Sultanate of Oman
Dhofar University
College of Arts and Applied Sciences (CAAS)
Education Department
Curriculum Authenticity in Salalah Schools: EFL Teachers'
Evaluation of Grade 12 EFL Curriculum Authenticity
Thesis proposal submitted to the Department of Education in
Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master Degree
Submitted by
Zainab Ali Aidroos
ID: 200900388
Supervised by Dr. Abdul Aziz Ayoub
Fall Semester
2011
Contents
Pages
Chapter 1: Introduction
5
1.1 Statement of the Problem
5-6
1.2 Rationale of the Study
6
1.3 Significance of the Study
6
1.4 Purpose of the Study
7
1.5 Research Questions
7
1.6 Hypotheses of the Study
7
1.7 Limitations of the Study
7-8
1.8 Definitions of Key Terms
8-9
1.9 Study Organization
9
Conclusion
9
Chapter 2: Literature Review
10
2.1 Education in Oman
10-11
2.2 Communicative Approach in Teaching English
11
2.2.1 Communicative Competence
11-12
2.3 The Issue of Authenticity
12-13
2.3.1 What to Consider in Preparing Authentic Materials
14
2.3.2 Types of Authenticity
15
2.4 The Definition of Authentic Curriculum
15-16
2.4.1 Important Factors in Preparing Authentic Materials
16
2.4.2 How Authentic Materials can be Effective
16
2.5 Curriculum Materials
17
2.7 EFL Curriculum
17
2.7.1 Role of EFL Curriculum in Oman
18
2.7.2 The Content of the curriculum
18-19
2.8 The relationship between EFL Curriculum and Culture
19-20
2.9 The Functions of EFL Textbooks
20-21
2.10 Developing the Curriculum
21-22
2.10.1Charactristics of Curriculum Development
22
2.11 How the Curriculum is Designed in Oman
22-24
2.12 A Review of Related Studies
24-26
Conclusion
26
Chapter 3: Methodology
27
3.1 Population and Sample
27
3.2 Instruments Used
27-28
3.3 The Procedures Followed
28
References
29-33
Appendices
34-50
Statement of the Problem
• The textbooks seem not to offer enough
communicative activities so that students may face
some problems in communication using English
outside the classroom.
• The researcher will focus on grade 12 curriculum in the
analysis to determine to what extent the materials
presented are authentic and related to students' real
life. It seems important to investigate EFL teachers'
perceptions about whether authenticity plays an
important role in grade 12 English curriculum.
Rationale of the Study
• Since it is necessity for second language learners
to have authentic learning experiences in order to
be able to use the language communicatively or
for communication (the main purpose of
language), I have chosen 1-to analyze grade 12
EFL curriculum to find out to what extent the
curriculum is authentic and 2-to investigate
whether the curriculum itself can be considered a
main cause of learners' inability to communicate
using the second language outside the classroom.
Significance of the Study
• The present study may help:
• 1- Describe teachers' evaluation of the
curriculum and its relationship to authenticity.
• 2- Improve the curriculum to fulfill students'
needs.
• 3- Give new implications to curriculum
designers to relate the curriculum to students'
real life.
Purpose of the Study
• This study aims at achieving two purposes:
making the curriculums serve students' needs
of using English in real life (outside the
classroom) and
• developing students' abilities of using English
as a second language.
Research Questions
• The study attempts to answer the following questions:• 1- Does grade 12 EFL curriculum develop different
aspects of the learner's personality? Does it develop
the learner's ability to interact with his or her
environment/ society?
• 2- Does grade 12 EFL curriculum reflect the Islamic
Omani Culture?
• 3- Does it help the learner to gain necessary skills for
life as communicating skills, self- learning and critical
thinking skills in order to be able to face the problems
and challenges of modern life and technology as well?
Hypotheses of the Study
• Based on the research questions, the following
hypotheses will be addressed:
• 1- Grade 12 EFL curriculum does not develop
learners' personalities and abilities to interact
within their societies in a sufficient way.
• 2- Grade 12 EFL curriculum does not give a
complete picture about the Islamic Omani
culture.
• 3- Grade 12 EFL curriculum does not help
learners to gain real-life skills as communicating
skills and critical thinking skills to a great extent.
Limitations of the Study
• - The results of this study cannot be generalized to all Omani schools
since the participants are randomly chosen from Salalah schools only.
Therefore, the results can be generalized to all Salalah schools, but not to
all Omani schools.
• - This study emphasizes the extent to which grade 12 EFL curriculum is
authentic. The lack of authenticity in the curriculum can be considered as
one reason for students' inability to communicate using the SL. However,
there are other reasons that are not discussed in this study as teachers'
styles in teaching English and students themselves who are not
motivated to learn the SL.
• - The difficulty of having access to boys' schools for interviewing male
teachers.
• - This study is only applied to grade 12 curriculum.
Chapter Two: Literature Review
• Chapter two is divided into two parts: Part one:
Theoretical Framework and part two: A Review of
Related Studies.
• 2.1 Education in Oman
• Within the development of education in Oman, a
new system was introduced in1998, which is
called basic education.
• the changes of curriculum focus mainly on three
aspects: reducing the quantity, relating materials
to students' real life and developing cognitive
skills of students.
2.2 Communicative Approach in
Teaching English
• Communicative method of teaching consists of
linguistic competence as well as communicative
competence. Language should never be
interpreted in isolation; instead, it should be
viewed in its social context.
• Matching the language to the situation and the
appropriate context is what learners need to be
competent at when they are using the language.
2.3 The Issue of Authenticity
• Authenticity is an important step to evaluate
language teaching materials. It has been stated
by some specialists that the language used in
teaching English in the classroom should be the
language that students will face outside the
classroom (communicative situation in real
contexts of native speakers.)
• Authenticity is related to three participants: "the
text and its content, the learner and learning,
and the classroom as social context."
• Authenticity focuses on the relationship between
the receivers and the materials.
• Mainly, there are four categories of using
authentic materials: audio authentic materials
(radio news and songs), visual authentic materials
(printings, shows and plays), printed materials
(newspapers and periodicals) and realia ("coins,
currency and puppets") (Abanomey, 2002).
2.4 The Definition of Authentic
Curriculum
• It is stated by Anderson (1999) that "authentic
texts are the texts which have been written for
native speakers of the language and not for
second language readers."
• authentic curriculum should focus on
communication in real life situations. It is "more
student-structured" and it raises students'
attention and motivation (Abanomey, 2002).
2.4.1 Important Factors in Preparing
Authentic Materials
•
•
•
•
•
choosing the authentic materials
-up-to-date materials
-appropriate for students' level
2.4.1.1 How Authentic Materials can be Effective
Authentic materials should provide a chance for
students to practice English, assist students'
confidence of the ability in English, inform
students about the cultural differences, and teach
students how to find relevant information quickly
(Kelly et al., 2002).
2.5 Curriculum Materials
• Curriculum materials are the items as papers,
chalks and others which are used as a kind of
supplement in courses.
Items that
encourge communication.
2.6 EFL Curriculum
• The marks of a good curriculum can be
summarized as relating the data to society and
culture as well as stating clear comprehensible
objectives (Saylor, Alexander, & Lewis, 1981).
• 2.6.1 Role of EFL Curriculum
• It is the curriculum that aims to create good
citizens and develop communicative skills. This
curriculum focuses on intellectual, social,
emotional and physical factors of students so that
they contribute positively in building their
community.
2.6.2 The Content of the Curriculum
in Oman
• Determining the content of the curriculum is
influenced by many factors: social needs, the
current changes, disciplines, usefulness to
learners, schools and the whole society,
published materials, "political pressure",
learner concern and interest, and cooperative
spirit to build the society (Schubert, 1986).
• In the content of curriculum, relevance to
curriculum objectives, appropriateness,
accuracy, comprehensibility and consistency
of materials should be given special emphasis.
Raising students' interests and challenging
them are also important in the content of the
curriculum.
The Relationship between EFL
Curriculum and Culture
It has been found that studying language and
culture will help in not only learning the
language, but also acquiring it (IHM, 1996).
Culture is seen as "an essential element of any
foreign language curriculum," because it has a
direct effect on the content of EFL curriculum
2.9 Developing the Curriculum
• The process of developing the curriculum is
done through three phases: planning the
curriculum (designing phase), implementing
the curriculum (action phase) and evaluating
the curriculum (judgment phase) (Abdelgalil,
1987).
2.10 How the Curriculum is Designed
in Oman
• The Directorate General of Curriculum concerns
about designing curriculum through three
phases.
• 2.10.1 The First Phase
• The first phase is before designing the curriculum
in which "subject specialists from the Ministry of
Education, Ministry of Higher Education, Sultan
Qaboos University, some teachers and school
supervisors" are the ones responsible for
designing the curriculum.
• 2.10.2 The Second Phase
• The second phase is the design phase which is very
important because it includes many steps such as choosing
how to design the curriculum which will be done according
to the aims of education and subjects as well as the skills to
be attained.
• This phase can be summarized as the following points:
• 1- Choosing a style of curriculum design.
• 2- Making design sample
• 3- Arranging a time table for the process of designing the
curriculum.
• 4- The process of designing
2.10.3 The Third Phase
• There are many steps that are included in this phase. First,
the first draft of curriculum should be done. Second,
language should be reviewed to provide accurate language.
Third, preparing visual aids as pictures, charts and figures
should be prepared to facilitate understanding for learners.
Forth, designing "the format of the textbook" should be
ready. Fifth, the last draft of the curriculum should be
reviewed by review committees that consist of experts of
curriculum, teachers, supervisors and some other
specialists. Sixth, the final draft of the curriculum should be
discussed by educational evaluation committee. The last
step is that textbooks should be printed and distributed to
students (Al-Mushaifri, 2006).
2.11 A Review of Related Studies
• Chapter Three: Methodology
•
•
•
•
This chapter is divided into three parts:
the participants,
the instruments used and
the procedures followed to collect relevant data.
• 3.1.1 The Population
• The population of the study consists of all Grade
12 EFL teachers of Salalah Schools.
• 3.1.2 The Sample
• The sample will be around 30 male and female
EFL teachers from Salalah schools and it will
be chosen randomly from the population.
• 3.2 Instruments Used
• Multi-methods of data collection
• The Questionnaire
• The questionnaire consists of 25 multiple choice questions.
• The first part of it includes personal information about the
teachers, including the gender and the years of experience.
• The questions of the questionnaire focus on three
dimensions.
• The first dimension is about the content of grade 12
English curriculum;
• the second part considers English four skills in the
curriculum and
• the last dimension of the questionnaire focuses on real-life
skills.
• Semi- Structured Interviews
• The semi-structured interviews will be held with
two parties: Grade 12 EFL female teachers
• and female specialists at Directorate General of
Curriculum since the researcher does not have
access to male schools for interviewing male
teachers and ,at the same time, male specialists
at Directorate General of Curriculum are not
accessible to the researcher for interviews.
• Observation
• Observing classes of grade 12 is another instrument
that I will use to conduct this research.
• The purpose of using this technique is to investigate
whether the English curriculum used inside classrooms
prepares learners for actual life outside classrooms so
that learners can use SL comfortably in daily life
situations. The researcher will observe classes in
female schools because the researcher will not have
access to male schools as mentioned earlier.
• The Procedures that will be followed in the Study:
• -After finishing the review of literature, the proposal
will be submitted in January 22, 2011
• - Questionnaire and interview questions will be
prepared to start applying the techniques in schools.
• -Data will be collocated.
• - Data will be analyzed.
• - Conclusions and recommendations will be made.
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