Author(s)

Rashidah Albaqami

Foreign Language Department, Taif University, Taif, KSA.

Factors that affect foreign/second language (L2) acquisition include internal factors related to the learners such as motivation and personality-related style preferences as well as external factors related to the learning process such as the amount and quality of input and more interestingly how the latter factors can enhance the former. This paper examines the role of input quality (instructional) during the course of L2 development by integrating arts to facilitate L2 development and boost the learners’ motivation by engaging them with masterpieces from classical art as a stimulus. A total number of 30 Arabic learners of English as a foreign language took part in this quasi-experimental study. The experimental group (n = 20) was enrolled in a teaching setting rich with input full of triggers by integrating arts including dramatization and art expedition (e.g. painting, photographing, and sculpting), whereas, the control group (n = 10) was enrolled in a traditional teaching setting. Three instruments were final examinations administered at the end of each semester. Independent-samples t-test was run to identify whether any significant difference existed in L2 proficiency of the control and experimental groups. The findings suggest that L2 learners who were exposed to the instructional settings highly enriched with robust and art-integrated input significantly performed better in L2 proficiency. This suggests that art-integrated input significantly enhanced proficiency of Saudi EFL learners.

Input Quality, Poverty of the Stimulus, Art-Integrated Input, Content-Based Instruction, English-Major Undergraduates

Albaqami, R. (2020) The Role of Art-Integrated Input: Implementing Arts to Maximise English Proficiency among Saudi English-Major Undergraduates. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 10, 260-276. doi: 10.4236/ojml.2020.104015.