Tuesday, 05 June 2007
By Kholood F. Al-Rhamah and Mohammed Salim Al-Kinani
As educators and students alike realize more and more how important it is to teach and learn English, they are also coming to a broader realization of just how much - and how big - the challenge is.
Even though a good number of students still graduate with high marks in English, what they get rarely reflects their real level of proficiency in the actual usage of the language.
The best solution teachers have to offer is a change in teaching techniques as well as beginning to teach the course at earlier stages of the student's educational life.
Wafaa is a high school teacher who has been teaching English for the past ten years. Based on her experience, she says she believes in the importance of teaching English in the early stages of a student's education.
"English is the language of the modern age," she said. "Being skilled in it means that you can acclimate to the development and requirements of this day and age."
An English course has already been added to the curricula for the sixth grade in elementary schools two years ago, giving the learning process a push forward to upgrade the students' capabilities of learning the language and minimizing any difficulties they might face.
"I support teaching English in the early stages of elementary school, for it will make it a lot easier to the students to accept and comprehend the language," said Wafaa.
One of the problems that usually causes the students to have difficulties in learning the language is the sheer size of the text book.
One high-school text book is full of new words as part of a vocabulary introduced to them for the first time. They feel the pressure of being obligated to learn and memorize this large number of new words, consequently causing them to lose interest and make them hate to learn the language.
Balqees, another teacher with 19 years of experience in teaching English language to high school students, believes that teaching the child to learn the language from a young age is imperative to his or her ability to grasp the language in later stages. She suggests that the topics in the books should be chosen wisely.
"The topics of the text book should be about life in general," she said. "The students will be more motivated to learn about how to pray in another language than to learn about academic topics, especially in another language."
In addition, says Wafaa, the fear factor in learning a whole new language is the main reason and binding the students from taking advantage of the language learning process.
She says that almost 60 percent of her public school students are good and capable of using the language after graduation and into their practical lives. "English is not a difficult language, but it is something seen as unusual by the students, which potentially scares them off," said Wafaa.
In the near future, the Ministry of Education is planning to introduce labs in public schools, in which students can learn English language will use modern technology, such as head phones, to hear the language correctly rather than just reading it out of a book.
Along with other subjects, teaching the English language at Saudi pubic schools goes back to the beginning of formal education in 1960.
Unfortunately, the outcome has never been as good as has been hoped, a fact that is especially well known to those who are involved in the educational process.
The answers as to the reason behind this gap between the scores the students achieve in English-language courses and their actual performance in real life depend on who you ask.
Educators' opinions were split.
While some of them believe the belated introduction of English to students, which now begins at the sixth grade, is the main cause of the students' low levels of performance, others believe that it should not be introduced at any level earlier that this."Children are emotional by nature, and when they are exposed to learn the English language at such an early age, they will definitely love it and learn it more easily," said Mohammed Al-Hunaidi, a public school teacher.
He said that the earlier English is introduced, the better it will be for students. For Hunaidi, any negative attitudes against the English language and English-speaking communities and cultures will not be evinced among younger pupils, facilitating the process of accepting and using the language.
Mohammed Ahmed, a retired teacher of English, opposes the idea, saying that it goes against the objectives of the country's educational philosophy.
The national educational philosophy, he says, is built on religious principles in a way that meets the religious, economic and social needs of the country and to eradicate illiteracy among Saudis.
He said that starting teaching English at an early age would disrupt the students linguistically and emotionally.
"It will also minimize their confidence in their own language," he said. "It will eventually account for some of the concepts of that foreign culture, which may leave a lasting impression on the students at a later stage."
Hunaidi disagrees with Ahmad, saying that the child is the outcome of his or her own culture, and adding that studying a foreign language has nothing to do with the cultural values that he or she will inevitably obtain, as culture is usually transferred to the child through the surrounding environment, especially the family.
"Schoolboys study more religion and Arabic courses than English, and it makes no sense to be afraid of teaching English at earlier ages," said Hunaidi. "Logic says the dominant culture is the one that remains and grows," he added.
There are people who believe that the timing of introducing English is not the reasons behind the weak outcome of English classes at Saudi schools. They went as far as accusing the teachers themselves of preparing exams that make students pass without much effort, just to save face due to their own low levels and, in some cases, carelessness.
Muhdi Al-Ardi, head of the English Language Department at Jeddah's Directorate of Education, defended teachers, saying that they are required to stick to certain criteria when setting up exams.
He added that his administration usually makes sure that teachers stick to standards, denying that teachers tend to give their students marks that deceive the latter's guardians.
He said an English exam sheet should include questions of various degrees of difficulty to cater to the students' intellectual differences. The Ministry of Education, he said, has relegated marks for each skill question, and teachers mark the answers accordingly.
On the other hand, some teachers admitted that their school principals want them to do everything to let students pass, for no other reason than to gain the reputation of running a good school.
"If we stick to the rules of designing exam questions, most of the students won't pass," said a teacher who spoke on condition of anonymity. "This will turn our principals against us, and they will question why students failed."
