Centre of Foundation Studies, General Foundation Program, University of Buraimi,
Sultanate of Oman
This quantitative research aims to investigate the implicit and explicit exposure to English among higher education General Foundation Program (GFP) students at the University of Buraimi. It aims to answer what GFP students at the University of Buraimi use more in the process of learning English: implicit or explicit exposure, which of the common higher education implicit English exposure activities that GFP students at the University of Buraimi prefer more, and which of the common higher education explicit English exposure activities the GFP students at the University of Buraimi prefer more. A total of 119 students participated in the study during the academic year 2024-25. They were selected using a convenience sample procedure. One electronic questionnaire was employed to collect data. SPSS software (version 27) was used to analyze data. Results showed that the GFP students at the University of Buraimi tend to use implicit exposure more frequently than explicit exposure. The GFP students at the University of Buraimi tend to use the communicative-oriented exposure. They prefer to learn English outside the classroom implicitly by using English in real-life situations more than the rest of the implicit activities. As for the explicit activities, results indicate that the GFP students like to learn English explicitly by talking face-to-face with English speakers to develop their speaking skills more than the other explicit activities. The results’ implications and future research avenues of this research were discussed.
Keywords: Implicit, Explicit, Exposure, English, Communicative-Oriented Exposure, Language Learning, Language Acquisition
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The 11th International Conference on Languages, Linguistics, Translation and Literature (WWW.TLLL.IR), 1-2 February 2026, Ahwaz.
