Teaching English Is Not Teaching History, Mr. Abood Al-Sawafi!

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela

Teaching English as a native language or a foreign language is completely different from teaching a content school subject like history regardless of the level of education or the methodology of teaching being used by the teacher. We do not suggest or imply here that teaching English is more important than teaching history. We just want to assert that there are specific requirements for the teaching of English as is the case with the teaching of any living language for communication. For instance, the classroom size should be small and manageable, preferably with a number of learners ranging from 15 to 20 students in class. The teaching room must be spacious to allow for the students to move freely and for language activities to take place. Students must not be seated like the audience in a movie theater. The textbooks should be designed in an interesting fashion with stimulating materials and many challenging exercises and activities. The textbooks themselves should be new prints; used textbooks are useless as most, if not all, of the exercises, had already been answered by former students. There is not much to gain from doing exercises in used textbooks.

Testing is another very important process that needs to go hand in hand with teaching not only as a measurement tool but also as an essential tool of feedback for teachers to see where their teaching is useful and where it is not, what areas of the syllabus and portions of the textbook have been taught and covered well and what areas and portions need more teaching and more recycling and more emphasis. There must thus be quizzes, monthly and midterm tests, and final exams. All these must be done in an academic, reliable, and well-planned fashion and in an educational environment in line with the general goals of education.

To disregard all the requirements above, and you still want to achieve success in teaching a language is very unrealistic, very stupid, and a waste of time and money. Regrettably, this is what is happening now in most schools, colleges, and universities where the blame of failure is placed entirely on the shoulders of the teachers rather than on the absence of all the academic and education requirements we have already talked about.

Instead of 15-20 students in the classroom, you find now 40 or 50 or even 60 students! Instead of spacious classrooms, you find tiny and cramped classes where the students cannot even move, let alone engage in any classroom activity. Instead of new prints of textbooks and activity books, you find used and torn-out books that are absolutely useless for teaching and learning. These used and useless books are distributed to the students and retrieved from them at the end of each semester and each year although this is uneducational and illegal.

There is another very damaging aspect to teaching and education. Most, if not all, teachers are overloaded with teaching hours and proctoring duties. The teaching load of the English Language teachers in most schools ranges between 20 to 30 active teaching hours! This is practically an enormous burden of teaching leading to exhaustion, stress, depression, and even mental disorder. Then after all these very negative aspects in the teaching and learning situations, you find reckless, incompetent, and stupid principles, directors, and managers place the blame on the teacher if there is a high rate of failures in tests or exams. Teachers are almost always used as scapegoats.

Everybody knows the situation very well but does nothing to help solve it. The governments, the principles, and all the bottom and top decision-makers understand the problem, but keep silent or resort to hypocrisy and irresponsible excuses to justify a very damaging educational situation.

This unfavorable environment to education and to the teaching and learning of English is particularly acute in government schools, colleges, and universities in most countries in the world, especially in the Middle East. ?The private institutions are a little better, but they also have their shares of recklessness and stupidity because of the greed of many of their owners who are more interested in making profits than in offering good or quality education.

The field of the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) or a Second Language (TESOL) is nowadays a multi-billion business all over the world. Students and learners in institutions of different sorts and levels (schools, colleges, universities, private education companies, and others) spend huge amounts of money on their attempts to learn English in order to use it as a communication tool to communicate with the world. English is regarded now by almost everyone as the lingua franca of the world: if you have a reasonable command of English, you can go around and communicate with most people almost everywhere. English has also become an academic tool of paramount importance for success and academic achievement, especially in engineering, science, and medicine. Many studies have shown that having a low level of English is a very significant contributing factor to the high rate of failures in these fields. You ask anyone, even a layman, about English and they will instantly answer you, you need English if you need to survive and get a decent job and a decent life.

English is a living language and is a vital tool for communication. It cannot be taught in our schools, colleges, and universities like a dead language or like a school subject in the same way as history is taught with the focus on passing information about the language to the students rather than training students on its use as a communication tool. This is one of the main reasons for the failure in teaching English to students and learners all over the world. Students are kept busy in learning “grammar rules” or sets of vocabulary items in isolated sentences or, even without sentences, without being able to use these rules and vocabulary items in the production of the language.

It is generally accepted that there are four language skills: Speaking, Listening, Reading, and Writing. Learners in foreign language situations need to learn and master the four skills in this order or in another order depending on the objectives and goals of learning for any particular group. For instance, air traffic controllers must possess a very high level of mastery in speaking and listening because these are the most important skills they need to do their job properly and efficiently; so there should be more focus on the two skills: speaking and listening.

In general-education schools, the four language skills are not taught in all schools, colleges, and universities because of the lack of facilities and equipment. The teaching of the listening skill needs audio machines and equipment that are not provided in most schools and colleges. Some teachers resort to a primitive method: they ask the students to listen to them while they are reading a written text, and then they distribute written questions to be answered by the students according to the information on the text read by the teacher. All the extra-linguistic features and authenticity of communication disappear in this method.

As for the teaching of speaking, it is almost no-existent except for some simple question-answer activities mainly based on reading comprehension texts. These activities are too limited and just a few students take part in them. Most of the students keep silent and just watch without even understanding what is going on between the teacher and those students who dare answer him /her.

Teachers are practical people and they always know what is “teachable” and what is “unteachable” for a particular group of students. For most, if not all, of them teaching students how to listen and speak in a foreign language is a great challenge and a formidable task. If they are required by the teaching program or educational authorities to teach these two skills, they will try to do it even if they know that such teaching involves a great deal of waste of time and money. They simply do not want to lose their jobs nor do they want to look like they are incapable of doing their job as teachers. What is not clear to the majority of them is the strong interconnection between the teaching of these two skills and their own culture and the culture of the students. If their culture or the students’ culture does not foster listening and speaking as essential parts of life and education, then these teachers are, by nature and upbringing, incapable of teaching their students how to listen and speak in the foreign language and the students themselves are incapable of learning how to do it.

The teaching and testing of English in most schools and higher education institutions have thus mostly focused on the teaching of only two skills: reading and writing, and even these two skills are not taught effectively or properly.

At the end of each semester, the lists of students’ names and their grades go to the principal of the school or the Registration Departments in colleges and universities with a very high percentage of success and with very high grades in all subjects, including English! Where are the officially-required standards and benchmarks? What was the level of teaching and learning, how much cheating was there in tests and exams? How did the students get their grades and, ultimately, their “useless degrees and certificates” that have no value on the job market? For most schools, colleges, and universities, especially in the developing countries, this is really not important as long as the principles, the heads of departments, and the top managers and officials keep their “rotten” heads and jobs and as long as the wastage does not affect their salaries, benefits, advantages, hypocrisy, conspiracies, and thievery! The money being wasted is not theirs; it is the public money and the students’. Regrettably, everybody else is deep “sleeping” and happy including ministries of education, ministries of higher education, and senior officials on the top of the educational ladder.

Some teachers go even further. They teach to the test! They teach only the sentences and the items which will be included in the quizzes, tests, and final exams in order to help the students in the groups they teach to obtain high scores in these tests and exams. The miserable situation is that such teachers are generally “popular” with the students! Sadly, a sizable number of students do not care about “learning” English as a language; they just want to pass and meet the requirements of graduation from a school, a Foundation Program, or a College Program. In fact, these students do not care about learning anything, and frankly, they do not deserve to be at a school, college, or a university in the first place.

Some senior managers think, mistakenly, that they are above the law. There is a disappointing culture of hypocrisy and corruption in education and higher education in most countries in the world, regarding the management of education including the teaching of English as a Foreign Language. This point needs to be honestly addressed and rectified. There is no place for selfishness and hypocrisy at these difficult times when the financial resources are getting alarmingly scarce. After many, many years of learning English as a Foreign Language, students are still unable to communicate in English, and some of them cannot even speak or write one good sentence in English. Such teaching is a complete waste of time and money.

I still remember the teaching of English as a Foreign language at A’Sharqiyah University in Oman, especially in the Foundation Program. We used to teach the four language skills: Listening, Speaking. Reading, and Writing using excellent international teaching materials (books, CDs, exercises, etc.) available on the market for the teaching of English. These are materials beautifully designed and written by native speakers of English. They are based on large natural corpora (collections of real-life texts) in line with rigorous methods of data collection to ensure that learners are presented with real English, as it is actually used.?Most of them are accompanied by interactive CD-ROMs and can be used for individual study, for homework, and for formal instruction in class. They are somewhat cheap because they are mass-produced by international publishers reputed for their educational efforts and the high academic standards of the materials they publish.?Locally-produced books and materials should be avoided because they are usually written by incompetent teachers and they teach “broken” English.?From my extensive experience in teaching English to learners of different levels in different countries all over the world, international books and materials are worth the cost. They are extremely useful in the teaching and learning of the English language and are highly recommended to anyone who is interested in learning and teaching English for public or private purposes.

The General Foundation Program (GFP) was one of the most successful programs at A’Sharqiyah University and in Oman as a whole. It has been designed as per the International standards and benchmarks of Foundation Programs. It used to consist of four components: English Component, Mathematics Component, Computing and IT Component with the General and Academic Study Skills component taught in specific courses and also built in the other three components. All components follow the criteria and standards of higher education as stipulated by the Ministry of Higher education and other education and accreditation authorities.

The Foundation Program is intended to intensively prepare the students for university and college studies by developing their English skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. All the teaching materials (textbooks, workbooks, CDs, etc.) have been carefully selected to help achieve the goals of the Foundation Program and meet the students’ general and academic needs. These materials are published by some of the best international publishers who take education very seriously and put it before profit such as Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Longman. They are beautifully designed and written according to rigorous academic standards and the needs of international students. There are eight textbooks for each level and a lot of interactive exercises for learning and reinforcing English language skills, vocabulary, and structures in life-like contexts and situations. There is a textbook for each language skill and component: Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, Grammar, and Study Skill. There is also an Integrative Textbook to combine and summarize the skills and components in a very effective way so that there will be language and academic compensation among the skills and components so that if there is a shortage in exposure or in teaching, for any reason, the other textbooks and teachers will compensate for the shortage. The Program worked very well, the students were very happy, the results were excellent, and the reputation of the University was greatly enhanced.

Then came Abood Al-Sawafi (former VC) and Hamed Al-Hajri (Assistant VC) and illegally canceled the Foundation Program in violation of all the legal obligations of the University towards its students and their genuine interests and in defiance of the Ministry of Higher Education and all accreditation authorities.

The Program has been drastically reduced in terms of scope, hours, teaching materials, quizzes, tests, and exams. It no longer covers all the English Language skills as it used to do. The number of books has been reduced from eight books to only one

Abood Al-Sawafi used to tell us that “it is difficult for university students to read more than one book in one term or one year!” Have you ever seen such a stupid VC anywhere in the world?!

They canceled the teaching of English grammar to reduce the number of books to be bought in the Program and reduce the number of teaching hours and, ultimately, the number of teachers in the hope of making illegitimate profits to appease the investors who are mostly camels’ breeders and owners of brick and cement factories and have nothing to do with higher education. All this was done at the expense of quality education and in the name of students’ interests and their future careers.

All the international requirements and benchmarks were canceled by Abood Al-Sawafi. The benchmarks are now “absolute zero”: no TOEFL, no IELTS, no Cambridge Certificate – nothing at all! What is the worth of a program or a degree without any international benchmarks?

The seven final exams each of two-hour duration covering the English language skills and components have been replaced by one exam only examining students very superficially, and in a very trivial way, on some aspects of the English language with no clear plan or strategy. So what has been left of the original Foundation Program? Nothing at all -- just garbage! The Program is now in shambles; it has no beginning and no end and has no educational goals or strategies. The aim is now just to make the students pass this “garbage thing” to satisfy the requirement imposed by the Ministry of Higher Education that all students should pass the Foundation Program before registering for their academic studies. The Placement Test was directly being controlled by Abood Al-Sawafi and his Assistant VC, Hamed Al-Hajri. They would cancel it for anyone who was prepared to pay a good bribe to them.

They canceled the use of books and references for teaching in all college programs and gave awkward instructions to the teachers to use “handouts” instead of books and references. These are tiny handouts made up of a few pages that students are asked to have them photocopied from the original books and references. The students are compelled to pay for all the photocopied materials used in teaching and assignments.?These?tiny handouts represent an awkward and outdated style of teaching that does not fit the modern academic requirements. They are also illegal as per the International Copyright Laws. They are photocopied without legal permission from their original writers or publishers.

Teaching at A’Sharqiyah university has been reduced to dull lectures and boring presentations. There are no tutorials or discussion sessions or even question-answer activities. Students just learn by heart the contents of the handouts and sit for written exams. The answers they write are just memorized information from the handouts. The student's academic life has been reduced to a worthless process of quizzes, tests,?and exams which are mostly of a very low level—oftentimes lower than a high school! Is this really university teaching?!?

It is no surprise then that too many students drop out of their academic studies. They go raising cattle and camels on the farms that are widely spread in A’Sharqiyah region or join the police and the army. But the Ministry of Higher education continues to pay tuition fees for the students even after they have dropped out!

As we have said repeatedly in this article and in other articles, Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri have never believed in “quality education”.?In fact, they do not know what this term means.?Because of their greed and avarice, and their “fish mentality”, they believe only in money, money, and more money.

The question which arises now is: why have Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri destroyed the teaching of English and the academic reputation of A’Sharqiyah University in this way? This question needs plenty of details to answer. But for the time being, we may give the following explanation. Both Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al- Hajri do not belong to the academic world and do not know how a higher education institution is to be managed. They are interested only in making profits for the investors to appease them rather than offer a decent education to their students. Because they are both big liars, cheats, and dishonest people, they have always disregarded their obligations to education, to the students, and to the Ministry of Higher Education. In addition, they hate the English Language and the English culture in an unbelievable way. This may be attributed to psychological and cultural reasons. Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri, with some other corrupt businessmen in Oman, mistakenly believe the English Language and culture constitute a threat to their businesses that use Arabic entirely and do not advocate the use of English for communication. This is why they have made Arabic the language of instruction at A’Sharqiyah University in spite of the fact that the University is legally required to be a higher-education provider using English as a medium of instruction.?Just go to the A’Sharqiyah University website, A’Sharqiyah Facebook page, and other pages on the Internet, you will be bombarded with information and notices telling you about the courses being taught in Arabic at the University: B.A. in Education, B.A. in Arts, B.A. in Archives and Documentation, B.A. in Management, Diploma in Management, B.A. in Educational Counseling, B.A.in Business Studies, and even M.A. in Business Administration (MBA).

It is no surprise that the vast majority of the male graduates of A’Sharqiyah University work now as “taxi drivers” and the female graduates as “housewives”! The rosy future Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri promised them when joining the University has always been a big nasty lie.

Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change life for the better and to advance peace and stability. The problem that has been facing the world is that education is not being given the worth it deserves. Regrettably, it is not regarded by most governments and officials as a top priority on the budget or in national planning policies. Teachers are very low paid, schools lack essential facilities and their buildings are very old and often collapse in bad weather, the school budget does not allow buying new books for the students, and teachers are overloaded and abused by reckless, incompetent, unqualified, and stupid principles, and managers.

Most politicians, government officials, and investors always pay lip service to education but, in reality, things are going from bad to worse. These people lack honesty, dedication, and responsibility. They care only about their selfish interests. ?The numbers of students are alarmingly dwindling in schools, and higher education institutions and ignorance has become widespread. It is in this light that we should look at the wider picture of teaching English and the bitter realities of schools, colleges, and universities, especially in developing countries. As long as there remain incompetent, unqualified, and corrupt officials like Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri in charge of education and higher education, we have the justification to remain very worried about the state of our education systems and the future of our students.

The future is bleak.

The fish stinks from its head down.

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