Sinergia entre las adiciones de ceniza volante y escoria en el concreto

The UAE’s ambitions of becoming one of the leading countries in the world has imposed several requirements on the government to support this transition. Part of the support offered to the educational community is the provision of professional development opportunities and the revision of materials and curriculum adopted in schools. The sections below will investigate these in further detail to provide a better perspective on part of the UAE’s existing approach toward educational reform.

2.6.1 Redirecting English Language Teaching

The Ministry of Education, with its realisation that the current teaching approach of English was not as successful as expected, decided to make an ultimate change in relation to the English language curriculum being implemented. Currently, the majority of students graduate after studying twelve years of English in school with little or no competence of English and lacking the ability to communicate in English within academic contexts. In other words, they graduate being false beginners in English. They have studied and been exposed to English for several years, but are not, however, capable of acquiring the target language or using it in an appropriate context.

After graduation, students undergo a language placement test to assess if their level of English could be used within an academic setting where English is the medium of instruction. Students who fail this test are required to take a foundation year of English, which may also include Maths and Computer Science.

Replacing the Existing Programme

In response to the high number of students who need to enrol in foundation courses at the beginning of their tertiary education, the UAE has decided to change the materials adopted in schools, beginning from secondary level. The Ministry of Education concluded that one of the factors that hindered students’ language learning progress was the material used at schools.

The main focus of the previously existing language programme emphasised the importance of language as a structure, mainly working on reading passages and the analysis of structures. Materials were published in-house by the Ministry of Education, through a team of language teachers assigned to work within its headquarters. However, after years of implementation, the Ministry of Education realised that the failure of their students may be due to the approach they were using to teach them, which abided by a traditional curriculum. Consequently, it was decided that changing the adopted programme being used may be one solution to work on improving students’ communicative language competence. However, being such a major decision in relation to the development of language teaching within the public school sector, it was necessary to have it accompanied by a teacher induction and training programme that

would familiarise English teachers with the new programme set for implementation. This would include a radical change towards the teaching approaches used in class. Implementing the New Programme

The new curriculum developed to replace the course used for secondary and high school students was considered revolutionary by teachers who had been using traditional courses that focused on general English rather than academic English. The course was designed to improve the English skills necessary to communicate within the academic environment to which most students would proceed. The new Skills in English series was theme-based, including topics that emphasised cross-cultural and curricular exposure. It was also skill-based, where the development of language sub-skills were emphasised. It emphasised all the main skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, while teaching grammar and vocabulary within context in a manner that students would relate to in their daily life. On the other hand, the previously implemented course put a lot of weight on reading, grammar and writing, with a limited amount of exercises or tasks that concentrated on oral communication skills.

Neither teachers nor students were familiar with the equal share oral skills had in relation to reading and writing. Shortly after the implementation of the new course, teachers were demanding the inclusion of a few pages on structured grammar that they could actually teach and thereafter assess their students on. Teachers seemed to have problems in the recommended strategies used to approach vocabulary and grammar within the sub-skills of language rather than in isolation.

In response, slight changes were made to the new programme to better accommodate teacher expectations. Material was restructured and adapted to include grammatical structural references for students and teachers to refer to after studying grammar within context. This adaptation was in the hope of accommodating the need for a more traditional approach to be followed while using a new course that required a student- centred approach.

Generally, English teachers were used to handling the subject in a content-based manner. There was no gradual development of knowledge or acquired skills; whatever the students covered within a specific unit was not addressed further in other units. On

the other hand, ‘Skills in English’ focused on the importance of language development while recycling taught structures. Unfortunately this was perceived by teachers as being repetitive and too boring for teachers to teach and students to learn. However, the repetition and recycling prompts were to allow students the opportunity to practice and reuse previously addressed areas in multiple contexts.

Impact of Model of Languages Taught in School

Teacher response towards the new suggested approach to teach students English may have had to do with how other languages are taught in school. English language is not the only language taught at schools. All of the schools are obliged to teach Arabic: some private schools tend to teach French as well. English takes up to 20% of the timetable, Arabic language has an equal share, with the rest of the time devoted to other subjects that include Maths, Sciences, History, Social Studies and Religion.

Arabic is taught as a mother tongue, where students have the capability of efficiently communicating in colloquial Arabic, but are involved in learning the ‘formal’ style of Arabic that would help them in their future official reading and writing assignments and perhaps speeches. Although all of the students are native Arabic speakers, they also appear to have trouble while studying Arabic, being a grammar-based taught subject, where grammar and structure are the main core on which to concentrate.

Arabic is taught mostly in its written form, with little emphasis on oral communication skills. Students basically read a text then work on answering comprehension questions and may be involved in memorising poems and verses. In addition to this, a lot of teaching and learning is set on in-depth grammar, where sentences are dissected and analysed according to their parts of speech and their function within the sentence. Consequently, to students, grammar is considered to be an essential part of learning ‘formal’ Arabic. In other words, since students are already competent enough in day-to- day Arabic, they would need further competence in the formal Arabic structure, which they would use in formal situations when required.

Perhaps when considering how the native language of Arabic is taught, an impact of some form will definitely be set on the way any form of foreign language is taught – which in this case would focus on structure and written texts. Additionally, private

schools teaching French tend to focus on teaching reading texts through comprehension exercises, vocabulary, grammar and translation. Few resources and teaching aids are used while teaching both Arabic and French. However, when it comes to English, teachers are required to further prepare additional and supporting resources in the hope of helping the teaching process.

Generally, English teachers are those that are mostly required to prepare for their lessons as well as develop useful teaching aids and resources. English teachers almost always put the most effort among language teachers when teaching their classes: this may explain why English teachers have the highest wages in relation to other subject teachers. Nevertheless, it is questionable how useful and interesting these additional resources being put into place are, when teaching students as well as how creative the teachers are in making use of these resources in relation to the set learning objectives. After reflecting on how both Arabic and French are taught, a useful link can be generated between teaching all three languages according to how teachers perceive the issue of language learning as a whole:

· language is found to be more a set of rules that need to be taught by the teacher and learnt by the students;

· the better the student is at grammar the better the student is in the language being taught, whether Arabic or another foreign language;

· the best way to encourage students to take part in a lesson would be by having him/her gain interest through the learning resources being used and developed by teachers;

· the learning process is found to be one that is isolated from any real world application, where the focus is on the grammar of the language.

The above noted remarks are based on general observations on how languages are taught in public schools. Some private schools tend to follow an engaging approach when teaching English or other languages. Nevertheless, the impact of how common language teaching practices are can be seen, and may even justify the existing approach to teaching English language in the majority of public schools.