/EFL writing have looked at the final product in isolation from the context in which it has been produced. This work has attempted a study of the process of teaching and evaluating writing at Damascus University across four years and analysed longitudinally, in the light of the contextual findings, the final products (written under the influence of the context described) of the same group of learners. Research on ESL writing too has focused mainly on the teaching of writing in smaller classes. This work is uni...
Open and distance learning is experiencing a rapid growth throughout the world and Syria is no ex... more Open and distance learning is experiencing a rapid growth throughout the world and Syria is no exception. With the turn of the new millennium, Syria launched two state institutes for distance learning: The Open Learning Centre (opened in 2001) and the Syrian Virtual University (opened in 2002). The Syrian Virtual University (SVU), one of its kind in the whole Arab region, offers students the opportunity to gain education through an online learning environment based on the latest technology. Since Syria is a country where English has become an important educational requirement, the teaching of English as a foreign language has therefore entered the arena of distance learning. There is an overwhelming consensus amongst language learning researchers today on the benefits of developing an autonomous approach to learning which has also been linked to successful language learning. In higher education today, autonomy is also seen as a ‘marker of graduateness’ as manifested in the British Q...
This research seeks to extend our current knowledge in the area of distanct English language lear... more This research seeks to extend our current knowledge in the area of distanct English language learning by exploring the language learning strategies used by students at the Syrian Virtual University (SVU). Hurd et al (2001) maintain that for learners to successfully complete a distance language program, they need to maintain their motivation and to develop a series of strategies and skills that will enable them to work individually. Few studies explored the language learning strategies employed in the virtual mode of learning. The objective of this paper is to make a first hand evaluation of the type and frequency of language learning strategies utilized by SVU learners to enhance their learning. This study will also examine whether there exists a relationship between increased linguistic proficiency and greater strategy use. Points of intersection between learners’ and teachers’ perceptions regarding the use of language learning strategies will also be explored. An adapted version o...
Very large public universities, an inadequately developed public sector, and a rapid growth in th... more Very large public universities, an inadequately developed public sector, and a rapid growth in the number of students seeking higher education are some of the challenges facing higher education in Syria today. The government’s ‘open admission policy’ has committed itself to securing ‘free access’ to higher education to every secondary school graduate. For this policy to continue and be successful and for the country and students to benefit, significant changes are needed, or else, the quality of teaching and learning in such massive contexts where minimal resources are available will continue to recede. Such circumstances besides the technological developments in the world today also make it imperative that the concept of education should be moving towards helping learners acquire the skills of self-directed learning and develop the attitude that learning is a life-long process.
An investigation into the relationship between the educational context and the written product of university EFL students with implications for the teaching of writing
An investigation into the relationship between the educational context and the written product of university EFL students with implications for the teaching of writing
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Papers by Dr. Hala Dalbani