This article sets out to examine the effect of utilizing different culturally-based materials on EFL university students' foreign language reading anxiety, reading comprehension self-efficacy, and reading proficiency within project-based classes. The research was carried out with two classes of intermediate freshmen majoring in English Language Teaching. The comparison group had to present thei...

The present research aims to examine the effects of using culturally oriented texts in project-based classes on the views of EFL university students regarding their L1 culture. To this end, three experimental groups of intermediate EFL freshmen, assigned to classes A, B and C, participated in this study. Each of the classes were presented with reading passages focused on L1 culture, L2 culture,...

this paper, largely motivated by hoey (2001), revisits the issue of written discourse analysis and, in particular, the problem-solution pattern. much discussion embarrasses the way in which texts are pro-duced and understood. the different functional approaches include halliday and hasan’s approach, van dijk’s process-oriented approach, the procedural approach of de beaugrande and dressler, and...

This study investigated the relationship of the attitudes and cultural background of Arab students in Israel to their reading comprehension of stories from Jewish and Arab culture. Participants were 74 eighth-grade Arab students (age 14±15 years) from Israel, learning Hebrew as a second language (L2). An attitude questionnaire, stories from Arab and Jewish culture and multiple-choice questions ...

This exploratory study investigates student attitudes towards culturally-oriented educational games for practicing computer programming, where the mainstream culture appeals to all of the students irrespective of their cultural background. We show that a shared appreciation of culture along the lines of humour promotes positive student attitude towards culturally-aware game based learning which...

This paper discusses strategies for developing students’ cross-cultural literature appreciation abilities. It aims at facilitating students’ cultural understanding of literary texts by demonstrating the current approaches of literature teaching practice. For nearly half a century, research has been conducted on learning and understanding literature from a variety of cultures. With the ever grow...