CRITICAL ISSUES in TESOL

Chapter 1 : Portrait of a Kuwaiti Teacher .[C]onstructing a global culture is like putting together a culturally incompatible orchestra : Instruments are not standard issue , there is more than one conductor , and not all musicians (if any ) want to play the same tune . The results can be beautiful music or cacophony , depending on circumstance (Wheeler , 1998 ,

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Introduction

The English language has already outgrown the inner circle ' of countries where it is used as a mother tongue and is rapidly winning the outer circle ' where it is performing institutionalized functions (Kachru Nelson

, 2001 ,

. 13 ) or is being employed as a communicative and epistemological tool to cope with educational , managerial , literary and other cultural tasks . The most recent theme made public is adequate training of English language teaching (ELT ) cadres with a special emphasis on the personnel for the outer ' and expanding (Kachru Nelson , 2001 ,

. 13 ) socio-linguistic circles . In regard to the Arabic-speaking Persian Gulf region , it is claimed important to explore language education policy and planning solutions that are locally based and help maintain and indeed promote Arab-Islamic values that is made possible by expanding the hugely important role and contribution of bilingual Arab teachers of English (Karmani , 2005 ,

br 101 . It seems that a successful marriage of the English and Arab cultures on the site cannot be obtained without qualified educational staff

But what makes an English language teacher successful in meeting professional as well as ethic requirements ? Is it enough to utilise approved teaching methods and appropriate learning resources to be a good teacher , a teacher who moulds the future generations and facilitates their integration to the challenging world ? What problems with professional ELT training are caused by the Arab socio-linguistic environment ? And why is there a modest corpus of research on the ELT issues in the Persian Gulf countries in general , whereas the state of educational affair in Kuwait , where I was born and educated , still lacks adequate conceptualisation

In to identify the key predictors of the effective English learning process within the Kuwaiti educational system , the current project will aim at the future of ELT in Kuwait as perceived by novice teachers . This will be a story of hope and , probably , despair , optimism concerning the quick pace of technological revolution and the English language expansion as a feature of postmodernist globalism and pessimism related to betrayal of local ideology and national identity

The first chapter of the project consists of six sections

The first section will denote the conceptual framework as created by an intersection of globalism and postmodernism with education and the English language . Kuwait is surviving a transition from modernism and localism to postmodern socio-linguistic globalism . The national educational system has responded to the challenge by hurrying to laud the clash of Western and Arab cultures as well by wrapping curricular around the English language as an effective tool of postmodern global communication . Justification of the trend is yet to be made

The second section will discuss the linguistic dualism existing...