Attitudes of Kuwait University Students towards Modern Standard Arabic (MSA).
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract: This research work endeavors to examine Kuwait University language students' attitude towards Modern Standard Arabic under the spread of English as a dominant language. It attempts also to examine differences between males and females' attitudes towards English as medium of instruction as opposed to Modern Standard Arabic. The undertaken study reveals that students hold more positive attitudes towards Standard Arabic as compared to English. It also showed that females hold higher positive attitudes towards MSA as a medium of instruction as compared to males. Key words: globalization--language attitudes--Modern Standard Arabic --English--Kuwait University. Introduction In recent years, the study of languages has become an essential topic of investigation in social science studies. Globalization has resulted in tremendous changes in different aspects of life such as media, education, finance and business. With the rise of English as a worldwide language, linguists of different languages have become aware of the threat of English on their languages. Standard Arabic is one of those languages that is claimed to be a restricted language used in certain domains. Language attitude is one of the recent and important discussed topics in the field of sociolinguistics. It is indicated by many linguists that learning a language is strongly related to attitudes that reveal the speaker's cognitive, feelings and behaviors towards the learnt language. With the global need to master the global language, learning English, the language of education, technology and employment, has become a fact that everybody must accept. The present study deals with Kuwait University students' attitudes towards the use of MSA (Mother Standard Arabic) and English. It is believed by many researchers such as Watfa (2013) who examined the status of MSA at Kuwait University that students are paying great attention to English as compared to MSA, whose position may be affected among its speakers. In fact, many researchers such as Mallah (2000) and Al-Bustan and Al-Bustan (2009) who have examined the status of English at Kuwait University found that nowadays students are developing a positive attitude towards English and its use. Some studies about languages attitudes at Kuwait University claim that students are becoming more aware of the importance of English as a global language, an issue that affects their attitudes towards their mother tongue, while others affirm that Kuwait University still praise and promote the use of MSA. Appel and Muysken (1987) found that English-speaking Canadian students regard their language as prestigious and more beautiful than French as they showed negative attitudes towards Canadian French. In a study conducted by Abidin, Mohammadi, &323 Alzwari (2012) on a secondary Libyan school to measure gender differences towards English, results showed that female students have higher positive attitude towards using English as opposed to males.. In addition, in a study among Flispanic male and female students to investigate attitude towards their language (Spanish) in relation to nationalistic ideology, Schwieter(2008) found that females have less negative attitudes towards Spanish as compared to males. Similarly, Guessas (2012) conducted a quasi-experiment to change negative language attitude among secondary schools students and professional training students in Tiaret (Algeria) to overcome language conflict. Results indicated that females displayed more positive attitudes as opposed to males towards using MSA and French while both males and females indicated that Berber and Algerian Arabic received less positive attitudes. Assaf's (2001) study of attitude towards dialectal Arabic and MSA in terms of setting and speaker's educational level indicated that highly educated students prefer to use MSA in formal situations whereas less educated ones prefer to use the Palestinian dialect in formal situations. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".