A preliminary evaluation of the program of disseminating English language skills to the students in the Jordanian universities : evaluating the experience of Mutah University

الملخص EN

This paper attempts to give a preliminary assessment of the Program of Disseminating English Language Skills to the Students in the Jordanian Universities that was proposed by the Council of Higher Education in the year 2000 through evaluating its application at Mutah University.

The paper investigates the impact that the three courses of the program , namely, E99, E101, and El 02, have had on the development of the students' language proficiency at the completion of these courses at Mutah University and the likelihood of attaining the goals stipulated by the program.

The sample of the study consisted of 700 students coming from different faculties in the university and representing different academic levels.

Students' performance was measured with^a test designed and validated for this purpose.

The results of the study show that the students who participated in the study have exhibited very low attainment) levels in English language skills.

The greatest majority of the students (91.34%) performed below the 50% pass criterion on the test.

Only 8.66% of the students passed the test in this study.

The paper discusses this result and other results concerning the independent variables and tries to explain the poor performance and lack of achievement by the students.

It also discusses the pedagogical implications of such results for the program of English language teaching at Mutah University in particular and the possible implications for the proposed reform program in general.

Keywords-.

Program evaluation, EFL, Applied Linguistics.