Saudi Cultural Missions Theses & Dissertations
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Item Restricted Expanding our understanding of the uses of Modern Standard and Hijazi Colloquial Arabic in Education: A Study Exploring Learners’ Attention, Academic Performance, and Language Attitudes in Saudi Arabia(University of Sussex, 2024-07) Alamir, Sarah; Blair, Andrew; Alkabani, FerasThis study investigates how the use of Hijazi Colloquial Arabic (HCA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) in oral instruction affects students' sustained auditory attention and academic performance and their attitudes towards both varieties in education. To form a clear picture of how effective both varieties are, the results of a nine-week pre-post-test classroom experiment, a follow-up questionnaire, and interviews were used for analysis. First, two groups of undergraduate female students (aged between 20 and 27) assigned to the 'History of the Americas' module at Umm Al-Qura University and a professor were selected for the experiment. One group had 29 students, whereas the other had 25. One group was instructed in MSA, and the other in HCA. The study findings showed that both HCA and MSA oral instruction improved the students' ability to sustain auditory attention, leading to better academic performance, with HCA instruction being slightly more effective. In addition, the disparities in automaticity and language execution between HCA and MSA were negligible. When it comes to attitudes, both HCA and MSA groups had more positive perceptions of MSA. Their actions, however, did not reflect their beliefs and feelings. Their attitudes and the underlying reasons could be grouped into six and five categories. Globally speaking, standard codes in diglossic contexts receive positive attitudes despite the changing social circumstances, while societal changes impact colloquial codes’ perceptions. These results implicate the field of higher education in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries when considering using Colloquial Arabic codes (CAs) as a medium of instruction, as they should go hand in hand with MSA. This can be done by further research and modifying language policies to promote the coexistence between the two codes, combining them in instruction according to contexts and the psychological aspects instructors want to provoke, and using non-featured CAs, such as the educated HCA or White dialect.33 0