Introduction
In the highpoint of my English teaching career, I found myself teaching English to Grade 4 Australian English learners. It was interesting because I am an Arab lady from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And many people found it rather unusual for me to be teaching Native English speakers their own mother tongue. This essay will outline the progression of my career as an English teacher and how I got to the climax of my career, teaching native speakers of English. I will outline my background, origins, immersion into the Anglo-American culture and how my professional career developed as an English teacher.
Background and Origins
I was born and raised in Dammam, a city in Saudi Arabia that has a long history spanning through the pre-Islamic times to medieval times. I am from an upper middleclass family and my father worked in Aramco, a major Saudi-American petroleum company with operations throughout the Arabian Peninsula. At the age of 8, the family relocated to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, where I spent my formative years.
The teaching and learning of English in Dammam was highly limited. This is because there was a general requirement to teach English at the middle school level. This meant all basic schools did not have English language programs. Thus, save for some very basic things like the alphabets and numerals in English, I had very little insight into English in Dammam. However, when we moved to Riyadh when I was 8 years old, I got introduced to the community of expatriate native English speakers. English was taught in schools there. I studied in the same school with children of such guest workers and through that, I was able to interact and get my earliest exposure to the Anglo-Saxon culture.
I have lived in Australia for over 5 years now and I am married with three children. My family is bilingual and I am able to use my skills to do several works that enables me to act as a bridge between the Arab world and the English-speaking world.
Education
The Saudi government’s commitment to creating an empowered and knowledgeable workforce enabled me to gain a place to study for a Bachelor’s degree in English in a prestigious university in Riyadh. This was a world-class institution that had standards which had been pegged at world-class universities like Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge. However, in addition to its requirements, there was a strong traditional background in the institution and everyone had to respect the core values of our society. Through this, I was able to appreciate aspects of the English language from two perspectives – the Saudi traditional background and the native English culture. I was able to get an understanding of a lot of things relating to the culture in America and Britain and this helped me to get some rather good grades in my course. This made my degree in English Literature worthwhile and I got valuable experience and exposure to important ideas and concepts.
After my degree in English Literature, I proceeded to Australia where I studied Applied Linguistics in the University of Newcastle – Australia. The course introduced me to the deeper structures of language. As a bilingual person, I was able to appreciate many angles of language structure through an ambidextrous evaluation of theories and concepts between the English Language and the different dialects of Arabic I am familiar with. This enabled me to appreciate language and how it can be perceived and internalized by different people and how it affects and is affected by the cultural structures of a nation and people.
With this background in Applied Linguistics, I was able to help people who needed to learn aspects of English within my own small environment. This is because my mother for instance could not speak or write very good English. With my understanding of linguistics, I was able to break English down to her from a very basic perspective that most organized programs never did for Saudi learners. I was also able to understand the needs of native English speakers – how they learnt concepts and ideas in English and how these concepts acted as a background on which they could progressively build a strong understanding of the English language.
Thus, with this foundation, I was able to understand syllabus development. I could critique various syllabuses on the teaching and learning of English and find different angles and perspectives through which they could be implemented. This gave me a head-start in my career and encouraged me to understand and appreciate many things that are often taken for granted by teachers and even syllabus developers.
Choice of Becoming an English Teacher
My decision to become an English teach was more inspired by interest rather than the need to earn a living. I was interested in learning English and I was also interested in helping people. I found that the mastery of the English language was something that could be done easily without many complications. Therefore, I looked closely at that and decided to develop it.
With time, as I learnt to the higher levels and understood the elements and features of linguistics, I understood how and why the teaching methods existed and how they can be improved or applied. The process showed me that I could get a fair understanding of students’ needs and integrate it into the teaching method.
I also identified over the years that each learner had unique needs and requirements. And my ability to make flexible moves from one system and approach to another gave me the impetus to develop this idea further and teach English as a means to help people who really needed my assistance and expert support.
Pedagogy also provided me with a lot of skills and competencies that enriched my ability to teach English – a foreign language to other people. This is because I got a strong understanding of the technical aspects of the classroom environment and I built upon it to create a framework for the teaching of English to students. This was practiced over and over again and helped me to become a good teacher in the normal sense. And assisted me to choose the idea of becoming an English teacher.
The fact that there were so many liberalizations in the Saudi labor force and the modernization of the kingdom proceeded without issues helped me to acquire a desire to build a career in this field. This is because prior to my generation, people working outside the home was not so common in our culture. However, the liberalization of this gave me the view that I could potentially teach English all my life. Hence, I developed my competencies, overcame the fears and tensions and developed this into a full time career.
Teaching Professional Development
My challenges in learning English gave me a high degree of empathy towards those who seek to learn English at the lower levels. This includes children who have a basic understanding of concepts and can be introduced to new ideas with relative ease. Thus, with my own ability to learn English when I was a bit older, I was able to have a more reasoned judgement on how to present information to people and how to break down complicated concepts and theories in linguistics to young learners.
The choice to become an English teacher was somewhat one of the obvious options I had. Generally, my country’s government’s desire to modernize the country culminated in the rare opportunity expand English language programs. Thus, the need for English Literature students to teach English was a part of the overall policy of the university and I was introduced to a lot of teaching methods and processes in my undergraduate studies.
However, I found myself in Australia, which was a country where a person like me would generally be considered a non-native speaker of English hence, generally not given an opportunity to teach. In spite of this, the quality of education I had and my experience gave me the chance to start teaching in a school. The quest for multiculturalism in Australia also contributed in creating a rich environment whereby a person of an Arab origin could be considered as an English teacher.
When I was given the chance to teach Australian children, I decided to take it seriously because Australian education is designed to promote critical thought and analytical evaluation of ideas and views. Therefore, I decided to critique the syllabus closely. This process got me to understand the methods of teaching and appreciate their ways of inculcating knowledge. Some of these things were taught in the Applied Linguistic program which provided a different worldview to me as compared to the education in the King Saud University which was modeled on the American educational system. The criticality and the ability to analyze information was an integral part of the British and Australian educational system.
Thus, I ended up having to evaluate and examine the Australian curriculum of my students. When I was due to commence teaching, I went through a series of training programs and this got me to learn how they applied their syllabus to the pupils. The practical elements of the Australian culture and the ability to ask questions and the need to create a cultural learning environment was very distinct to me.
Eventually, when I started teaching, I decided to utilize the system of active learning, where students were to participate in the learning of English. This was particularly important in English grammar and reading. The process led to a lot of brainstorming and through the process, I was able to build a relationship with my students. This got me to learn how the students think of things and how they analyze information and build important understandings of theories, concepts and ideas in the English language process.
I learnt how they thought by reading their essays and assessing them in order to understand what they needed. My conclusion was that the idea of teaching English is steeped in the need to understand the level of English language skills and usage amongst the learners. From there, a teacher could apply important skills and ideas learnt in institutions of higher learning like undergraduate and postgraduate courses.
The process became a model that I realized I could replicate in different points in time and apply in various forms of education which could help me greatly. I therefore built some core competencies that made me identify a strong career path.
The practical aspect of learning and the practical elements of evaluating ideas and concepts helped me to appreciate the fact that the teaching and learning of English could become a profession I could master and use to earn a livelihood. Therefore, I chose to develop this further and pursue it to the highest levels.
Future Plans for Professional Development
I intend to learn more into the pedagogy of teaching and learning English in the Arab context. I hope to return to my homeland some day and create an English language teaching network. There are several systems like that which provides franchises for the teaching and learning of English. I hope to create such a system to provide education to Saudis of all backgrounds and expand it to the rest of the Persian-Gulf region in order to create a system that works for my people in the quest to learn an international language. The process will involve a lot of investments but I believe that with the right effort and assistance, we can achieve a lot of ends and goals that will advance our engagement in the international community.
Conclusion
In summary, I got exposed to the English language quite later in life – after the age 8. However, I was able to appreciate the linguistic structures of the English language at an early age. I proceeded to do a degree in English literature in a prestigious world-class Saudi university that had a vision of training teachers to educate the nation. This education exposed me to the pedagogy of the English language. I found myself in Australia where I completed a degree in Applied Linguistics which opened the door for me to understand how the structures of language worked. This further enhanced my ability to appreciate and understand important things which helped me to teach native English speaking children in a period of multiculturalism. The teaching process helped me to critique the syllabus and delivery systems. This allowed me to build an earning system for the assessment of many things in the teaching and learning environment which enhanced my ability to teach English.
