Enhancing Students engagement among Saudi EFL learners: Empirical investigation

Abstract

Student engagement plays a key role in the achievement of academic excellence among students. In particular, student engagement for EFL learners is crucial due to its role in shaping their abilities in language acquisition. This study aims to investigate the student engagement of EFL learners in an Arabic context. The study adopts a cross-sectional design with a descriptive-analytical research approach to review the available literature and collect data from concerned EFL learners to reach accurate results to answer the research question. The study relied on a questionnaire as the main research instrument which was developed based on reviewing the available and relevant literature. Additionally, the study adopts non-probability sampling techniques and convenient sampling methods. The data was collected by distributing the research questionnaire electronically to EFL learners at Jazan University in Saudi Arabia, where 105 responses were collected for analysis. The findings indicated a low to moderate extent of engagement and interactions among EFL learners. Further, the findings indicated that there is a strong positive correlation between student's overall engagement with their learning efforts, activities, interaction with peers and teachers and their social engagement. It was found that students' overall engagement is significantly influenced by interaction with peers and teachers along with learning activities, however, social engagement and learning efforts were not found to be influential. Finally, the results indicated that gender is the only variable contributing to the variance in the learning effort, activities, and the interaction of EFL students with peers and teachers. This study adds to the literature by being the first study to investigate students' EFL engagement in an Arabic context; further, it presents the role of student's characteristics in diversifying the extent of their engagement and interactions.