The Advantages and Challenges faced by the Students of Learning English as a Foreign Language During Service-Learning Participation

Abstract

Service learning encourages students to learn multiple skills by actively participating in the community services. It facilitates students to directly be in contact and engage with those whom the services are being provided outside the classroom. Teachers encourages students to participate in the service-learning activities through different projects conducted at higher education level. But still there is very limited research available regarding the positive impact of service-learning activities on learning capabilities of the students and enhancements of various skills among them. Likewise, the challenges associated with these activities are less explore. Therefore, following study aimed to examines the major advantages and challenges that the students experience in the process of Service learning in their different majors. A qualitative approach was adopted, and interviews were conducted from students at the United Arab Emirates University. By applying modern statistical analysis software (NVivo), the reflections of 25 students were analyzed to explore about their experience and involvement in Service-Learning activities the results revealed that most of the students reflected that they were able to get and improve various language learning skills, communication skills and carrier growth opportunities with the help of their services while working in the community or in the universities. Apart from this, students indicated that they faced some difficulties in terms of fixing their work schedule with that of their course timing that prevented them from engaging into the Service Learning. Study further provide recommendation for future researchers as well as teachers and practitioners.