TOEFL or ILETS

One day I got a bad news from my friend telling me that he failed in TOEFL test. I was surprised and I asked him the reason but obviously there was no clear answer for that. I started to look at the standard test like TOEFL, ILETS and so as “a profitable trade” and the victim is the examinee. But when I look at the real life, a question will be raised in “how can we measure the students ability to be accepted at the university or for other further reason. When I read JJ article, I like the idea of taking the official test like TOEFL and others by the major. I would call it (TSP) and that stands for test for specific purposes. In this case, students would make a huge success in taking the test and it would be fair.

My wife situation Bandar Aljafen

During the week, we discussed several important issues about WE and after I saw the movie “who owns English” I started look at the WE concept from different corner. As long as I can speak fluently, I do not find the marginalization because I am a graduate student and I do not have much financial problems. But when I think about my family, I discovered that they are marginalized and she cannot communicate even with the cashier to pay for a T-shirt. Therefore, I discover that she has mutual feelings of the excluding and the need to learn English to express herself. In this case, I encourage her to take some English courses to over come her problem. I really find it clear when I watch the movie and when I understand that language helps me to understand the culture, and culture helps me to communicate and have peace.

A fight between the structure and idea in writing Bandar Aljafen

One day a great professor stands on the platform and gazed at the students arrogantly. He was a marvelous source of knowledge and some people call him the father of the English language. Most, of not all, students considered him an example to be followed. The mere problem is that he considered himself as he is right all the time and others are wrong. He corrects the students’ questions even before the students finish from it.

When I read the article about the African American context and how the teacher was beneficial from the linguistic competence and started to change her policy from direct correction to simply repeating the statement with American Standard. I was really wondering about the accepted way to evaluate the students in writing. Is it according to the structure or the idea? I was lucky to get a chance to observe writing research 202 and the teacher surprised me when she notify me that the idea is the most important thing to be evaluated about and it is the opposite of what I have experienced in my country.

During the discussion, I understand that the balance between the idea and the structure is the key role to solve the problem that I witnessed. A good way to help the students to write better is to ask them to write a draft and then the students have to go over and over again to improve his/her writing and reduce the chance of making many mistakes.

English Threat... Bandar

I enjoyed a lot when Somer mentioned the question in her marvelous presentation. She ended up her presentation with a wonderful question mark. The question is: what is the role of the language teacher in these kind of English as a threat to national language? What do we think about this debate?

I remember some words like “one eight” that means a “pick up” car. But when we look at the original of this word, we can see the influence of using this word in “Saudi Aramco” in Dammam and Yanbu. Although Saudi workers at that time were uneducated, they spoke fluently in English in order to survive. Some of these words were transformed to the reset of Saudi people. I guess that all because we did not have this kind of invention like (cars, computer, and other technologies etc) and people absorb what in the western countries culture and they consider it right all the time. The other reason was that Arabic language was not dominated and influential at that time. In my humble opinion, I think the main stream would accept the new English words and it is difficult to interpret them and use the Arabic equivalent. We pronounce the new words with different pronunciation and we use it in different context.

Finally, I do not think that there is a threat on my language because most languages borrowed some words from each other and they still have the strong sense like for example the English language.

Eglish as a Medium of Instruction.

In these days, English Language becomes a universal and the language of communication. 10 years ago, the English language is considered as a forieng and people who use it were considered as outer of the Saudi contex. Wg=hile in fact that, when I was a BA students, people looked at me as an educated and professional person. It is wired and complicated to be explained. I have heared that the students were complaining about the difficulity of the English language and thay try to ask some stupid ,and at the same time, clever questions like "why we study the English language while the American and British people do not speak Arabic language?

Nowadays, English is the meduim of instruction in most of the colleges and universities. Because of that, Most, if not all, universities created a prepatory year which the students are expected to know how to master the English language before enroling to their special. In spite of the student's resistance because of one reason or another, the misetry of higher education are working hard to apply it to the rest of other universities.

In my case as a teacher, I really tried to apply the WEs in the university. I bought a book and prepared myself with enough activities. The book was dealing with listening and speaking in different variety of English for students who were in the intensive course. I really like the book because most of the PhD teachers were admired by the way that they had been taught. There were American and British English teachers and they were working hard to grap me to his British/or American net. On the other hand the students made some kind of resistance especially when they heared some Indian and Korian prononciation. They sometimes laughed and made some jokes around. I then, gave them a clear picture about what was going on and why I kept teaching them this kind of book. I briefly told them that the Saudi environment is not American and British speakers. We have people from India, Pakistan, and so on. we have to keep in mind the importance of knowing who would the the audiance and who I would speak with. Finally, The chairman of the department at that time told me that I had to adhere to international series like Interactions becuase he thought that the English language is must be taught by American native apeaker. I understand what Kumar was trying to say when he discuss the three Ps. (Particularity, practicality, possibility)
In this course and after reading some articles, I found out the importance to look at the English language from different corner. Native and non-native dichomy should be omitted and we have to replace it with multilingual users.