Education and English Language Education in Yemen [Archives:2008/1217/Education]
Sultan Al-mekhlafy
[email protected]
(ME.d) Dept. of English
Faculty of Education
Hodiedah University
President Ali Abduallah Saleh has set four top priorities for the government. They are improving living conditions, fighting corruption, reducing poverty and encouraging foreign investments. Achievement of these objectives is not possible without setting right our system of education. Education is the sine qua non for all these objectives. Yemen encourages foreign investment and globalization. To achieve this goal, first we have to set right our English language education.
Our education, more particularly English language education, is beset with a multiplicity of problems. After the dark age of Imam Yahya, education of Yemen has expanded by leaps and bounds. But the quality has suffered due to quantity. We share most of the problems of the poor Third World Countries like large classes, poor infrastructure, low level of students' proficiency, mixed ability classes, lack of qualified teachers. To begin with, we imported teachers along with courses and syllabus from foreign countries. Currently we are in the process of taking over. We are preparing our own syllabus and teachers. But there are many gaps and lapses. Our literacy rate is low and women literacy still lower. Many of our children are still out of school and the drop-out rate is very high. And those who pass out, most of them are found to be lacking in even the minimum level of proficiency.
All these problems stated above are found to exist in an aggravated form in English language education. We have the largest number of low proficiency learners in our English classes. About 60%-70% of our students pass out of secondary school (after studying English for six years) without achieving an optimal proficiency level of the first year of learning English. We have introduced an ambitious and very expensive set of English textbooks (The Crescent series) which seem to create more problems than it can solve. We have a big gap between our school and college courses in English. While the school materials are ELT oriented, the college courses are based on British colonial literature, mostly old and outdated. When the school does not equip them with basic English language skills, the students are asked to deal with old archaic British English literature. Our pre-service training courses in Faculties of Education do not equip the future learners either with English language skill or teaching skills. And in-service training in ELT in Yemen is unheard of. With regard to medium of instruction in Science, Technology and Medicine, initially we started with Arabic but then have switched over to English. We, therefore, have a myriad of teething problems. When students have not achieved the basic skills in general English, we are trying to introduce them to ESP. And our Achiles' heel is in the area of writing. (I will discuss the problems in the area of writing in the next article.)
But, besides all the negative aspects of education in general and ELT in particular in our country, there are some positive aspects that give us hope. Yemeni learners, if properly guided and taken into confidence, can work hard. Many of them are highly motivated and have real respect for teachers and willing to learn, especially the English language. Therefore, teachers in general and English teachers in particular should take this into consideration while teaching, if they really want to help our learners and our country.
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[archive-e:1217-v:16-y:2008-d:2008-12-18-p:education]
