Trends of MA Theses of the English Department in the Faculty of Education- Sana'a University from 1994 Through 2017 Dr. Abdulkhaliq Ali Yahia

Abstract

To the promotion of ELT approaches and curricula in Yemen, MA students at the English Department in the Faculty of Education – Sana'a University (EDFESU) have done incredible contribution to ELT and curricula field of study with a total number of ninety-six theses since the beginning of the MA program in 1994 until September 2017. The study population of this paper encompassed all these MA theses, which were analyzed using content analysis under the following headings: the studied research areas, the target groups, the target scholastic stages, the research approaches, the data gathering tools, the experimental treatments, the sex of the researchers, and the future trends. The study reached the following conclusions. The studied research areas were of the following order. Spoken Skill studies ranked first with a percentage of 20% followed by curriculum studies (evaluation stage) with a percentage of 16%, and reading skills studies 14%. Next, curriculum studies (design stage/ needs analysis), writing skills studies, and attitude acquisition studies came with a percentage of 9.4%. After that, error analysis studies got 6.3%, grammar studies got 5.2%, teaching methods studies and contrastive analysis (CA) studies got 4.2%. Competence studies came last with a percentage of 3.1 %. As for the target groups, university students ranked first with 61.5% followed by school students 15.6% and in-service teachers 9.4%. Then, schoolbooks were ranked 5.2%, university-teaching courses 4.2%, university programs and university teachers were rated last with 2%. The target scholastic stages were rated as follows: university stage 65.63%, secondary stage 28.13%, basic-school education 5.21%, and in-service institutes 1.04%. Regarding the research approaches, descriptive studies ranked first with a percentage of 61.5% and experimental studies with a percentage of 38.5 %. Regarding the data-gathering tools, testing technique was the most popular tool with a percentage of 63.6%. Questionnaire technique was ranked next with 40.6%, interview technique got 32.3 %, and observation technique was rated 14.6%. As for experimental treatments, teaching methods were ranked first with a percentage of 94.6% and teaching materials ranked second with a percentage of 5.4%. As for the sex of the researchers, female researchers ranked first with a percentage of 59.4% and male researchers ranked second with a percentage of 40.6%. As to the recommendations and future trends, most studied papers recommended carrying out comparisons between various teaching strategies, training teachers, conducting similar studies using new variables, applying the results of research in psycholinguistics, and paying a balanced attention to educational objectives, in addition to using modern technology in ELT. As to the goals of these theses, all of them were of applied ELT and Curricula research. None of them was of basic research. It is noticed that many of the theses studied similar topics due to the absence of a vision or a plan in the EDFESU regarding the significance and the priorities of research areas. The study ended with a number of relevant recommendations.