المستخلص: |
The present study examines the effectiveness of a proposed program based on multilingual approach and community language learning principles in developing reading and speaking skills of 1st year English majors and German majors students, (1) re-orienting them to an alternative perspective on learning and (2) improving their interpersonal communicative competence. The study adopted the quasi-experimental pretest-posttest one group design. Twenty four first year students participated in this study (12 English majors and 12 German majors). To determine the most important reading and speaking skills to be developed throughout the program, an integrative checklist was designed and approved by a jury of subject matter specialists. Based on these reading and speaking skills, reading and speaking tests (English and German) were developed and used as pre-post tests. An interpersonal communicative questionnaire was developed by the researchers besides a program satisfaction questionnaire. Results show that the proposed program was effective in developing English majors and German majors reading and speaking skills. Discourse analysis revealed that there was no evidence that students were confused by the presence of two languages, and data indicated that students were able to restrict themselves to one language or the other when required by external circumstances. Also, they were able to utilize their major language skills in the service of learning the second foreign language. Moreover, there ,was improvement in students’ Interpersonal communicative competence as the quantitative and the qualitative interpretations of the results of the study indicate.
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