The present study evaluated the subjective happiness of Lebanese college youth using a multi-item rather than a single-item subjective happiness measure. An Arabic translation of the Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS) was administered to 273 Lebanese college youth from state- and private-run higher institutions of learning, as was the Arabic Adult…

When factorial invariance is established across translated forms of an instrument, the meaning of the construct crosses language/cultures. If factorial invariance is not established, score discrepancies may represent true language group differences or faulty translation. This study seeks to disentangle this by determining whether…

This study examines attitudes towards bilingual Jewish-Arab education among Jewish and Arab adults in Israel. The sample consisted of 1014 respondents who participated in a national phone survey in late 2006. Results indicate that Arabs are significantly more supportive of bilingual education in Israel than Jews. Positive attitudes regarding the…

This study explored the relationship among pre-reading skills, language proficiency, and visual perceptual abilities in 150 children who had been exposed to both English and Arabic (mean age 70 months). Information regarding language proficiency was gathered indirectly through reports from teachers and parents and directly through children's test…

This paper examines the role of morphology in gradeschool children's learning to read nonpointed Hebrew. It presents two experiments testing the reading of morphologically based nonpointed pseudowords. One hundred seventy-one Hebrew-speaking children and adolescents in seven age/schooling groups (beginning and end of 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, and 11th…

The issue of including or excluding the learner's mother tongue in the EFL classroom has been the subject of ongoing discussion and controversy for a long time. This paper attempts to investigate the use of native Arabic in English classes at two Saudi technical colleges. The main objectives were to examine the purpose of L1 use and the attitudes…

Writing has always been regarded as playing a prominent role in learning a second language. UAE university writing center provides a key support service within the institution, and as such must find ways to evaluate the impact of the instruction they provide. However, many studies of tutorial effectiveness lack adequate analyses of tutorial…

This study examined oral reading fluency (ORF) of bilingual and monolingual students. The author selected a sample of 510 (258 males and 252 females) native Arabic-speaking sixth-graders (62 bilinguals and 448 monolinguals) in Egypt. The purposes were; (a) to examine oral reading rate, oral reading accuracy, prosody, and oral reading comprehension…

In the last two decades, higher education institutions have invested significant resources to internationalise, due to economic, political, academic and cultural pressures. Students play a dual role in this process: as customers, selecting institutions based on respective reputations (including the international dimension) and as outputs of…

This article provides an overview and analysis of a relatively new phenomenon: congregational schools that have altered the conventional grammar of schooling, either through their structural arrangements or through their curricular approaches. Five pre-bar/bat mitzvah models are discussed: family schools, schools as communities,…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors predicting academic proficiency (AP), the specialised domains required for performing academic tasks, among Russian speaking (L1) immigrants currently studying Hebrew as a second language (L2) and English as a third language (L3) in Israeli schools. Specifically, the study examined the…

Mobile learning delivery platforms include cell phone based SMS technologies that provide access to learning materials without being limited by space or time. Sophisticated technological advances in the domain of pedagogical delivery have led to flexible, motivated, user-friendly, controlled and adaptive learning using cell phone based delivery…

The aim of this paper is to investigate the role and place of Hebrew within the Australian Jewish day schools' curriculum and to analyse the cultural factors, which contribute to the challenges Hebrew teachers face. Our findings show that there is a need to locate Modern Hebrew more centrally within the schools' organizational structure. A…

Teaching methodology plays an important role in transmitting knowledge and skills to learners. The effectiveness of both knowledge and skills depends greatly on the methodology used. This paper describes a study to investigate the learners' perspectives on the teaching methodology used by the teachers at the Centre for Foundation Studies,…

Language learners' increased mobility and the ubiquity of virtual intercultural encounters has challenged traditional ideas of "cultures". Moreover, representations of cultures as consumable life-choices has meant that learners are no longer locked into standard and static cultural identities. Language learners are better defined as…