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Evaluation is seen as an important process which should influence the planning and the implementation of curriculum. Nation and Macalister (2010) argue that evaluating a course should be aimed at all aspects of curriculum design to reach sound judgments about the effectiveness of the curriculum. In the context of the study, evaluation of EAP courses is narrowly focused on one aspect of the curriculum which is the students’ assessment and very little is being done to evaluate the other curriculum elements. As indicated through the analysis of the questionnaire, a significant majority of the EAP teachers (84% in item 15) either strongly agreed or agreed on curriculum development requiring systematic evaluation of various curriculum elements. This gives a clear indication that the majority of participants believe in the importance of evaluating the curriculum which is seen as an integral element of the process of curriculum development.

The kind of programme evaluation which is being executed across the colleges is basically focused on allowing certain people to provide their feedback about areas of improvement in EAP courses. As a level coordinator at Sohar College, only HODs, level coordinators and assessment coordinators are asked about their general feedback on the EAP courses. They are required to write a report to be submitted to the Programme Director by the end of every semester. As explained earlier, the English programme at CAS colleges operate under a top-down leadership which means that the final say regarding any curricular changes will be from the Programme Director. This fact was supported by the participants’ responses in the questionnaire for which a large number of the participants (67% in item 7) either strongly disagreed or disagreed on their involvement in the revision and evaluation of existing course outlines. Similarly, the analysis of item (14) indicated that 45.6% of the participants either strongly disagreed or disagreed, 29.6% neither agreed nor disagreed, and 23.5% either strongly agreed or agreed that EAP teachers are encouraged to develop various curriculum elements. The qualitative analysis of the semi-structured interviews revealed that the majority of the participants suspect the existence of an evaluation scheme for

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EAP programmes at CAS colleges. Abdul Aziz (Male, Omani, 5 years in CAS) reflected:

“The course definitely needs evaluation. EAP has been since I joined almost completed six years and a half, given that doing the same thing with the same goals, with the same objectives..”

One of the interesting facts about evaluation at CAS colleges as mentioned by one of the participants in the interviews is the college administration’s insistence on teachers urging students to fill out a survey for each module. Students are asked about their feedback on the course in general and about the instructor of the course. However, teachers are not asked for their feedback about the course and they do not know what happens with the results of the surveys filled out by students every semester. In relation to this issue of the lack of a programme evaluation scheme, Basma (Female, Omani, 7 years in CAS) commented:

“Students are given questionnaires, this is not regular to evaluate teachers and the courses and so on, but what happens after that, we don’t know. So, this is like a students’ based evaluation and teachers are not updated about the results of these surveys but it is only for the administration feedback. Teachers also are not asked about their feedback after teaching the course”

Some participants referred to the lack of teacher evaluation at EAP courses which is also associated with the issue of lack of a programme evaluation. Hamed clarified this issue further in the following comment:

“If there is a problem with a teacher, they shouldn’t overburden all the teachers with extra work which is really not needed. You should sit with them, talk to them, and give them the right piece of advice. I think because they don’t do this, they try to generalize. I don’t think that this model is helping curriculum development of EAP courses”

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Based on my reflection on the issue of formative teachers’ evaluation which seems to be suggested in the previous quote, this issue can influence curriculum development. Despite EAP teachers being aware of the summative evaluation which takes the form of an annual appraisal completed by HODs, this form has not been effective due to a lack of transparency. EAP teachers have no idea of the results of this evaluation and therefore it cannot be seen as an effective evaluation method. Regarding formative teacher evaluation, there is no structure or a framework for this kind of evaluation which means there is a need to establish a proper teacher evaluation method for EAP teachers at CAS colleges.

Another significant remark referred to by Hamed (Male, Omani, 10 years in CAS) with respect to evaluation is that evaluation should support the course objectives because if the evaluation indicates that a curricular change is to be made, then this change has to result in modifying and refining the course objectives. He discussed this issue in the following quote:

“As I said here, any curriculum if we talk about developing a curriculum which we have been teaching let’s say for the past 7 or 8 years maybe needs to be updated based on the learners’ needs, based on what improvement that takes place even in their majors. If they require from them certain skills, English for Academic Purposes, If they say now we ask them to write this kind of reports or essays, what we teach here in English maybe should relate to what they need. So, we need here to evaluate our curriculum, is it matching the requirements or not? If we think in general and we talk about the generic skills for English for Academic Purposes maybe, there are always changes and improvements. So we need I think to evaluate this yes. As I said based on this maybe we need to change the aims and objectives of what we are teaching”

Another interesting point represented by Sheikha (Female, Omani, 6 years in CAS) in relation to the issue of evaluation is the form of evaluation initiated by the institution for the purpose of adhering to the quality assurance standards. This kind of formal evaluation does not reflect a clear and an accurate depiction of the

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real weaknesses and points of strength in the EAP programme at CAS. She stated:

“Evaluation is very important. It could be done within one year or two years but we can’t leave the system without evaluation because within evaluation you can think of the strengths and the weaknesses and you are going to reinforce the strengths and improve the weaknesses so I think it is very important yes. Maybe people involved with quality assurance are currently more interested in this because they are trying to reflect on the performance but practically I feel it is just to write documents, it is not to evaluate and to really improve the weaknesses but we are trying to hide the weaknesses and to show our strengths and this isn’t evaluation”

Unlike the reality concealing approach adopted by the quality assurance committee at the ministry, curriculum evaluation should be aimed at delineating the existing curriculum challenges so that an action plan can be suggested to promote EAP curriculum development at CAS colleges. The previous responses indicated that there is an agreement among EAP teachers about the need to establish a programme evaluation scheme to deal with areas of improvement and to cater for the emerging needs of the students, the academic departments as well as the job market.