i Challenges Experienced by Saudi Female Students Transitioning Through Canadian Pre-academic ESL
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ii This study explored the issues for female Saudi students studying English in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada that might have a negative impact on the development of proficiency in spoken English. A mixed methods approach was used. A 38 item questionnaire was completed by 61 participants. It asked about experiences within the classroom, opportunities to talk to others, level of comfort speaking, and the relative importance of speaking, reading, and writing. Structured interviews were conducted with four students, two teachers, and two support staff (receptionists) to enrich the knowledge gained from the questionnaire. Results indicated that Saudi female students had issues with self-confidence, shyness, and a fear of making mistakes. While it can be argued that all ESL students have similar issues, the sense was that the issues were more profound for Saudi females than for other females or for Saudi males. As well, Saudi female had additional cultural differences that had a major impact on performance. Firstly, Saudi women – even those with university education-- are unaccustomed to co-educational classes and male teachers. Secondly, Saudi women are expected to defer to males. As such, the presence of males in the classroom causes Saudi women to remain silent. Thirdly, Saudi women are not expected to interact outside the home, or with males. As such, Saudi women socialize only with Saudi women and do not have the opportunity to practice speaking. Finally, Saudi women are expected to have all business transactions conducted by a male relative (husband, father, brother) and as such, have little opportunity to practice speaking even for official reasons. Recommendations for Saudi women, the Saudi and Canadian governments, and ESL instructors are provided. iii
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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 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| 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".