Job Discussion Forums

[Geronimo]

How well prepared is Oman for more learner training? Are its English teachers well-equipped for the challenges posed?

My trainee Omani English teachers generally agree that it is not possible for Omani high school students to attain fluency in English without self-study outside of their school's English lessons. However, there is also a consensus view that it is quite possible for these same school students to gain good marks in their English exams without such self-study. (As far as I am aware, there is no Speaking Exam in the end-of-year assessment schedule).

Consequently, I suspect that little emphasis is placed on support for greater learner autonomy in Omani high schools across the board. No doubt there are English Days; and English language newsletters; but these may involve only the minority of more able students.

I have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to discuss such issues with staff in local schools' English departments. The picture appears to be a mixed one.

The Ministry of Higher Education has endorsed plans to provide learner training for the students studying at the Colleges of Applied Sciences. English Teachers in these Colleges are assisting their students to develop their research and reporting skills.

"Blackboard plc" interactive whiteboards are anticipated for the degree course programs next year. Therefore the scope for e-networking is growing, too. So significant changes are taking place in the higher educational landscape.

Is this experience typical of the Omani scene nowadays? I would be interested to learn of other posters' experiences in this area of learner training in the private sector as well as the public. Are there discernible trends?

[kuberkat]

Hmmm, it's telling that with 40 views so far, there are still no reponses to this very valid question. Thank you, Geronimo, for one of the most pertinent and interesting posts to appear on this board for a long time.

Geronimo wrote:

[Geronimo]

Thanks, in turn, Kuberkat for your informative and thought-provoking response. Your last question...
"The true question, in my mind, is this: what will make learners thirsty for knowlege?"
certainly merits more consideration.

Many of the students at our College of Applied Sciences need to develop a clearer sense of their audience as well. Passivity induced by years of teacher-centred instruction has to be overcome if these students are to realise their full potential.

On the expat side of the equation, a review of the Job Profile for "English Teacher, College of Applied Sciences" , which takes into account the learner training element of our evolving roles, is probably overdue.

And yet, these are still 'Early Days'. One of the local school's English Teachers told me that he had asked his students to google "Oman" before writing an essay with that same title recently. One student's subsequent output was extermely accurate linguistically. There was just one drawback for evaluation purposes; his submission was in German....as a consequence of the German word for 'Oman' being 'Oman'...

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[kuberkat]

ROTFL!!! Now if that happens at my college, I can just see the student in question marching straight to the HOD's office to complain about being accused of plagiarism, too.

As to the expat side of the equation, the ministerial colleges are hard-pressed to find adequately qualified teachers for more advanced courses. And beggars, as they say, can't be choosers. I have been gobsmacked to discover that third year teaching students, who have been instructed by PhDs for the past years, can give a textbook definition of TPR, but have never actually done TPR. Many instructors are in the same boat: even those who are familiar with bleeding-edge educational ideas often resort to the teacher-centered model- and I admit my own occasional guilt here. It isn't easy to get that kind of thinking out of one's system.

But can even a paradigm shift (to jargonize flagrantly) in teaching methodology instill the idea of personal responsibility in learners? Can learner independence be cultivated? This is a pointed question, even in cultures where learners embrace the philosophy that each individual is the master of their fate and the captain of their soul, but even more so in this profoundly collective, deterministic culture.

[veiledsentiments]

[eha]

"The true question, in my mind, is this: what will make learners thirsty for knowlege?"

Well, I know what WON"T: a system obsessed with quantitative assessment and record-keeping --- quizzes, exams and tests every ten minutes; test results being seen as the only outcome of learning; a system which makes the GPA all-important in records of student achievement. And these are NOT Omani ideas; they've been imported from countries which are having serious problems with their own educational systems.

[veiledsentiments]

The Omani educational system started out completely based on the Egyptian system. The complete education department was Egyptians when SQU opened. So they began with a system based on memorization and testing. I don't think much has changed...

Which system is not based on testing? It is true of all the Asian systems too... the US is heading that direction with 'no child left behind'... the UK has seemed to always be that way.

VS

[steppy-boy]

Has anyone noticed that it seems to be either the Palestinians, Tunisians, Egyptians or Iraqis that seem to run these institutions, In other words, they are the buffers or go-betweens between the foreign native speakers and the local administrators? No change can take effect without them, and I just have a feeling, a hunch, they are hood-winking the Gulf Arabs here too. They set up little cliques of their own and are very subservient to the Gulf Arabs, their bosses, but quite ruthless to "us" the foreign native speakers. They give the impression of caring for the students, being efficient and all that. They make all the right "noises" but they know they are on a good thing here. It's just a "hunch". Does anyone out there have the same "hunch"?

[Stephen Jones]

[veiledsentiments]

[eha]

'Test-based' is one thing; 'obsessed with quantification' is another. I was educated in the Irish and English school systems; at school, we had end-of-term tests, but not at University. In fact, I never came across 'weekly quizzes' in a university until I started to work in the TEFL world, where I found that many of the decision-makers were NOT trained educators, but came into tefling from some other background. I'm not saying that's a bad thing; an educational environment should surely benefit from diversity. But what I found in the Tefl world (what made some of us call it the TEFLON world) was that the people with the LEAST educational experience and knowledge were often the most administratively ambitious (not to mention the youngest), so they very often became the decision-makers--- in this age of managerialism, we'd call them 'line-managers'. Can you imagine taking a quick MA in say, Legal Studies, then getting a job (as if!) in a Law office, and telling everyone how it's done? Only in teaching! (Why, incidentally? Are we such wimps?)

[Stephen Jones]

The PET and IELTS are exams for non-native speakers of English. As such they are not going to form part of the standard English and Welsh curriculum any more than TOEFL and the Michigan test form part of the standard US curriculum for young native speakers.

A British school has the following tests: nationwide tests at the age of seven, eleven and fourteen that are standardized tests for the purpose of ranking the schools, not the students. GCSEs at the age of 16, and A levels at the age of 18. There are also possibly A/S levels at the age of seventeen depending on the arrangement of the school.

A school may also have its own internal examinations, though these carry no weight whatsoever outside the school.

My experience has been that it is the Americans more than the Brits who are obsessed with testing. Teaching at college, whenever I suggested to some American colleagues that to have fortnightly tests that took up 5% of teaching time was quite unnecessary, and that two exams a semester were more than enough, they looked at me as if I came from another planet.

[veiledsentiments]

Perhaps because language teaching is so different from other subjects... progress is so slow and difficult to detect after a certain point - the move from elementary to intermediate level being quicker and easier than the move from intermediate to advanced - and the problem that each learner varies at the progress within each skill. (the nightmare of the fluent low advanced speaker who writes at an elementary level which is so common in Gulf universities.) I believe that this situation is one of the major factors which has led to excessive testing to figure out how to place students and advance them through the 'levels.' Administrators who have never taught a language are demanding 'proof' that 'progress' is being made. Mainly because in the content courses the professors constantly complain of the level of the students who have been passed out of the foundations programs. The demand for proof moves down the chain and ends up with teachers having to demonstrate practically weekly that the 'goals' have been met. IMHO, it is this situation that has led to over testing.

It was a difference that became glaringly apparent when I started also teaching accounting. No need for any quizzes because each chapter's problems serve the same need to show if they actually absorbed the information. And each chapter built on the next logically, so that what one learned kept being used and refined. The final exam need only be a large question and you can either balance your problem or not. No knocking one's head against the wall of trying to get your essay class to actually proofread before turning in or not plagiarize.

It is actually somewhat similar to the situation that I see happening in the US system. Employers have complained that secondary graduates increasingly seemed to lack basic reading, writing, and math skills. Soon enough local, state and now the federal government have stepped in. What are they demanding? Test scores, of course... starting in elementary school. They have foisted a test based curriculum on the whole system or they lose their funding... and education is completely dependent on tax revenue. (no actual educators consulted, of course) So, what was already a marginal system in many parts of the US will now go to teaching to the test... from the day they get to school.

Then there is the issue of who is managing most of these systems in the Gulf. I was always amused (?) at how the system was managed, by people with zero management training and too often no skills - other than being buddies with those who assigned the positions. They were the ones who disliked or were unable to succeed in the classroom... or were just bored with it after a few years.

It is a very strange profession and just what we are discussing here is why there is so much discussion of whether it is actually a 'profession' at all. A debate that occurs regularly around this board.

[veiledsentiments]

[Archangel]

I have to agree with Veiledsentiments about the British system. The British seem obsessed with tests and scoring and ranking. One look at their social structure will convince you of that.