In an effort to familiarize students with Toastmasters International, the ELC Club, the main student organization of the English Language Center, UTAS-Salalah, organized a workshop in the Self-Access Center on March 28, 2022.

Ms. Amal Al Balushi and Mr. Musallam Al Kathiri, the guest speakers from the Toastmasters International –Salalah Chapter, shared information to the students about the organization, the merits of joining it, and the membership fee. Using English and Arabic, the speakers explained how the Toastmasters club has helped them become more confident communicators, public speakers, and leaders, and how they have gained the skills needed to achieve both their professional and personal goals.

When the floor was open for clarifications, some teachers asked content-related questions while volunteer staff and students participated in the ice-breaking activities.

Mr. Saeed Al-Mashiki, the Head of ELC, appreciated the initiatives of the ELC Club chaired by Ms. Marriam Al Sabbah and he assured the support of the Center in all student activities. He also thanked the Dean and the Assistant Deans for coming over in the workshop.

The ELC has its own Toastmasters Club, which is open for bonafide students from the General Foundation Program and the Post-Foundation Program at UTAS-Salalah.

The fourth ELT symposium on Current and Future Trends in ELT, organized and hosted by the English Language Center (ELC) at the University of Technology and Applied Sciences (UTAS) – Salalah on March 17, 2022 via Zoom platform, was designed to address the challenges and changes that have dramatically impacted the institutional landscape of English Language Teaching (ELT) in recent times.

The symposium began with a brief introduction by Ms. Muna Salim Kashoob, the chair of the symposium organizing committee. She articulated the committee’s commitment in providing continuous support and professional development opportunities for the ELC staff, including interactions with other academics across Oman.

The Head of ELC at UTAS-Salalah formally welcomed the attendees of the symposium. In his opening remarks, Mr. Saeed Salim Al-Mashiki urged them to endeavor in keeping abreast of the current and future trends in ELT and in addressing the challenges and repercussions brought by the global pandemic. He also thanked the Vice Chancellor (VC) of UTAS for honouring the event, and the symposium partners, namely, the National Geographic Learning, Galfar Gases, and Labelle for extending their support.

Gracing as the Patron of the symposium was the VC of UTAS, His Excellency Dr. Saeed Bin Hamad Al-Rubaie, who spelled out the University’s responsiveness, resilience, and compliance in ensuring that the core work of teaching and learning across UTAS campuses is undiminished. The VC expressed his appreciation to the management and the staff of UTAS-Salalah, in particular, for their continuous efforts in helping the University achieve greater heights of success.

The first keynote speaker was Dr. Ali Al-Bulushi, who elucidated the topic Empowering Language Teachers as Reflective and Transformative Intellectuals: Teachers Creating their Own Theory of Practice. He is the current Director of the Centre for Community Service and Continuing Education at Sultan Qaboos University, Oman.

Dr. Peter Watkins from the University of Portsmouth, UK, was the second keynote speaker on the topic Five Ways to Improve the Teaching of Reading. Among his renowned publications are Teaching and Developing Reading Skills (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Extensive Reading in ELT: Why and How? & Extensive Reading for Primary in ELT (both Cambridge University Press, 2018), and Learning to Teach English (Delta Publishing, second edition 2014, first edition 2005).

The third keynote speaker was Mr. Alex Warren from the National Geographic Learning whose topic dwelt on Visible Thinking Routines in the English Language Classroom. He is s a DELTA trained teacher trainer with over 15 years’ experience of working in ELT as a teacher, academic director and teacher trainer.

Engaging Students through Shared Classroom Decision-Making – How can it be Done? was the last keynote topic presented by Dr. Andrew Littlejohn, an Associate Professor of Language Education and Deputy Dean (Research) at the Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of Education, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. He has spoken at numerous international conferences as an invited plenary speaker.

Other highlights of the symposium included five paper presentations and one workshop by select academic staff from prestigious higher education institutions across Oman. Done in concurrent sessions, the paper presenters were Dr. Zainab Al Balushi (SQU) on Mapping out the Paths to Teaching Social Responsibility in the Context of ESP; Dr. Yasir Alyafaei (UTAS-Salalah) on Affordances of Online Collaboration on Students’ Writing Performance and Revision Behaviours; Ms. We’a Al Jilani (UTAS-Salalah) on Integration of Technology in the EFL Classes to Teach Past Tense; Dr. Moza Al-Malki and Dr. Yaqoob Al Ghatrifi (UTAS-Rustaq) on The Use of Problem Solving at Cycle 2 English Classroom; and Dr. Jamila al Siyabi (SQU) on Responding to Special Needs in ELT: Challenges and Opportunities. Mr. Abduall Al Hashmi (UTAS-Nizwa) and Mr. Salah Al-Hanshi (SQU) collaboratively presented a workshop on Transforming Learning and Teaching Experience through RoznaHub.

The keynote speeches, paper presentations, and workshop made gleaning essentials to the following recommendations to help set the future directions of ELT across Oman.

1) Developing the current curriculum is needed to support the teaching and learning process.

Dr. Littlejohn stressed that engaging students through shared classroom decision-making is not easy but he concluded that teacher’s role to guide, question, give ideas, and support is vital. The research of Dr. Al Malki and Dr. Al-Ghatrify’s also divulged that critical thinking and problem solving skills are acknowledged as the most important competencies required in the 21st century and that teachers are responsible for adapting the activities to support the learning process. This harmonizes with what Dr. Al Balushi stated that a teacher should question the goals and values that guide his /her work, the context in which s/he teachers, examines his/her assumptions. He believed that HEIs in Oman should promote language teachers as transformative intellectuals. Ms. Al Balushi’s paper was correlated to the aforementioned findings. The integration and implementation of social responsibility as a 21st century skill was found to be important to support Omani students’ development and enhancement of their skills in ESP courses.

2) Extensive reading has more benefits than intensive reading

Dr. Watkins’s talk showed evidence that extensive reading (ER) has benefits beyond just developing fluent reading skills. As such, he suggested practical ways in which learners can be encouraged to engage more with reading programs and therefore gain the rich rewards that reading offers.

3) Using different routines and activities is important to enrich EFL classroom.

Mr. Warren shed light on new ideas and activities that teachers can incorporate into classrooms to enrich students’ learning experience, such as: See-Think-Wonder, The Three Whys, Think-Puzzle-Explore, Question Starts, KWL, Stop, Think, Discuss, and The 4 Cs.

4) Integrating technology in EFL classroom is essential.

Based on Dr. Al-Yafaei’s research, teachers play a crucial role in shaping students’ collaboration during the online collaborative activity. In the same theme, Ms. Al-Jilani’s paper revealed that integrating movies to teach the simple past tense played an effective role in improving students’ grammar competency. Similary, Mr. Al-Hashmi and Mr. Al-hanshi’s workshop demonstrated how teaching and learning experience can be transferred through the “Rozna Hub” app. In like manner, Dr. Al Siyabi’s paper disclosed that assistive technologies are crucial to language learning of special needs students and that innovations in education and technology can be effectively used to shift practices and perspectives of ELT in the context of Oman to being universally accessible, equally usable, more inclusive and tailored to students’ individual needs.

Meanwhile, Ms. Huda Al-Huraibi, the co-chair of symposium organizing committee, closed the event by thanking the UTAS-Salalah administration under the deanship of Dr. Mohammed Rashid Almamari, the ELC administration headed by Mr. Saeed Al-Mashiki, the keynote speakers, the presenters, and the participants from across Oman for contributing to the success of the 4th ELT symposium, which is yet another milestone for the ELC.

The ELC staff is now looking forward to next year’s event with several implications of this year’s symposium being highlighted. Calls came for a centralized location for future ELT conferences for all the UTAS colleges. Salalah itself would be an ideal hub for this event in the months of the ‘khareef’ season. One potential venue identified was the Sultan Qaboos Youth and Cultural Complex in Salalah as it has all the infrastructure necessary for a conference.

The English Language Center welcomed the new academic year with its formal launching of the Writing Center Mini Workshop Series for students in the General Foundation and Post-Foundation Programs. More than 100 students participated in the two workshops held last March 7 and 9, 2022 at the Self-Access Center (SAC). The workshops were organized by Mr. Randy Magdaluyo, Writing Center Coordinator, and Ms. Atsloom Al-Maashani, Assistant Coordinator, together with all the writing tutors, namely Ediphil Sibanda, Helen Jemima, Racquel Barth, Steleen Pramod, Zeenath Shaik, Dr. Mohammed Al-Raimi, Rachel Joseph, and Rio Asada.

The ELC Writing Center continuously commits to further enhance students’ language skills. Mr. Saeed Al-Mashiki, Head of the ELC, stressed the important role of the Writing Center as one of ELC banner programs in developing students to become critical, creative and independent English language learners.

The first workshop on instructional writing was delivered by Ms. Racquel Barth, a level 2 lecturer. She highlighted the important words and techniques to guide students in writing a step by step instruction. Students watched an instructional video on how to make noodles and discussed in their small groups the different steps they observed after watching. Then, they practiced writing an instructional paragraph with topic and concluding sentences using the action verbs and transition words taught in the workshop. Some students also received prizes for their active participation.

Mr. Ediphil Sibanda, a level 1 lecturer conducted the next workshop on vocabulary development strategies. He emphasized the importance of building one’s vocabulary through the 4-step approach, namely read, learn, record and use. This simple approach teaches students (1) how to choose the materials to read; (2) how to learn new words using the dictionaries and context clues; (3) how to record these new words with other related words; and (4) how to use them in different forms of writing or language activities. Students participated in an interactive vocabulary exercise in their small groups by doing a short reading and practicing the 4-step approach to learn important words from their Pathways books.

The workshops culminated with students completing the feedback forms. The Writing Center thanked all the participants and invited them to the next workshops scheduled this semester.

The Student Induction Committee of the English Language Center (ELC) organized an Induction Program for the new intake of students for the spring semester of the academic year 2021-2022. The program was conducted on 15 February, 2022. Keeping in view the guidelines of the Supreme Committee to curb the spread of the Covid-19, a blended method was used to address about 400 students live via the Teams’ platform. The speakers delivered their presentations from the Dean’s Conference Room, while the students, divided in 15 groups, along with teachers, participated from their respective classrooms.

Ms. Khayar Al-Mamari (HoS-CTM), representing the Head of English Language Center, opened the induction session. She welcomed the new students and encouraged them to take active part in the learning activities. She informed the students that they have the opportunity to learn from a team of well-qualified and experienced lecturers coming from various cultural backgrounds. She assured them of the full support from the staff and management of the ELC in realizing their dreams of getting a quality education.

Ms. Kamla Koofan, Ms. Amal Alawadi and Mr. Khalid Al-Ghafri explained various points for the new students. Ms. Koofan illustrated the mission, vision, goals and the graduate attitudes of the University of Technology and Applied Sciences for the audience. After her, Ms. Al-Awadi took the steering wheel and discussed the points related to the teaching and learning process in the ELC. She clarified the assessment schemes of the English, Math and IT courses, and highlighted the required grades to qualify the General Foundation Program and move onward to their respective specializations. Furthermore, she provided the students with the importance of utilizing the SAC and E-learning for the students' learning process. She also provided them the E-Learning login information and instructions for registering courses on the CIMS platform.

At the end, Mr. Khalid Al-Ghafri talked about the University policies, dress code, and maintaining discipline inside and outside the classroom. He also explained the role of the Grievance Committee about how it helps the students in case they have problems during their educational life in the center. He detailed the attendance and examination policies as well.

The Induction program was successfully organized by Dr. Rana Aslam (Coordinator Students’ Induction Committee) under the leadership of Mr. Saeed Al-Mashiki (HELC).