Linguistic Awareness or Grammatical Competence: What Dominates the Saudi Undergraduate EFL Classroom?

Abstract

Globalization leading to massive geopolitical changes around the world has made it meaningful to reconsider the state of English education in Saudi Higher Education Institutions to gain a realistic understanding of their role and contribution in preparing native Arabic speaking Saudi EFL learners to establish themselves as global citizens. This study weaves around the twin axes of linguistic awareness and grammatical competence by evaluating these factors in a random sample of student participants (N= 120) from Hail University, KSA. They are exposed to two remotely administered tests the first of which measures their grammatical skills in English. In addition, linguistic awareness is measured using participants’ acceptability judgements to four types of English syntactical constructions to gain a deeper understanding of their language awareness. Results show that just 17% of the participants could correctly answer the grammar test while 83% of them answered the test incorrectly. Further, in the acceptability judgement test, students answer the syntax with rare collocations (Yes=52.7%, No=47.3%), syntax with unusual collocation (Yes=41.3%, No=58.8%), syntax with frequent collocation (Yes=49.2%, No=50.8%), and syntax with wrong collocation (Yes=5.2%, No=94.8%). Language being a cognitive, social, and cultural construct, a comparative analysis of the results obtained from these two kinds of data is likely to bring the spotlight on the dominant component in the Saudi university EFL classroom, and hence, help identify the precise factors that need to be boosted.