Riyad Alhomsi's Abstracts

      Riyad Alhomsi
      Ph.D. Candidate
      Second Language Acquisition & Teaching

      Conference Summary
      Middle East Studies Association (MESA 2016)
      November 17 - 20, 2016
      Boston, MA
 

Abstract

Increasing students’ intercultural awareness is an integral part of the success of any
language instruction if we aim to build a global learner in today’s small world. Besides,
technology is an indispensable tool that not only helps us achieve this but also increases
students’ motivation to engage in more authentic language use and exposure. “Motivation plays a
crucial role in all kinds of learning processes, and particularly in the development of an L2”
(Jauregi et. all, 2012); moreover, research shows that motivation is sustained through interaction
with the teacher, learners, and other speakers of the language outside the classroom (Jung 2011)
and that high level technology use (e.g. Webquest) is linked to high and sustained motivation
because it focuses more on learner-centered tasks (Ertmer 2005). This presentation will discuss
how technology is used to raise the students’ Intercultural Competence and motivation at the
same time. Educanon-enhanced YouTube videos and Arabic podcasts will be discussed to
illustrate the simultaneous increase in students’ ICC and motivation.

Abstract for Lay Audience

Teaching Arabic language is extremely under researched in many areas. Learner
intercultural communicative competence, which simply means the ability to communicate
effectively with people from other cultures, i.e. knowing what to say what, when, and how, is
one of these under researched areas that can certainly benefit from more research. Knowing the
language per se does not guarantee accurate and correct use because language is governed by
many tacit linguistic and non-linguistic cultural components that regulate it use in the target
language context. Unless our language learners are aware of these regulations, their learning will
be incomplete and they are bound to face many mishaps. One route to tackle this issue is the
introduction and use of technology in the Arabic language classroom. Technology can provide
useful tools to promote learner intercultural communicative competence due to the incredibly
rich content it has. One example to consider is the rich cultural content of YouTube videos that
language teachers can use in their classrooms. Moreover, the use of technology has been shown
to increase learner motivation especially when used in an interactive manner where learners are
encouraged to observe, participate, discus and research on their own. The current presentation
will report on findings of a study on how technology was used to increase learner intercultural
communicative competence and motivation in an intermediate Arabic language class.