Research in the field of English language as a foreign language (EFL) has been consistently highlighted the need for communicative competence skills among students. Accompanied by the validated positive impact of technologies on students’ skills’, this study aims to explore the strategies used by EFL students in enhancing their communicative competence using digital platforms and identify the factors of developing communicative competence using digital platforms (linguistic factors, environmental factors, psychological factors, and university-related factors). The mixed-method research design was utilized to obtain data from Iraqi undergraduate EFL students. The study was conducted in the Iraqi University in Baghdad Iraq. EFL undergraduate students from the English department from the second-year grade constituted the population of the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 EFL students to explore students’ usage of digital platforms to enhance communicative competence. A convenient sampling technique was used to select the students. The data from the interviews were analysed thematically using QSR NVivo software. Also, a survey questionnaire was demonstrated to the sample of the study to identify the challenges of development. 150 EFL students participated in the study sampled using the proportional sampling method. SPSS software was also used to analyse the data. The findings showed that students used digital platforms to develop grammar accuracy, pronunciation, vocabulary, cohesion and coherence, punctuation, and spelling. On the other hand, the challenging factors identified are grouped in four categories which are linguistic factors, environmental factors, psychological factors, an university-related factors. The findings of the study offer new insight for future directions research and recommendations to the university management as these findings could be the cornerstones of the planning for successful implementation of digital platforms in teaching and learning English in general and communicative competence in specific.
الهدف من الدراسة هو معرفة أثر استراتيجيات التفكير البصري (VTS) على تحصيل طلاب الكلية في مهارات الاتصال باللغة الإنكليزية. ولتحقيق هدف الدراسة تم استخدام التصميم البعدي التجريبي. وتمثلت العينة بـ (70) من طلاب المرحلة الثانية بقسم اللغة الإنجليزية بكلية التربية. وقد تم اختيارهم عشوائياً وتقسيمهم إلى مجموعتين: المجموعة التجريبية والضابطة (35) طالباً في كل مجموعة. ولتحقيق هدف الدراسة تم بناء اختبار تحصيلي لمهارا
... Show MoreReading roles as the third skill in the range of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning. Although the capability of reading in both academic and non-academic texts is assessed on standardized tests, few of oral interpretation of written language excludes images from estimating literary knowledge. This paper highlights strategies of reading comprehension and visual literacy. It aims to investigate either textual or visual reading in EFL can make an impact on students' comprehension. The effective use of visuals changes instructing reading comprehension recently.The imagery-text model can affect developing reading comprehension and enhancing intellectual thinking. The study hypothesizes that there is no relationship between reading and
... Show MoreWriting in English language demands both mental skills and a suitable level of language proficiency. Some studies showed that writing anxiety has an impact on the acquisition of language learning. This study; however, teaches the cognitive strategies (PLAY & WRITE) as a writing strategy, so as to decrease students’ use of it when experiencing writing anxiety at the academic writing level. The sample has been (100) second-stage Department of English learners at the College of Education (Ibn –Rushd), in the University of Baghdad-Iraq. They have been randomly selected and divided into experimental and control groups; (50) students in each group. To achieve the objective of the study, SLWAI questionnaire has been distributed to the e
... Show MoreThe knowledge related with lexical items can be realized as including relations of meaning a cross words. Words that share a similarity of meaning are called to be synonymous, and words that share a contrary of meaning are called to be antonymous. Both of them are universal linguistic phenomenon that exist in terms of linguistic system of every language. The present study aims at finding out areas of difficulty that Iraqi EFL learners encounter in the use of synonymy and antonymy, both on the recognition and production levels. Also tries to detect the main reasons behind such difficulties. A diagnostic test of two parts, namely, recognition and production, is designed. The test is built to include two linguistic phenomenon which are: synony
... Show MoreWriting in English language demands both mental skills and a suitable level of language proficiency. Some studies showed that writing anxiety has an impact on the acquisition of language learning. This study; however, teaches the cognitive strategies (PLAY & WRITE) as a writing strategy, so as to decrease students’ use of it when experiencing writing anxiety at the academic writing level. The sample has been (100) second-stage Department of English learners at the College of Education (Ibn –Rushd), in the University of Baghdad-Iraq. They have been randomly selected and divided into experimental and control groups; (50) students in each group. To achieve the objective of the study, SLWAI questionnaire has been distributed to
... Show MoreThe political participation of the Iraqi woman, gains a big importance equivalent to its role in all other fields. Therefore , it represents a higher value in the democratic orientation in addition to the importance of rising the reality of the woman specifically in the fields that are considered as a scale of the human development like the income, health, and education . The weakness of womenʹs political participation, is something that can't be ignored or neglected if we are looking forward to the rising of the country᾽s reality and achieving the required development in its all aspects. The woman is half of society or more than that due to the burden of raising the generations tasks. This can be achieved by taking part in th
... Show MoreYouTube is not just a platform that individuals share, upload, comment on videos; teachers and educators can utilize it to the best maximum so that students can have benefits. This study aims at investigating how active and influential YouTube can be in the educational process and how it is beneficial for language teachers to enhance the skills of students. The study demonstrates different theoretical frameworks that tackle the employment of technology to enhance the learning/teaching process. It relies on the strategies of Berk (2009) for using multimedia media, video clips in particular to develop the abilities of teachers for using technology in classrooms. To achieve the objective of the study, the researchers develop a questionnair
... Show MoreFor over a decade, educational technology has been used sparingly in our schools and universities. Online training courses have been used since 2003 to fill the gaps in our learning system and to add extra program besides classroom learning. This paper aims to investigate the Iraqi EFL instructors’ participating in online training courses and its influence on the process of teaching and learning.
The sample of present study consists of 30 instructors from University of Baghdad. The questionnaire of sixteen items was constructed. After ensuring validity and reliability of questionnaire, it was applied on March 2013 and the result shows that most of instructors improve their teaching methods b
... Show MoreTests in the sports field constitute an essential tool for achieving optimal results and evaluating player performance, particularly in competitive sports such as basketball. The importance of shooting emerges as it is the only means of direct scoring and the critical statistic that distinguishes victory from defeat. The researchers observed that previous tests of basic shooting types whether administered individually or in combination do not adequately reflect the complexities of actual game situations. Therefore, the problem lies in the need to address this gap by designing a composite test that simulates various playing conditions related to basic shooting skills. The descriptive approach was adopted, and the research community was delib
... Show MoreThe current study is concerned with investigating the difficulties that Iraqi EFL learners of English may face when translating English collective nouns. Such collective nouns as committee, government, , jury , Parliament , etc. are considered singular when the concept of the unity as a group is emphasized , but when the concept of the individuals or numbers is emphasized they are treated as plural. A sample of twenty undergraduate students have been selected randomly to translate certain English collective nouns in some selected political texts in order to find out the difficulties they might face in rendering them into Arabic. It is hypothesized that most of the testees have used the singular form rather than the plural ignoring the
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