English abstract
The study sought to reveal the role of the host families in the Sultanate of Oman for non-Arabic speaking students in both linguistic and cultural competencies, and reveal student's benefit from staying with these families according to variables of sex, years of experience, educational qualification, and languages they are fluent in.
To achieve the study's goal, the researcher used the descriptive approach by designing a questionnaire of 27 paragraphs divided into two axes: linguistic competence and cultural competence.
The study's community consists of 30 Omani families, and they were selected with the assistance of supervising doctor and the Noor Majan Training Institute in Ibri.
The tool was applied to all of the study community during the period (2020), and the result of the study sample reached (19) out of (30) questionnaires (63.3%) and the number of missing questionnaires reached (11) questionnaires by (36.7%) and a set of statistical methods was used, including arithmetic means, standard deviation, and estimation of stability using internal consistency.
The results showed that the role of host families contributed effectively to improve the linguistic and cultural competencies of non-Arabic-speaking students in the Sultanate of Oman, allowing the student to contact the surrounding community and learn the language in a wider environment.
Cultural competence came in the first rank, as it received the highest arithmetic mean of (4.42), a standard deviation of (0.31) and a very high degree.
The results of the study also showed that there are no statistically significant differences at the significance level (α ≤ 0.05) on the role of host families for the language competence axis, while there are statistically significant differences for the cultural competence axis depending on the educational qualification variable.
The researcher concluded with several recommendations, the most important of which are:
Enhancing the cultural aspects of the host families of non-Arabic speaking students would reflect positively on the students being hosted.
