The political and economic crisis since 2011 AD is the reason for the deterioration of Yemen’s level of proficiency in the English language
Most international educational institutions recognize both TOEFL and IELTS
From my long experience, I find that girls are more persistent and persistent than boys in mastering English
Websites support basic education in language institutes or English language educational institutions and are not a substitute for it.
The interview was conducted by journalist: Hassan Muhammad Al-Bayti
The interview was conducted by journalist: Hassan Muhammad Al-Bayti
The Education First Foundation report in 2015 showed that Yemen ranked 51st globally out of 70 countries, and second in the Arab world out of 12 countries in the extent of proficiency in the English language. With the beginning of the ongoing conflict in Yemen in the same year, the education system in general collapsed, as after three For years, Yemen disappeared from the organization’s reports completely and was replaced by Syria.
The English language is taught in Yemen from three sources: government educational institutions, private linguistic institutes, and the Internet. Private language institutes remain the strongest of all of these due to the support provided to them by those in charge of them.
Government educational institutions, especially pre-university institutions, suffer from poor teaching of the English language by a wide segment of male and female teachers who are not fluent in this language, as the guest of the press interview pointed out.
Perhaps the reason behind the weakness of English language teaching in government educational institutions is the weakness of government financial support for it, as stated by Eric Lowry, Director of English Language at the British Council in the Middle East and North Africa.
Yemen is one of the countries that follows the British system in learning the English language, as this dates back to more than a century and a half, when southern Yemen was subject to British occupation since 1839 AD.
With the ongoing global conflict, which has reached its peak in the linguistic aspect, the United States of America has placed its wings on the Middle East in order to spread the English language according to its system, so what was known as “AMIDEAST” was established in Yemen, as one of the Middle Eastern countries, an institute funded by the US State Department through Its embassies around the world, as it began in Yemen in 1952 AD, where Yemeni students began to be sent to study in the United States of America, then it developed to open official offices in Sanaa in 1981 AD and Aden in 1998 AD, and their activity extended through these two centers in the most prominent Yemeni cities in the north, in the Taiz district, and in the south, in the Mukalla district.
With the presence of the British Council supported by British embassies around the world, Yemen has not improved the required level in the English language, in addition to the number of good speakers of this language, the majority of whom are female, reports show.
About this and more, Akapress corresponded via the Facebook Messenger application with Dr. Shatha Bakir - a university lecturer at Hadhramaut University. She currently resides in the capital of Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) to devote herself to her doctoral thesis, and our guest is well known to the team. Acapres While she was at the AMIDEAST Institute in the city of Mukalla in eastern Yemen between 2011 AD and 2013 AD, before she left the country for Malaysia after obtaining a scholarship to complete postgraduate studies there.
Dr.. Shatha Bakir is an expert in both Arabic and English. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in English language at Hadhramaut University in 2003, and continued her master’s degree in the United States of America through a Fulbright grant supported by the US State Department, where she obtained a master’s degree in English literature at Appalachian State University in 2011.
She returned to Yemen as a teacher at the AMIDEAST Institute, as the journalist who interviewed her was a student at that institute between 2012 and 2013. She then left the country to join the National University of Malaysia (UKM) in 2013 in order to obtain a doctorate in the English language by 2019.
In the correspondence we had with her... I welcomed Dr. Bakir conducted this dialogue, which delved into the depth of interest in teaching the English language in Yemen, as she began her conversation with us about The importance of the English language for university students in Yemen, especially scholarship students, So I explained Dr.. Early The English language is of great importance in self-development, and in accessing the latest scientific research in various fields and on websites. It is also the common language of application for most international universities where teaching relies mainly on the English language. Emphasizing at the same time that the English language has entered most fields as a result of civilizational and cultural openness among all countries. As a result of the electronic revolution, the English language has become the first language in commercial transactions and in scientific fields, stressing at the same time the importance of the student’s proficiency in the English language to help him develop himself and create better future opportunities in the labor market.
Then we touched on an aspect of life Dr.. Shatha Bakir Her academic and linguistic excellence in learning the English language, and the extent to which that excellence is related to her travel between foreign countries, so she answered by saying:
In my beginnings, I relied on self-education of the English language and did not enter any of the linguistic institutes that helped acquire the English language, but I had books and CDs that I would listen to and repeat what was on them for long hours, or watch movies, news, and programs in English intensively until My English improved, and I started to gain a lot of vocabulary. I became able to speak quickly. This, of course, was before I traveled to America or any other country, but certainly after traveling, my English improved even more as a result of the fact that I was constantly speaking with native English speakers in America.
Since Dr. Bakir is from the team affiliated with the American system of teaching the English language, and in order to clarify from her the difference between the American and British systems of teaching the English language, we asked her the following question:
Acapres: When starting to learn the English language, students often have a valid question: Should I prepare for the TOEFL or IELTS certificate? And why?
Dr.. Early: The specifications of the TOEFL certification exam are largely equal to the IELTS, but the difference may be in the universities and educational institutions that support one of these tests over the other. For example, the American system of education and American universities greatly support obtaining the TOEFL certificate, as most of them adhere to American linguistic and grammatical rules, while British universities or educational institutions that use the British system, such as what exists in the United Kingdom, Australia, India, and many countries that rely mainly in their educational institutions on The British system prefers the IELTS system, as it depends entirely on British grammatical rules, but at the core, both exams have almost the same characteristics and measure the same linguistic skills. Currently, most educational institutions have begun to accept both exams equally, so the choice is up to the student then.
Acapres: What is the difference when a student receives his English language education via the Internet, or through institutes, and do you think that electronic language teaching institutes have become better than traditional institutes?
Dr.. Bakir: In fact, currently, with the electronic revolution and the introduction of the Internet into all fields, many websites have been designed that help students practice many linguistic skills from writing, listening, and even pronunciation.
But from my point of view, language institutes are considered more beneficial for students, as they take into account the individual differences of students, and in them the student gets a lot of exercises with his colleagues and teachers, so that he can interact with them and ask them about any aspects in which he feels a lack of understanding, while Websites, even if they have multiple levels, do not take individual differences into consideration. Therefore, websites can be supportive of basic education in language institutes or English language educational institutions and not a substitute for it.
Acapres: Why do some Yemeni students graduate from high school with somewhat distorted English, and how do you deal with such cases when they receive their education from you?
Dr.. Bakir: Unfortunately, sometimes teachers at the secondary level are not well qualified to teach the English language, and they may have errors in pronunciation, which affects the students they teach. Also, the total reliance on the curriculum, which lacks many of the educational materials used in daily life, which creates A student who cannot speak English in different social situations, and also the absence of various exercises for conversation in the English language, as it is a language that needs continuous practice.
But high school students have a set period per week used to complete the curriculum, and they lack the time to practice and speak until they become fluent. These are all problems that cause students to reach the university level and their English language suffers from defects in pronunciation, how to use appropriate words, and also in fluency.
As for the university stage, we try as much as possible to correct some of the students’ linguistic errors, and provide them with a broader environment for practice and conversation, but now the greatest burden falls on the student, as university study is essentially a self-education stage, and therefore professors at the university stage provide ways for the student to learn. However, the greatest burden falls on the student himself in correcting these errors.
Then we continued our conversation a little to ask her about the efforts made by the AMIDEAST Institute in Yemen. When we visited their official website, we found that they had made unremitting efforts to send 4,000 people to obtain training or academic degrees from higher education institutions in the United States of America, in addition to teaching the English language in Yemen through its centers. Accredited, and taking the internationally accredited TOEFL exam, in order to develop civil society sectors.
Here, we focused on the question of the extent of the efforts made by AMIDEAST to promote the English language among its students in Yemen.
Dr.. Bakir: From my experience working at AMIDEAST, there are modern teaching methods used to teach the English language that are not found in other institutes. In addition to using the latest educational curricula, as well as seriousness and accuracy in education, taking into account the students’ levels and working to determine them so that the student is taught according to the linguistic level that distinguishes him. We also use modern teaching methods; Among them: methods that are based on the student himself, and greatly evaluate linguistic skills between speaking and listening, which shows its impact in a short period on the student in the way of pronunciation and his knowledge of its vocabulary.
But while appreciating the efforts mentioned by Dr. Bakir, but the report of the Foundation Education First He showed various statistics, as stated in the introduction to the press interview, between 2015 and 2018, so our question to her was literally: Where did that fluency go?
Dr.. Bakir: It is no secret that Yemen has been suffering from a political crisis that has led to a severe economic crisis since 2011 AD. It is not surprising that the impact of this crisis has appeared on education in general, and on teaching the English language in particular. The economic crisis has greatly affected the individual’s levels of spending, so that Parents were unable to provide English language education for their children in specialized institutes.
Also because of the political and economic crisis that led to a security destabilization that led to the travel of many foreigners who were studying in these institutes, and these are a number of reasons that led to the deterioration of English language teaching in Yemen.
And back To report institution Education First In 2015, according to a survey, women have better language proficiency skills than men. We wanted to know the situation of both genders in learning this language, so the following question was:
Acapers: In all honesty and without bias, and since you studied at institutes and universities, who is better at mastering the English language, boys or girls? How did you find teaching both genders?
Dr.. Bakir: There is no big difference in girls or boys finding the English language if they are serious about learning it, and they are aware of the effort required to do all the phonetic exercises and review the grammatical rules, but from my long experience I find that girls are more persistent and persistent, and I feel that they spend a long time between references and books for review. To try to get the highest grades, while boys are also interested but get bored faster than girls, however, many of the male students I studied have the ability to master the English language excellently, which is a clear advantage that distinguishes them.
Acapers: There are those who suffer from forgetting many vocabulary words in the English language, and some of them suffer from difficulty understanding the pure English accent in terms of the speed of speaking it. How do you advise these people to improve their level?
Dr.. Bakir: I advise them to do a lot of auditory and vocal exercises, listen to a lot of songs and watch movies, programs and news in English so that they get used to hearing and understanding the English language and also acquire new vocabulary.
At the conclusion of the press interview, Dr. Bakir provided advice and guidance to male and female students inside and outside Yemen who want to complete their university studies in the English language, as she once again confirmed that the English language is the language of the times, the language of writing, the language of the computer, and the language of the Internet. It must be mastered greatly so that in the future it will be easy to pursue university and postgraduate studies, and be aware of all the new research and inventions in the world. Learning the English language facilitates an individual’s dealings while traveling and enables him to speak easily with all people, even if the original language of the country is not English. She pointed out at the same time that we can now find in most countries someone who understands us and helps us when we speak to them in English.
