Islamic Studies and Private Universities in South-West Nigeria: Challenges and Prospects

Islamic Studies is one of the core and pertinent courses offered and taught at both private and public universities in Nigeria. The subject prepared its graduates to have potentialities, capabilities man power in teaching, administration, politics, economic, legislation and judiciary in Nigeria. Despite these significant contributions, the subject has confronted with a lot of deprivations in the enrollment of students, recruitment of staff and availability of physical and instructional materials. Based on these, the paper therefore, intends to explore the teaching and learning of Islamic studies in the south west Nigeria private universities, identify problems facing its teaching and learning and proffer solutions to these predicaments. The methodology adopted is analytical with information from both oral interview and written sources from libraries in Nigeria. Among the findings of the study are that the Subject-Islamic studies needs more experts to teach its core courses in private universities in Nigeria and students who wish to enroll for the subject should have rudiments of the discipline before admission.   

Fluency Enhancing and Fluency Hampering Factors in English and Their Effect on the Listening Comprehension of Pakistani Learners of English

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of fluency enhancing and fluency hampering factors in English on the listening comprehension of the Pakistani learners. English is not taught as a language in most educational institutes in Pakistan. It is treated as a subject. Naturally, its phonological aspect is badly ignored. This, later, affects the competence and performance of the learners. Before starting the research, the researcher had claimed that where the fluency enhancing features of English helped its native speakers in accelerating their verbal speed, they affected the aural comprehension of the Pakistani learners of it. Similarly, the fluency hampering factors in English also affected their listening comprehension. Based on this claim, the researcher formulated the hypothesis: Language learners who are taught listening skills with the help of fluency enhancing and fluency hampering factors of English perform better in aural comprehension than those language learners who are not taught through these factors. Using a quasi- experimental design the researcher conducted the study on two groups -one control group and the other experimental group. The design had the following stages: Pre-test treatment Post-test. The pre-test was set to assess the existing aural abilities of the members of the groups. T-test was used to know the significance or insignificance of the data. It was followed by the treatment that spanned over two months. During this period the researcher treated the experimental group with the help of eight model lesson plans, all focusing on fluency enhancing or fluency hampering factors in English. After the treatment, the post-test was conducted and the data were analyzed by using the t-test again. The results of the pre-test and the post- test of the both groups were compared. It was found that the experimental group (n = 15) achieved significantly higher score [t (28) = 10.16, p > .001] than the control group (n = 15).It was concluded that the fluency enhancing and fluency hampering factors affected the listening comprehension of the Pakistani learners of English and that students could overcome this problem if they were treated properly despite the fact that there were a number of independent variables.