ALTERACIONES DENTARIAS

The medium of instructional teaching and communication in Saudi Arabian public schools (state schools) is Arabic up to the university level. In the Saudi state schools, English is only taught as a foreign language for 45 minutes four times a week. It starts as a main subject in year 4 (at the age of 9). The Ministry of Education has states several general aims and objectives of teaching English in Saudi Arabia. Also, various committees and bodies were also setup by the government to develop appropriate curriculums for the different levels of education (Rahman & Alhaisoni, 2013). However, Al-Seghayer (2014) stated that despite the efforts exerted to improve the teaching-learning process of English in Saudi Arabia, the outcome is still lower than expected and the learners’ proficiency remains inadequate. Accorign to Al-Seghayer, Saudi students start learning English with anxiety, fear and reluctance, and carry these negative feelings into intermediate and secondary schools, believing that English is very difficult to learn. For instance, a considerable number of secondary Saudi students reported that if it was optional to study English as a subject at

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school, they would not select it (Al-Zahrani, 2008). Also, Alshumaimeri (2003) confirms that students leave the secondary school lacking the ability to make a short conversation.

All the English teachers in the state schools are Saudi citizens. The English teacher’s role in the classroom is perceived narrowly as the provider of knowledge. Saudi English teachers consume much of their time and effort by extensively focusing on grammatical rules and the tedious repetition of words and phrases (Al-Mohanna, 2010; Al-Seghayer, 2011). Exploiting only the course textbook and the blackboard, most Saudi English teachers do not use teaching aids and authentic supplementary materials in the English classroom

(Alseghayer, 2014). In this learning situation, Saudi English learners fail to take part or engage in a basic conversation or comprehend a simple oral or written message. They have little exposure to communicative situations or communication functions in lifelike situations (Rahman & Alhaisoni, 2013). Consequently, according to Khan (2011), these students feel incapable of reaching the desired outcome, which is learning English as a foreign language. Moreover, Al-Jarf (2008a) found that despite the fact that the lowest GPA for high school graduates admitted to the College of Languages & Translation in 2007 was 98.3%, results of the same year final exams showed that only 21.8% of the students passed the reading course.

With regard to the qualifications of the Saudi teachers, teaching certificate is not required to be hired as an English teacher. The only qualification that is required for being hired as an English teacher is holding a bachelor’s degree in English which can be classified into the following groups: BA degree in English Language and Literature; BA degree in translation; or BA in Linguistics. Alseghayer (2014) stated that from the early 1980s, English teachers in Saudi Arabia graduated form university or colleges that award them the degree after studying a four-year programme in the English department. The offered English teaching-methods courses represent no more than 10% of the total courses offered in these four-year programs (Al-Seghayer, 2011). As aresult, these programs produce a considerable number of Saudi EFL teachers who are professionally and linguistically incompetent (Javid, Farooq, & Gulzar, 2012; Khan, 2011). Moreover, most students who graduate from English departments in Saudi Arabia are not well-qualified for the job of teaching English due to their inadequate pedagogical preparation (Khan, 2011; Shehdeh, 2010). It also provides English teachers who has insufficient knowledge of the four skills teaching strategies, different testing techniques, and various assessment methods. With regard to teachers’ training in Saudi Arabia, most Saudi teachers are hired to teach English without having neither in-service nor pre-service training for teaching. This situation, according to Al-Seghayer (2014), is

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exacerbated by the fact that there is no incentive for English teachers who are willing to engage in professional self-development.

In terms of Saudi learners of English at public school, a considerable number of these students believe that learning English is beyond their ability. Maherzi (2011) noted that they often ask themselves why they are studying English, as they realise a gap between their efforts and the desired outcome of achieving competency in the English language outside the classroom. Therefore, English is largely perceived as an academic exercise or a boring subject learned for instrumental purposes, primarily to pass exams with the minimum effort needed (Alseghayer, 2014). Leaning English in a large class with 40 to 50 students, Saudi learners are not given equal opportunity to practice what they learned in the classroom (Shah, Hussain, & Nassef, 2013). Thus, their motivation is limited to learn only what is required in order to pass a test and very little interaction takes place in the classroom except for answering the

teachers’ questions or completing a grammar task.

In terms of official assessment method and policies adopted by ministry of education in Saudi Arabia. It is well-known in Saudi Arabia that English final exams have a fixed format or template on which students can be trained within a short period of time and pass the test easily with minimum effort. Speaking and listening skills are not tested and the reading skills are usually neglected in teaching as well as in testing. For example, even when reading skill is tested, emphasis is on testing explicitly stated information, or predicting the meaning of certain words form the context. Also, writing skill is tested using a few number of written passages that are given to the students to memorise before the exam. These assessment methods exacerbate the situation and increase the students’ feeling of carelessness toward learning English as a foreign language.

Family background play a vital role in the Saudi student’s English learning journey. Lack of support received from their parents, especially those whom are uneducated, affects the students’ desire to learn English negatively (Khan, 2012; Shah, Hussain, & Nassef, 2013). These uneducated families do not see the point of learning a second language. Therefore, they do not motivate their children or make them aware of the significance of learning a foreign language or prepare them for the next challenging experience that they will have when learning English. Also, some families have a negative cultural and religious attitude towards learning English or any other language rather than Arabic “language of the Muslim’s holy book Quran”. They encourage their children to be proud of Arabic and do not motivate them to learn other languages. Due to their unawareness of the significance of learning English in

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the higher education stage, they give more attention to academic achievement in other subjects.

Although there are a number of voices that promoted teaching English and believe that it served as a tool for modernisation that provide a brighter new future of saudi arabia., there are also a considerable number of voices that argue against English and believe that it poses a danger to eroding the identity of its locals. These voices sees English as a colonising language and worry that the use of English in Saudi Arabia may undermine local values and beliefs. Reviewing the literature shows that there has been a considerable discussions in Saudi Arabia about the relationship between teaching/learning of English and a perceived threat to local cultures, values, national identity, and heritage. Not only Saudi people might concern that teaching/ learning English has an underlying missionary that may be contrary to Islamic values and fear the loss of cultural and linguistic heritage. For instance, Ahmed (2010) notes, the language issue in the UAE has caused heated debates and controversies in the academic and political arenas who believe that English can be a threat, dominating all aspects of life and that the Arabic language and national identities are being “sidelined”. Moreover, the debate about cultural and religious concerns about the role that education can play in maintaining cultural and linguistic heritage are not unique to Saudi Arabia and not only among Arab and Muslim linguists. Indeed, there has been an increasing global concern about the dominance of English as an ‘imperialistic tool’ (Phillipson 1992), and a ‘missionary language’ (Wong & Canagarajah 2009).

Phillipson (1992) has demonstrated how English Language Teaching has been implicated in neocolonialist reconstruction and imperialist aims. According to Phillipson (1992), imperialism can take numerous forms, such as cultural and linguistic. Phillipson argues that it is the economic and political interest of the United States to ensure that the world is moving toward making English a common language, and toward developing values with which the Americans are comfortable.

Glasser (2003) notes that after the 9/11 attacks, western countries and Gulf educators or reformers began to inspect Arabic-language textbooks and teaching methods, particularly in Saudi Arabia. As a result, according to Glasser, students in the conservative Qatar are now learning less Islam and more English and that the country is making way for more hours of English classes and less Islamic studies and Arabic. Also, Elyas (2008) reports that, in response to the post 9/11 political and social pressures in 2003, Western media has called for an educational reform of curriculum in the Muslim world. Therefore, there has been internal and external pressure for change in the Saudi Arabia curriculum in general, and in the English

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curriculum in particular. This pressure resulted in the inspection of the allocation of time to English instruction and the way in which English is taught. As a result, the Saudi government decided to introduce English into all primary schools (Elyas 2008).

Azuri (2006) discusses the same pressure that the US government put on Saudi government to introduce English language studies at primary schools in order to expose its young generation to the idea of acceptance and tolerance of others (USA and theWest) and introducing the concept of living in harmony with the ‘others’ or the ‘West’. As a result, there has been a shift in the English language curriculum in Saudi Arabia. English curriculum in Saudi Arabia that focused on local cultures and deleted references to Western cultures, habits, or customs such as dating, drinking alcohol, were replaced with the curriculum that carefully introduced Western culture and different paradigms of thinking and behaving, showing differences between sociocultural practices, but not as a clash of civilisations (Elyas 2008). However, the nations themselves suspect these reform suggestions and view them as intrusions into their culture.The trend towards ‘more English and less Islam’ (i.e. calls to promote ‘more English and less Islam’, in the belief that this position will serve in eliminating the seeds of terrorim activities by Muslim extremists) has provoked an anger among many Arabic and Muslim scholars (Karmani, 2005).

On one hand, there are many scholars in the Muslim World who believe that, as it has been practised in British Empire, the teaching of English in this modern age, serves as a tool for linguistic imperialism, cultural alienation, and in the case of Muslim countries a de- Islamization of a targeted nation‖ since it acts as a conveyor of knowledge and culture (Argungu, 1996; Karmani, 2005). Karmani, for instance, conceptualised English as a container, ideas as objects and communication as sending these objects. Hence, English is served in the Middle East, and especially in the Gulf States, as a container of ideologies which may result in reshaping the ideas and sending the wrong messages to the society in general. These scholars believe that a curriculum should present our own identity, our own history, our own religion and that it is not for others to come and try to change it. They worry about the effects that learning English may have on young Muslims and see the EFL classroom as a means for spreading Western non-spiritual values that may undermine Islamic values and thus damage Islamic youth.

In light of the current debate on the issue of more English less Islam. There have been other scholars who questioned or refuted the argument that teaching English would serve as an imperialistic tool and argued that the idea of embracing other’s values and ideologies can be very positive. Although the fact that Saudi learners are exposed to the English language’s

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western values and ideologies that might contradict their own, it can be seen as a positive opportunity for Saudi learners to look outside the box and accept differences between the two cultures. A strong evidence that refutes the linguistic imperialism view is the findings of Youssef and Simpkins’ study (1985) that showed that Arabs, who lived in a U.S.dominated culture for a long time and were under daily exposure of the Western ideology, did not suffer from de-Islamization of their values. Rather, they held a positive view of their ethnicity and remained proud of their own identity. In addition, Elyas (2008) argues that the demand for English is always prevalent with increasing globalization. He even asserts that, after 9/11, the need to learn English is present, more than ever, for the purpose of understanding what is being said and written about Arabs, interacting with the West, and understanding the west. According to Elyas, English as a language will stay, while people are reshaping, remoulding, and adjusting it to suit their cultural and social norms.

Elyas (2008) investigated the impact of 9/11 on the educational system in Saudi Arabia and examined how the youth feel towards Western ideology, learning English and Western culture. Elyas conducted a case study on a group of Saudi freshmen students studying English at King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia . A 12-item

questionnaire, was distributed to 65 Saudi students studying English in their second semester of the New English Curricula. The results showed that although about half of the Saudi students surveyed do not agree with the Western ideology which might contradict their Islamic and Arabic identity, they feel that learning English and the Western culture is needed to an extent that their Saudi cultural and Islamic identity is intact. The participants agree that studying both English language and its culture are necessary in order to develop their English comprehension. Therefore, the study concluded that studying another language does not necessarily diminish one‘s heritage and that, for these students, teaching/learning English does not serve as a tool with an imperialistic purpose of Westernisation of their Arabic identity.

Moreover, in the same line of thought, Kabel (2007) argues that a language is a fluid concept that can be shaped, reshaped, and reproduced according to its carrier. Although English learners tend to carry the cultural influence of the English culture when speaking or writing, this can be easily manipulated accordingly and language can be at the service of its users. According to Kabel, language learners have a mind of their own and can carry their own hidden plan in learning a language. Thus, Kabel believes that the calim that learning English deliveres ideologies that contradict with the views of Muslim learners cannot be accepted as it is without further investigation.

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A number of muslim scholars have argued that some elements of English culture need to be taught as a component of any EFL curriculum. For instance, Hare (1996), argues that tolerating and accepting different cultures does not necessarily mean practising them or agreeing with them. Hare suggests that EFL teaching should involve teaching students to untie the various threads of context and meaning that exist in any given text.

Due to the strong arguments in favour of and against the teaching of English in Arabic or muslim countries, there were a number of recommendations that were provided by scholars in order to reduce the negative cultural or religious impact of learning English on the learners’ identities. For example, Mahboob (2009) provides considerable evidence of cultural and religious localisation in the use of the English language in Pakistan, including evidence from textbooks. The references to local Islamic traditions, practices and personalities in the

Pakistani English textbooks reflects how English was adapted to reflect local identities. Also, the teachers are given a key role to unpack Western discourses in texts and to compare them with local discourses. Hadley (2004) confirms that teachers should teach locally but think globally. Some scholars have even suggested that an Islamic approach to English teaching should be followed (Argungu, 1996). This debate goes on to call for syllabus designers in the Arab world to be inspired by the wealthy and glorious Islamic Heritage of the nation.

According to Zughoul (2003), this approach could focus on facilitating the learning English, the language of knowledge, science and technology for Muslim learners, while censoring content that could be percieved as anti-Islamic.

Mahboob and Elyas (2014) examined the nature and use of English as it is used in secondary school textbooks and looked at whether and how English has been localised to suit the local needs and practices. Based on an analysis of English language textbooks used in Saudi Arabia, their study identified a number of discursive features of English that are much more locally oriented and reflect local cultural norms and practices. Their findings suggest that English textbooks in Saudi Arabia reflects recognisably local cultural, religious and social values and beliefs.This localisation of the English language teaching material suggests that the English language taught in the classrooms carries a local flavour and does not push Western cultural practices, but rather invites students to consider diverse practices and believes in relation to local practices.

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