Job Discussion Forums

[Charlie123]

I am interested in what textbooks people are using for their classes. In particular, what books are being used at the university level? Do you think your books are level-appropriate? It is my understanding that one issue at a lot of uni's in Oman is that fairly low level students, who need work on basic grammar, have books that are considerably above their ability. I am wondering if anyone has run into this problem. If so, have you tried to do anything about it? Finally, if this is a widespread issue, why are uni's teaching students with a curriculum that appears to be beyond their students' ability?

Helpful and constructive thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

[madrileno]

At my HCT, we use Cutting Edge. Everyone hates it.

I can't speak for the other MoM colleges.

[Dr X]

[veiledsentiments]

The problem is in the public schools. The students will be the first to tell you that they didn't bother to go to English classes much of the time... especially the boys. You can't learn a language from a few hours a week of basic conversational English and grammar drills. The students can acheive a very high school leaving exam score in English with only high beginner level skills.

They arrive at university with a good half of them as fossilized beginners. Dragging them up to a level to study in English is not possible... but there is much pretense that this is the foundations teachers' fault that they can't perform language miracles in a semester or two. Reality is that most would require 3-4 years of English to be academically proficient.

It is a catch-22... should the texts be at the level of the students' skills or should they be at the level that the students should be... with the assumption of using native speaker texts and writing academic papers in a year.

The next difficulty is that even the best students will have speaking/listening skills at a much higher level than reading/writing. Unless they have gone to one of the International Schools, they will be unable to write a simple grammatical sentence and think that reading is to practice pronunciation.

The real issue is that the language used in the university should be the same language that they spent the last 12 years using in their classes. Unless and until they have truly bi-lingual public schools (as the UAE is attempting), the majority of students will arrive at university ill-prepared in English.

I taught at 4 different universities in 3 Gulf countries and the problems were always the same.

There really are no appropriate textbooks. I always taught writing and didn't use a text at all.

VS
(sorry... not really helpful, but basically we all muddled along as best we could with the students and texts we ended up with...)

[Charlie123]

[Eijse74]

We use a range of materials at my college. If they're not pulled straight from teh interwebs, they're reproduced without permission or lovingly crafted by teachers. The latter are in broken English and full of mistakes, but don't be fooled - that's only to test the students.

Eh, who am I kidding? What materials we use or what curriculum we follow don't matter at all. To be blunt, most students here seem to have little interest in academic study. Or in anything that doesn't involve posting on Instagram, really. In my opinion, we could hand out pop-up books with no words in them and most of my students still wouldn't be able to read them. Ha, they wouldn't even try to get past the cover anyway. You know how you can lead a horse to water, and all that jazz? Yeah, they just don't care.

As far as I can see, the higher-ups really only care about glossy figures. Period. We routinely change exam weightings when it looks like too many students will do poorly. We pass students who can't do much more than write their names on the top of exam papers. Yeah, it's all a sad joke to be honest, and I feel like I'm wasting my time by continuing to teach in this country.

I'm a teacher because its a 'helping' profession, and I came here thinking I'd be helping people. Trying to make a difference here is a total waste of time, though, so I'll be moving on in a few months without regrets.