Dr. Mansoor. S. Al – Malki
Vice Director TUELC / Vice Dean PYP Assistant Professor Applied Linguistics TUELC
Before the proceedings of the interview, let ' s run through a quick personal history.
I currently work as a Deputy Dean of the PYD as well as an Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at the ELC. I obtained my PhD from one of the world’ s leading universities“ the University of Melbourne” in Language Assessment in 2014. I also hold an MA in TESOL and the Cambridge CELTA certificate, and taught English for several years in Saudi Arabia as well as in Australia. My main research interests include language assessment, blended approaches in language learning and language teaching, and qualitative research methods. lived in Saudi Arabia all my life until 2007. But living in Saudi Arabia and studying, then teaching English, left me with a series of questions. It is these questions which have motivated me to be specialized in language education. The questions relate to processes of change and innovation, to ways of teaching EFL, and finally to assessment. In time, I moved to Australia to continue my studies, then opportunities arose, and this is how I now find myself working as an Assistant Professor at the ELC.
How do you see English Language in the backdrop of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?
Being a second language learner myself has provided me with a broader perspective of how a second / foreign language should be facilitated and taught to students. There are three main language learning metaphors that I can classify for language learning. Namely, language learning as instruction, language learning as acquisition, and language learning as socialization. These metaphors characterize the practices of all language domains of learning, teaching and assessment. Nonetheless, certain approaches to teaching and learning of languages are more common in certain settings. In Saudi Arabia we typically use a formal lecturebased approach to teaching and learning, similar to the‘ instruction’ metaphor where it somehow inherited its roots from the old grammar translation method. Actually, not only our language learning practices that are framed with the instruction metaphor, rather our whole educational landscape is instructionally predominated. With the current initiatives in the EFL context like technology implementation, I believe that there will be a shift in language learning. This shift will be in moving from language learning as‘ Instruction’ and‘ Acquisition’, as it is currently, to language learning as‘ Socialization’, where the pedagogical focus can be more on multimodal activities and the overall growth of the language community. In my opinion, the main challenge learning English in an EFL context, like the one in Saudi, is trying to find more opportunity to use English away from the classroom. Exposure to the target language is currently limited at all levels. This contrasts with English taught in English-speaking countries where students have inherent opportunities for language practice outside the classroom. It is, therefore, our
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