Exploring Students' Lived Experiences in a Domestic Arabic Language Immersion Pilot Program, Phenomenological Study

Download or read book Exploring Students' Lived Experiences in a Domestic Arabic Language Immersion Pilot Program, Phenomenological Study written by Dahlia Dwedar and published by . This book was released on 2018-11-25 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Color Print. The DLIFLC with the cooperation of the MIFLTC have put together an intensive iso-immersive language pilot programs for the purpose to equip the US troops with the language and cultural knowledge they need to acquire, to facilitate their missions. The problem is the presence of a gap in literature regarding the students' lived experiences of the Arabic language programs and in, category IV languages, pilot programs in general. The purpose of this research was to explore the lived experiences of the recently graduated students from the Arabic language pilot program at the MIFLTC that occurred over 24-week. The aim of this study was to gather and analyze data about the participant students' perceptions of the MIFLTC's contribution to the development of their Arabic language learning and culture competency skills. A volunteered sample of 9 students from the 24-week program was utilized. Open-ended questionnaires list was used to conduct the interviews with the participants for data collection, which took place over the phone, then has been analyzed using the modified van Kaam method as presented by Moustakas (1994). Six core thematic categories were identified: in general, all participants indicated that this program was a positive experience; participants voiced common challenges in learning the language at different stages such as, vocabulary retaining, news sounds pronunciation, comprehending listening, fluency, and especially grammar and morphology; the native instructors were sincere in their duty and highly credible through their engaging behavior, and teaching effectiveness, all participants had high regards for them; interactive peers learning was an appreciated element of instruction in this program that kept them all motivated to learn despite challenges; integration of technology in the learning process helped in the intensive learning process; cultural awareness mastery by interacting with the native instructors from different backgrounds; and, length of the program could have been longer, and earning college credits.