Job Discussion Forums

[dragonpiwo]

I've been in and around the Middle East for 20 years mainly working in Oil and Gas. Before that I was a Cambridge Assessor at a European university.

Currently, I make tailor made courses/materials for electrical, mechanical and instrumentation technicians and process operators. Here the need for tailor made courses is obvious.

However, with General English/exam prep programmes a lot of time is spent making courses and materials more culturally approriate but I see no real benefit in the learning outcomes with Arab learners. In fact, the best results I've ever seen were on the KET and PET programmes we did in Libya using off the shelf books.

What are your views on this?

[wailing_imam]

Customised materials work well for shorter courses where you are able to do a thorough needs analysis for your students. For courses above 200 hours, I think it would be a struggle to adapt/create material and I'd probably go for an off the shelf tome supplemented by customized materials.