Teaching and Learning English in the Arabic-Speaking World

Kathleen M. Bailey, Ryan M. Damerow, Kathleen M. Bailey, Ryan M. Damerow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317818113
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: English Language
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Co-published with The International Research Foundation for English Language Education (TIRF)

An important contribution to the emerging body of research-based knowledge about teaching English to native speakers of Arabic, this volume presents empirical studies carried out in Egypt, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—a region which has gained notable attention in the past few decades. Each chapter addresses an issue of current concern, and each includes implications for policy, practice, and future research. Nine chapter authors are Sheikh Nahayan Fellows—recipients of doctoral fellowships from The International Research Foundation for English Language Education (TIRF). This volume is the first in the Global Research on Teaching and Learning English Series, co-published by Routledge and TIRF.

1RESEARCH ON THE TEACHING AND LEARNING OF ENGLISH IN THE ARABIC-SPEAKING WORLD

Questions in Search of Answers

Ryan M. Damerow and Kathleen M. Bailey

In this chapter, we will introduce readers to our purposes in editing this volume. We will explain why we have taken a regional focus in selecting the chapters to include and then provide an overview of the contents. Finally, we will discuss the research methods used by the authors. One major aim of this chapter is to establish questions that you, the reader, will find answers to as you navigate the research reports that follow.

Purpose of This Volume

This book has been written for a wide reading audience. It is intended to add to a growing body of literature on the teaching and learning of English in the Arabic-speaking world (e.g., see Coombe & Barlow, 2007; Gitsaki, 2011; and Midraj, Jendli, & Sellami, 2007). The present collection offers 10 previously unpublished studies which will contribute to the empirical base and enhance our understanding of language education and acquisition in the region.

While we loathe drawing sharp distinctions between teachers and researchers, or teacher trainers and policy makers, we acknowledge that different readers may bring a variety of questions to the chapters in this book. We encourage you to reflect on your own individual contexts while reading the following chapters, but we also challenge you to consider perspectives that may be very different from your own.

For example, teachers might ask themselves the following kinds of questions: Should I encourage my students to watch TV programs in English? Would doing so help them increase their English vocabulary? What kinds of questions do I use while I’m teaching? Should I vary the question types more than I currently do in the classroom? Are particular questions more appropriate for certain parts of a lesson? What are my students’ writing strategies? What issues do my students have in using modality in their writing? Are they able to attend to monitoring their texts during the composing process? What are my school’s assessment measures and how can I better understand them? What test(s) does my school use to predict students’ future academic performance? Is there anything I can do to help strengthen the assessment process? What are the challenges of foreign language education at my school? What factors—both internal and external to the institution—might be contributing to the obstacles I face in the classroom? How can I work with administrators at my school to ensure the cultural relevance of the materials that are used in my program?

In addition, researchers might want to know more about the following issues: What is the role of first-language transfer in Arabic speakers’ production of English structures, such as the passive? How does the use of modality devices by native Arabic-speaking learners of English compare to the findings of studies with other populations of foreign language learners? Does the age at which individuals begin learning a new language impact their long-term success? Given the importance of the age of foreign language learning as a global political topic, what data are available regarding this issue in the Arabic-speaking world? What role does input play in the gains language learners make, in regards to their proficiency levels? How important is the intensity of exposure to input in developing language proficiency? How does the predictive validity of a regionally developed exam compare with that of international tests of English proficiency?

Teacher educators might have a different set of questions entirely. In contexts where teachers-in-training are themselves nonnative speakers of English, teacher educators will ask, how can I help my trainees’ improve their English proficiency as well as their confidence in using English, while respecting their identities as native speakers of Arabic? What sociocultural conditions in my trainees’ home contexts may affect their attitudes and beliefs towards English as a medium of instruction? Will my teacher training course have any impact on the trainees’ identities as language teachers? How will I address the issue of the cultural relevance of the materials I use, and how will the trainees choose their own teaching materials in the future? What support do novice teachers need to implement new teaching techniques in their classes?

Yet another set of questions might be raised by policy makers. What is the optimal age at which to design English as a foreign language (EFL) instruction for school students? What is the best intensity of exposure for language learners in terms of weekly instructional hours? What types of materials should be used to help learners develop their English proficiency? What assessment procedures yield reliable and valid information about students’ English abilities? What are the likely outcomes of using English as the medium of instruction in primary, secondary, and/or tertiary education? What sorts of education experiences do teacher trainees need in order to prepare them as teachers who are both proficient in the target language and pedagogically skilled?

Posing questions like the ones above will help readers of this book dig deeply into both the research findings and the underlying issues raised by the authors. Indeed, the chapters that follow will address all of these questions. To maximize what you take away from this book, we encourage you to think about the multiple implications of these studies. Whether you work primarily as a teacher, a researcher, a teacher educator, or a policy maker, we hope you will find information here that will be helpful to you.

Taking a Regional Focus

In a recent discussion with a colleague, we were asked why we would focus a collection of empirical research on a particular region. After further discussion and a great deal of thought, we came up with four particular ways to address this question.

The first reason is that people who work in or are concerned with a certain area will benefit from findings of research conducted in that region. Examples of such studies in applied linguistics and language teaching have begun to appear in publications. For example, Cheng and Curtis (2010) have edited a volume on English Language Assessment and the Chinese Learner, and another book has been published about language testing in Japan (Brown & Yamashita, 1995). Yet another edited volume focusing on language testing in a particular region is Assessment in the Arab World (Davidson, Coombe, & Jones, 2005). Similarly, TESOL, Inc., has published an entire series based on teacher research conducted in various regions: Asia (Farrell, 2006), the Americas (McGarrell, 2007), Africa (Makelala, 2009), the Middle East (Coombe & Barlow, 2007), Europe (Borg, 2006), and Australia and New Zealand (Burns & Burton, 2008).

The second point is that cultural issues may make particular research topics crucial to study in certain areas. For instance, Farrell (2004) has published a book of research on classroom communication in Asia. A collection of papers about multilingual education in Africa was edited by McIlwraith (2013). LoBianco, Orton, and Yihong have edited a volume entitled China and English: Globalization and the Dilemmas of Identity. Our focus is on the Arabic-speaking world, because, as Gitsaki (2011) notes in the preface to her volume on teaching and learning in the Arab World, “Education is undergoing significant change globally and locally. In the Arab States, globalization and economic development have had a significant effect on education” (p. xiii).

The third reason is that there may be substantial differences not only in research foci, but also in the research methods appropriate for use in particular cultures. For instance, several authors have argued that when conducting research with Muslim women, focus groups are a better source of data than are individual oral interviews (Madriz, 2003; Thomas, 2008; Winslow, Honein, & El Zubeir, 2002).

Fourth, gross distinctions such as “EFL” and “ESL” (English as a second language) are not fine-grained enough to make meaningful differentiations in some research contexts. In fact, “FL” itself is a very broad brushstroke, since key variables in different foreign language contexts may vary widely. Ortega (2009) has made this point in her review of writing research in foreign language contexts:

We should take great care to avoid the pitfall of treating teachers, writers and writing contexts across studies as belonging to an undifferentiated, homogeneous contextual class of “FL” or “EFL”. The FL label is convenient and allows FL researchers to gain a broader base and a deeper impact in their pursuits. But it should not blind us to the great diversity it hides, as the research programs represented in this collection attest. As much as we must use commonalities across FL (and English as a FL) contexts in order to build strength across research communities, we must also not forget that research is always built on contingent, context-specific data. (p. 250)

We agree with Ortega’s view here, and have chosen to focus this volume on research in the Middle East, in part because of the rapid development of the education system and the emerging importance of English there.

Indeed, cultural, historical, and linguistic factors in the Arabic-speaking world create a context for English learning and teaching that differs widely from that of other regions. For example, let us consider a study of English use in companies in Rwanda, Nigeria, Pakistan, Cameroon, and Bangladesh (Pinon & Haydon, 2010), which involved in-depth interviews with representatives of 12 companies in Rwanda and 30 companies in each of the other countries. The study revealed that staff members with English language skills had a strong advantage over other employees. About two-thirds of the respondents in each country said that “employees with English language skills progress more quickly within the company and that English is beneficial for company growth” (p. 8). Respondents were asked whether English is used for training purposes, and between 62% and 82% of company representatives said yes. Thus, English-speaking employees in these five countries appear to have greater access to training opportunities and possibly greater likelihood of benefiting from such training than do other employees. Pinon and Haydon (2010) concluded that “a good degree and strong language skills lead to economic prosperity and individual wealth” (p. 14).

In contrast, using the same data collection and data analysis methods, somewhat different patterns occurred when the research was replicated in eight Arabic-speaking nations (Ramaswami, Sarraf, & Haydon, 2012). Representatives of 120 companies were interviewed. Again, the respondents were asked if English was used for training purposes. Here, however, the respondents’ answers were very different from those in the Pinon and Haydon (2010) study, with only 30% or fewer saying yes in Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia. In three Middle Eastern countries, the figures were higher, with 60% or more of the respondents saying yes in Egypt, Yemen, and Iraq. In Iraq, inquiries were made in two different cities, with contrasting results: In Erbil, 67% said yes, but in Baghdad, 100% said yes.

The two studies summarized above exemplify the very essence of Ortega’s point that not all foreign language teaching and learning contexts are the same. Both studies were conducted in FL contexts and they used the same research methods, but Pinon and Haydon’s (2010) results differ greatly from those of Ramaswami, Sarraf, and Haydon (2012). Arguably, most interesting is how different the results are regarding the use of English for training purposes across the different regions where the studies were conducted. Although the regions are geographically proximate, the results vary greatly across countries and studies. It appears that while all countries in both studies are certainly FL contexts, the respondents clearly report differing demands for English when it comes to using the language for training purposes. Thus, language teaching professionals should not make the mistake of overgeneralizing research findings from one context when making decisions about language programs located in another.

Overview of the Chapters

We will next present a brief summary of the contents of the various chapters. We will then discuss the range of research methods used by the authors. Our intent here is to give you an overview of the topics to be covered and to introduce the data collection and analysis procedures used by the authors.

In Chapter 2, Abdul Gabbar Al-Sharafi explores modality in Arab EFL students’ academic writing. Modality is the use of modal verbs and other lexical means by which writers show their doubt, certainty, and confidence in the views they express in their written discourse. The acquisition of modality devices presents interesting challenges for Arabic-speaking English language learners, as it does for English learners from other first language (L1) backgrounds. Al-Sharafi addresses this issue by analyzing a corpus of academic essays written by native speakers of Arabic in Oman, using a list of the 99 modality devices most frequently employed in academic writing, as established by previous research (see, e.g., Allison, 1995; Holmes, 1988). The study combines quantitative and qualitative analyses, and the results are compared with the modality use documented in previous studies of students from Hong Kong (Hyland & Milton, 1997) and Eritrea (McEnery & Kifle, 2002). Al-Sharafi concludes that his subjects overused modal verbs to express modality when other lexical devices could have been used.

Chapter 3 also provides a study of academic writing by Arabic learners of English. The author, Muhammad M. M. Abdel Latif, focuses on Egyptian students’ use of monitoring in their EFL composing. Although much research has been conducted on second language (L2) composing processes, he notes that few studies have dealt with writers’ monitoring strategies, and even fewer with the monitoring strategies of emerging English writers whose L1 is Arabic. Abdel Latif examined two groups of students with different levels of linguistic knowledge. The data included think-aloud protocols generated by the students while they were addressing an argumentative writing task. The results showed that the students in the upper-intermediate level group attended more to monitoring their text production and used more types of monitoring behaviors than did the students in the lower-intermediate level group. Abdel Latif concludes that when L2 writers do not have adequate linguistic resources, they are unable to allocate much effort to monitoring their text production. Instead, they are preoccupied with translating prelinguistic ideas into linguistic messages.

Chapter 4, by Hassan El-Nabih, addresses the problem of Arabic native speakers’ overpassivization in English. Like Abdel Latif, El-Nabih considers English proficiency, but as it relates to first-language transfer, which has been defined as “the influence resulting from similarities and differences between the target language and any other language that has been previously … acquired” (Odlin, 1989, p. 27). El-Nabih used a task based on acceptability judgments and corrections, which he administered to Palestinian high school English teachers and university undergraduate students from the Gaza Strip, Palestine. The results showed two types of overpassivization: ungrammatical and unnatural. Ungrammatical overpassivization is the use of unpassivizable verbs (for example, English learners accepting the erroneous structure several accidents were happened). On the other hand, unnatural overpassivization is the use of the passive pattern with verbs that do allow passivization, but where English native speakers would typically use an intransitive structure instead. For example, the Arab learners of English in El-Nabih’s study would reject the well-formed structure the vase broke and incorrectly use the passive the vase was broken. El-Nabih argues that these overpassivization problems can largely be attributed to transfer from Arabic. The results also show that while interlanguage development towards target-like behavior was observed across proficiency groups, certain test conditions reveal a strong influence of L1 transfer on even the higher proficiency participants in his study.

Taken together, these three chapters focus on the English learners and their efforts to use academic English, particularly in the context of written discourse. These studies offer insights into students’ difficulties but also reveal improvement with the target structures as learners develop their linguistic competence.

Chapter 5, by Melanie van den Hoven, explores a topic that is receiving increas...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Research on the Teaching and Learning of English in the Arabic-Speaking World
• 2 Modality in Arab EFL Students’ Academic Writing
• 3 Arab Students’ Use of Monitoring in Their EFL Composing
• 4 Arabic Native Speakers’ Overpassivization in English
• 5 The Use of English for Education in the Arab World
• 6 Exploring the Impact of Teacher Education Pedagogy on EFL Reading Teacher Identities
• 7 English Language Teaching in Lebanese Schools
• 8 Palestinian Teachers’ Use of Questioning in Two Different Instructional Settings of EFL Reading
• 9 TV Shows, Word Coverage, and Incidental Vocabulary Learning
• 10 Explorations in the Predictive Validity of a Regionally Developed English Proficiency Exam: The CEPA
• 11 Age of L2 Learning Makes No Difference in Instructed Settings
• 12 Summary and Concluding Observations
• About the Contributors
• Author Index
• Subject Index