RIYADH, 2 January 2006 — English-language textbooks taught in the intermediate schools are to be revised in the light of the feedback received from teachers. Mohammed Al-Ahaydib, supervisor general of English Language Project at the Ministry of Education, told Arab News that the ministry would be contacting international publishers to explore the possibility of bringing out revised editions of the textbooks that could be easily followed by the students.
The new package would also include workbooks and CDs for each student. New educational aids would be posters and flash cards, while educational websites are also being planned for both students and teachers. He said a symposium would be held in Riyadh in March this year for a brainstorming session on what needs to be done to introduce English teaching from the fourth grade onward, besides evaluating the teaching of English at the sixth grade level during the last two years.
The lack of an adequate number of qualified Saudi or other Arab teachers in English has hamstrung government efforts to introduce English teaching at an early stage. At present, there are 20,000 male and female English language teachers in government schools.
With pressure mounting for Saudization and resistance from the private sector to hire more Saudis in view of their deficiency in English, the Ministerial Council passed a resolution three years ago calling for the integration of IT courses and English language teaching in the school curriculum.
To this end, a group of Saudi women writers from the erstwhile Presidency of Girls’ Education was assigned the task of writing English textbooks for the secondary schools. While they did a good job of it, it went over the top of some Saudi teachers and a majority of the students. And this is where the shoe pinches.
According to Al-Ahaydib — who was assisted in the task to revise the textbooks by English language supervisors Abdulaziz Al-Amar, Mohammed Al-Dukheil, Abdulkareem Al-Homaid and Eissa Al-Otaibi — the problem exists because even teachers are having problems comprehending the textbooks.
Ahaydib and Amar said the problem was created in part because the textbooks were written in Jeddah by highly qualified women who wrote a curriculum too advanced for the grade level of the students. Unfortunately, they were unable to contact male teachers for comments when the project was still in the gestation period. As a result, even if the students get a hang of the meaning of the English text in Arabic, they cannot write a simple answer on their own.
The reference to the high standard of the textbook, by the way, should be understood in the relative, rather than absolute, sense. To those well-versed in English, the textbooks are pretty simple and straightforward. They are in the question-answer format requiring a student to write “yes” or “no”’, or a few lines at the most. For the eighth graders, they have to go through the text and answer the questions that follow.
Under the revised plan, these textbooks will be further simplified leaving no room for confusion.
Asked what would happen to the students already saddled with the present textbooks, Ahaydib said they would have to skip some of the units that are beyond their grasp. How this group moves to the next stage of the educational ladder and what happens when these students go for higher studies remain question marks.
In the meantime, he said, the teachers would also go through a rigorous training program to upgrade their own standard. The official said, in reply to another question, that the review would pay special attention to developing written communication skills of students.
