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trapezius
Joined: 13 Aug 2006
Posts: 1670
Location: Land of Culture of Death & Destruction
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 Posted: Fri May 09, 2014 7:09 pm Post subject: "Winds of change: English teaching in Saudi Arabia" |
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http://www.arabnews.com/news/567896
Winds of change: English teaching in Saudi Arabia
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For several years now, English has been touted to be an important lingua franca in many countries where it is widely used as a means of communication among various ethnic groups and people of different backgrounds. The advent of the Internet has only reinforced its eminence where almost 30 percent of the data is in English. In addition, most of the world’s music is in English (although this is debatable) while job opportunities are certainly better in non-English speaking countries with good salaries and perks.
According to the British Council, English is the official language in more than 75 countries across the globe.
However, as English has steadily gained prominence in the Gulf region including Saudi Arabia in recent years, attention is increasingly being paid to pedagogy in Saudi English classrooms and a debate is on as to how it should be taught. There has been much criticism about the Saudi educational system, its “flaws and inconsistencies.”
A World Bank study suggests that the Saudi educational system is deficient in “imparting higher-order cognitive skills such as flexibility, problem-solving and judgment” (World Bank, 2002, p. 2). Added to this is the lack of critical thinking and analytical approaches to the learning/teaching of the curriculum, English or otherwise.
In response to this, Arab governments including Saudi Arabia have adopted western curricula and pedagogy with the aim to open up their countries to the rest of the world. It is for this reason that the curricula, content and pedagogy are often not in tune with the needs of the learners who are rooted in Islamic traditions and identity. In addition, the social media, new media and free access to the Internet have opened up Saudi society like never before. Although mobile apps are increasingly being downloaded on smart phones, they are more widely used for chatting and sharing videos or photos. There is also research currently under way to test the feasibility of applying mobile apps in English classroom teaching.
Interestingly, Saudis are increasingly being faced with a phenomenon common in other countries of the world, which have put up a stiff defense against the adoption of English as a main language of communication, for example, France and Belgium perceiving the foreign language as a threat to their national identity.
The parallel wave to the English prevalence in the country- the back to basics theory calls for a reversion to the Arabic language in official meetings inside and outside the Kingdom and to have shop titles in the native language. Some learned quarters do not perceive English as a tool to progress maintaining that Arabic will serve just as well.
However, the increasing number of students on the King Abdullah Scholarship program with exposure to western thoughts and values come back with different notions and are instrumental in rooting to have English become a compulsory part of the curriculum from the early years.
As language in its essence cannot be taught in isolation of its culture, the adoption of the communicative approach in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) answers the conundrum of bridging the gap between the threat of English dominating the status quo and the preservation of the unique Saudi identity. That said, English remains as foreign and as alien as ever.
Some foreign language researchers (Al-Hazmi (2003, p. 341) have suggested a paradigm shift to English pedagogy in the Saudi Arabian context. But questions remain about its appropriateness in an environment where rote learning is still the preferred mode of study in subjects across the schools’ and university curricula.
According to Bhabha, 1994, ‘there needs to be an acceptance of the hybridity of teacher and student identity. Consequently, English needs to be placed within the ‘third space’ with a hybrid English language pedagogy which combines the traditional Islamic approaches and relevant Western practices to achieve the best learning and teaching experience for the learners. In essence this means that we as educators need to work toward finding a middle ground where we can meet half-way with the student to help to attain a level of English language proficiency which would enhance not only communication skills but also a critical approach to the language.
A wide-ranging curriculum with English as the medium of instruction in a whole school mode should answer the many deficiencies prevailing in the system.
The English curriculum in higher institutions needs to embrace the Islamic cultural values and take the best practices from western pedagogy, as Bhabha says. Native language oriented English books have been introduced into the Saudi educational system time and again but the huge disparities have resulted in frustration both as far as results are concerned and at the cultural level.
Recently, a supplementary reading program has been initiated at the foundation year in the universities in the Kingdom which is an attempt to open up different cultures to the students. This can pose a challenge to a mindset which does not equate human emotions with animals for example.
A suggestion has been made to introduce more Islamic oriented books in English into the curriculum with a special focus on language, grammar, syntax and semantics. Good translations in Standard English could be utilized for the purpose. There are many Arabic writers with western backgrounds currently writing profusely in English and there is no reason why a graded series of books cannot be produced for students.
Although Saudi Arabia is gradually opening up, its people are essentially in a state of transition and English as it is being taught in institutes of higher education, across the Kingdom is constantly evolving. The way forward is to help students appreciate their Islamic identity and understand that the English language is a means to an end; it is by no means a substitute for the Arabic language. |
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Rostom
Joined: 16 Apr 2014
Posts: 102
Location: UK/Veteran of the Magic Kingdom
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| Posted: Fri May 09, 2014 9:02 pm Post subject: |
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The following Saudi academic says the opposite!
"Teaching English along with its culture is in line with the announced goals of teaching English to Saudi students, i.e., to prepare Saudi citizens to be intercultural speakers or cross-cultural literates who are knowledgeable of different cultural practices and world views. Therefore, the call to remove all cultural references from the English language textbooks of international publishing companies, the call to teach English in isolation from its culture, and the call to include only local cultural references while teaching English are all unwise and unreasonable. In fact, making such calls indicates a lack of knowledge about what it takes to learn English as a foreign language as well as a lack of awareness about the close intertwined relationship between language and culture along with the negative effects of teaching English without its natural cultural context."
http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentid=20130129151084
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| Although Saudi Arabia is gradually opening up, its people are essentially in a state of transition .. |
In what sense is the 'opening up'? |
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rollingk
Joined: 23 Jul 2006
Posts: 212
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| Posted: Fri May 09, 2014 9:28 pm Post subject: |
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Does this mean we instructors should become half-rockers, characters who work out a rocking cadence to the conjugation of be? Or does it mean we should learn to feign interest in religious texts that we know, or care, little about? People get their heads removed for saying the "wrong" things about these texts in the gulf. Or is this writer recommending only Muslims teach English in the gulf?
This seems like another excuse for failure to me, and there's an implicit criticism of those returning Saudis with different ideas who have in fact learned the language. Seems to me part of the problems are the old ideas and I don't mean the Islamic ones, but the regional, cultural ones.
It's ridiculous to blame failure of students on some kind of contamination from western teaching methods or materials. Have our students who come from those rote-learning classrooms really learned much of any use. They've had English for how long before university -- with their usual local rote-learning pedagogy? |
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Grendal
Joined: 13 Aug 2009
Posts: 861
Location: Lurking in the depths of the Faisaliah Tower underground parking.
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| Posted: Sat May 10, 2014 2:16 am Post subject: |
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Cultural sensitivity is an issue that seems to hinder the acquisition of an L2. No matter what the language or even the discipline for that matter. As long as you have any kind of repression of information that is not necessarily evil but seen as harm to to doctrines of theology practiced in any country, you will always have ineffective syllabus, curriculum, exams, and tests.
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D. Merit
Joined: 02 May 2008
Posts: 203
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| Posted: Sat May 10, 2014 8:46 am Post subject: |
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There seem to be frequent oddities in this piece. Music is mostly in English, he says, then it seems it isn't. There are quotation marks placed around criticisms of the Saudi education system that don't seem to be quotations, etc etc.
Mostly the writer seems to most definitely have a dog in the fight of convincing Saudi Arabia that the sole sources of English in the country should be Arabs.
If he's so fearful of outside influence that he advocates English texts should only be written by Arabs then perhaps the whole reading and writing thing isn't really for him. |
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plumpy nut
Joined: 12 Mar 2011
Posts: 1652
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| Posted: Mon May 12, 2014 11:58 am Post subject: |
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| Grendal wrote: |
Cultural sensitivity is an issue that seems to hinder the acquisition of an L2.
G |
Third World culture is a major hindrance to all Western based knowledge including science. As one works in different countries in Asia this becomes apparent very quickly. In the countries I've worked in I have never seen any culture aspect that is compatible with the rigor and the ingenuity that is necessary for learning. The only exceptions I know of are South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. |
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scot47
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 15343
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| Posted: Mon May 12, 2014 2:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Those three are hardly "Third World" ! |
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