English Language Teaching in Yemen Need of the Hour [Archives:1999/16/Focus]

This is an OPINION pae.
Every week, a different intellectual writes a FOCUS on a pertinent issu!
Dr. M. N. K. Bose
Dept. of English, Faculty of Educatin
Hodeidah University, Hodeidah
In English teaching in Yemen, the need of the hour is neither revamping or revising the curriculum nor safeguarding Shakespeare or Milton; it is teaching the ‘English-thirsty’ Yemeni learners useful and simple English more sincerely and more efficiently than is perhaps being done at the moment.
Those who may be surprised about the ‘English-thirstiness’ of Yemeni learners are referred to the many letters to the Editor of Yemen Times whose writers express sincere hopes that their future generation would prosper with English. Moreover, a small survey some of my students undertook in 1997 showed clearly that students in the post-secondary level were really ‘English-thirsty’ and those at the secondary level were not against learning English. The girl students at both levels were madly in love with English, though they didn’t know why! Why is there, then, a steady increase in the number of students seeking admission to English courses in the Faculties of Education?
Yemeni students need English in order to understand and be understood by their non-Arabic speaking teachers as long as they are in the university; later, they need English to understand their colleagues in the office, bank, factory or wherever they work with non-Arabic speakers. As businessmen they need English to advertise their goods, transact business in the international market, if they are importing and exporting goods; as industrialists they need English in order to promote their business in the international market, to deal business partnership with international companies, to recruit men and women from non-Arabic speaking countries and supervise their work; as common men and women they need English in order to identify the labels of medicines they are buying in pharmacies or locate the shops some of whose name boards are in English in cities like Hodeidah, Sana’a, Aden or Taiz. Even a motorcyclist or a taxi driver needs English in order to understand the better-paying customers who do not know Arabic. The other day in a tailor shop, a Yemeni youth was struggling hard to make the tailor understand the design of the trousers he was ordering similar to the one he watched on the TV, for want of a simple English word; when he got the word from me, he was glad to use it in his Arabic description. And I remember a girl student who picked a quarrel with her teacher because she couldn’t understand the difference between ‘smiling at’ and ‘laughing at’. I am not arguing that Yemen will come to a standstill if there is no English, but we should acknowledge the fact that more and more Yemenis are realizing that they need more and more English in the days to come.
In this scenario, all our efforts should be pooled to see that useful English is taught at tall levels – preparatory, secondary and post-secondary. The responsibility is greater at the Faculties of Education, where teachers of English are prepared for Yemeni schools. The activities which take place in our classes should provide opportunities to the teacher-trainees to improve their English and develop in the abilities to create similar activities in their classes when they teach English in the future. Loading them with novels, whether Western or Eastern, or pumping into them Transformational generative or the Phrase Structure rules will not do the needful in their direction. What they need to develop is a set of skills to listen to speak, read and write, skills to refer to a dictionary or an atlas when necessary, to follow lectures in English, and skills to give responses in English suitable to questions, suitable to persons and suitable to situations. As teacher-educators we will be unfair, if we lose sight of this essential aspect in the teacher education courses calling in ELT bandwagon or whatever. One may suspect that it is a sour grape syndrome!
The literary jargons and advanced literary criticism may be useful to a small number of learners even on the literature courses conducted in the Faculties of Arts in a few universities, where most of the learners are struggling to read and understand the original works of modern writers and write continuous texts about what they read. Students on the Postgraduate course of this Department in our university find it difficult to cope with the six or seven novels they are expected to read and ‘digest’ on their course.
The English courses in the Faculties of Education should be geared to meet the challenges mentioned above. Unfortunately this is not happening in many faculties/universities in this country. The Hodeidah University recently revised the English course in the Faculty of Education with this important responsibility in mind, tailoring the content, to a large large extent, to suit the real needs of the future teachers. The focus of attention now is to develop the teacher trainees’ proficiency in English through skill-based courses, grammar and spoken English course and a few courses in literature and their professional abilities through course which center round classroom teaching of English.
The curriculum change will eventually take place under pressure from the society as the change of materials came into effect recently. Having used ENGLISH FOR YEMEN for the last 15 – 20 years the government of Yemen thought it fit to replace it with a new course called THE CRESCENT ENGLISH COURSE FOR YEMEN in 1994-1995 since they realized the need for teaching materials with new ideas and better outlook, presumably as a result of demand from teachers, parents, educationists and others who are interested in the English education of the children in this country. The new materials are colorful, attractive and they do ‘catch’ the children but they do not usher in the ideas of communicative teaching as most people think; THE ENGLISH FOR YEMEN course had a number of activities based on such idea. The new course has plenty of interesting tasks for learners to do on their own and in pairs, colorful pictures or photos to go with the reading texts and useful activities for developing all the necessary skills. But, as some of the teachers I talked to point out, the information content is heavy in Books 4 and 5. There is little doubt that the cultural context of the entire series needs rethinking. Creating an awareness of the culture of the target language is justifiable but the amount of time, space allotted for this purpose on a course and the usefulness of such information have to be kept in mind, especially on a course meant for school learners in an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) setting. Whether the Yemeni learners should be told about the Marib Dam or the Sabre Mountain more or about the Hadhrami’s wall and the Lake District more is a careful decision the authors have to take. I understand that such a concern was voiced by the school inspectors who met in Sana’a in a workshop to review the new course books recently. When the government of Yemen is seriously planning to boost tourism in the country in the years to come, it is necessary that the school students should get more information about their own tourist places in their English books to prepare them to join the tourism industry if they choose to, rather than spend time to understand why black ravens hover over the Tower of London in England. The priorities have to be fixed carefully; it does not matter much whether ‘air hostess’ is introduced or ‘railway station’ in he book. No one can find fault with introducing Fuad Hassan and Paul Archer as neighbors (Course Book 4) but Mukalla fisherman who escapes drowning can be Hassan Omar instead of Jim Duffy (course Book 4).
The need of the hour, let me repeat with stress, is teaching simple useful English to the well-motivated Yemeni learners in schools and preparing Yemeni teachers of English for this job. Let us realize the need and meet the challenges.
Happy English Language Teaching!
 
  The Right to Respond A Reply to Last Week’s
“Housing Co-operatives in Yemen”Focus Article
I take this opportunity to refer to the Article that was published in your esteemed paper on opinion page No. 15 dated 12th April, 1999 by Architect Kamal Haglan on the housing co-operatives in Yemen.
I have gone through this Article and am of the view that it is more theoretical rather than practical.
Despite being the senior most lawyer in Aden, I have not taken part in the negotiations and formations of the housing co-operatives. It happened that I was in the office of the legal counsel at the Little Aden Refinery and by coincidence I heard one of the laborers shouting at the top of his voice about being deprived of his moneys in the housing co-operatives and that laborer was saying, although they were luckier to have a plot of land and yet this land has its own problems and nothing seems to happen that shows any progress in the right way towards to achieving their desired goals.

With due respect, Architect Kamal Haglan, though a duly qualified graduate of the Newcastle University- upon Tyne U.K. seems that perhaps he has with my apologies Ð insufficient knowledge about the actual facts of the problems being faced by these Housing Co-operatives. Hence I would advise him to pay visits to some of these housing co-operatives and find out the progress alleged to have been achieved and the mess they are actually in and to advise them as to how to solve theproblems in order to achieve their desired goals.

We all know that hundreds and thousands of employees have contributed in these housing co-operatives and yet those amounts contributed are still meagre and yet such amounts will glow bigger and bigger with a hope always that eventually in a couple of years or so they will be having a suitable accommodations of their own a dream that shall Insha’alla becomes true.
I repeat that the employees and the housing co-operatives are in the same boat, that is because the scheme was not properly studied and administrated by qualified persons. Some of these co-operatives are completely varnished into thin air and no one seems to be held liable and the others have not achieved any useful gains and in some cases no one seems to be accountable to submit proper audited account annually.

For your information, my Law Firm is prepared to render any legal assistance and we may be able to render and I shall allot two of my assistants to see that help is rendered and I hope that Architect Kamal Haglan will not refrain from participating as an expert to give his expert opinion and render assistance whenever and wherever possible.
Mohamed Shafi A. Karim.

——
[archive-e:16-v:1999-y:1999-d:1999-04-19-p:./1999/iss16/focus.htm]