Journal ArticleDOI
Language policies in education in Qatar between 2003 and 2012: from local to global then back to local
Eiman Mustafawi,Kassim Shaaban +1 more
TLDR
Kirkpatrick and Barnawi as mentioned in this paper examined the problems that had caused the failure of the reform initiative through surveying, by means of structured interviews, the opinions of teachers at independent, public, and international schools in addition to the opinion of some SEC officials; the total number of interview hours was 34 conducted with 24 interviewees.Abstract:
The State of Qatar, in cooperation with the RAND Corporation, launched in 2002 an ambitious educational reform and development plan, Education for a New Era, which included, among other things, the instating of English as the medium of instruction (EMI) in mathematics, science, and technology in the K-12 system. From the start, the reform plan came under fire locally on grounds related either to ideological concerns or to implementational practicalities. Results of students in all grades on national examinations, which the Supreme Educational Council (SEC) oversaw, showed that a very small percentage of students (8–20%) had mastered the set learning outcomes in any of the main four subjects (Mathematics, Sciences, English, and Arabic). These results showed clearly that the reform initiative had failed to deliver on promises of improved student performance (Kirkpatrick and Barnawi, in: Kirkpatrick (ed) English language education in the Middle East and North Africa, Springer, Switzerland, 2017). In 2012, these perceived failures led the SEC to issue a decree reinstating Arabic as the language of instruction in grades K-12 in schools as well as at Qatar University in all areas of social sciences. The present study examined the problems that had caused the failure of the reform initiative through surveying, by means of structured interviews, the opinions of teachers at independent, public, and international schools in addition to the opinions of some SEC officials; the total number of interview hours was 34 conducted with 24 interviewees. The study identified the following issues as factors that had actively contributed to the demise of the experiment of using EMI in mathematics, science and technology: attitudes of stakeholders; teachers’ qualifications and preparedness to take up such a daring task; the complexity of the context of teaching; and the manner of introducing the reform agenda.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Laboring to communicate: Use of migrant languages in COVID-19 awareness campaign in Qatar
Rizwan Ahmad,Sara Hillman +1 more
TL;DR: Ahmad et al. as discussed by the authors examined the communication strategies employed by Qatar's government in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and showed the significant roles community and religious leaders and social media influencers played in disseminating the awareness information to the diverse migrant language communities.
Journal ArticleDOI
Language policy in higher education in the United Arab Emirates: proficiency, choices and the future of Arabic
TL;DR: The authors explored the linguistic tension resulting from the English-medium instruction policy at a state university in the UAE and proposed that higher education in the country be linguistically diversified in order to achieve the goals of higher education and to protect the linguistic rights of local citizens.
Journal ArticleDOI
Perceptions and attitudes of Qatar University students regarding the utility of arabic and english in communication and education in Qatar
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the linguistic attitudes and perceptions of Qatar University students regarding the utility and vitality of the two languages that define the education and communication scenes in Qatar, namely, Arabic and English.
Journal ArticleDOI
EMI and the international branch campus: Examining language ideologies, policies, and practices
TL;DR: This article examined the language planning and policy and linguistic landscape at one IBC in Qatar and revealed both the overt and covert language policies and ideologies of the institution and its various stakeholders, and the extent to which languages other than English are used and accepted.
Journal ArticleDOI
Imageability, familiarity, and age of acquisition ratings for Arabic abstract nouns, abstract verbs and adjectives
TL;DR: This paper provided norms for a set of 165 abstract nouns, 56 abstract verbs and 109 abstract adjectives, collected from healthy speakers of Arabic, using rating tasks, norms for imageability, age of acquisition, and familiarity are established.
References
More filters
Book
Language and Symbolic Power
Pierre Bourdieu,John B. Thompson +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the economy of language exchange and its relation to political power is discussed. But the authors focus on the production and reproduction of Legitimate language and do not address its application in the theory of political power.
Book
Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research
TL;DR: Part 1: Social Analysis, Discourse Analysis, Text Analysis 1. Introduction 2. Texts, Social Events, and Social Practices 3. Intertextuality and Assumptions Part 2: Genres and Action 4. Genres 5. Meaning Relations between Sentences and Clauses 6. Discourses 8. Representations of Social Events Part 4: Styles and Identities 9. Modality and Evaluation 11. Conclusion
Book
Language, Power And Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire
TL;DR: This paper revisited research, theory and policy in bilingual education - evaluating the credibility of empirical data challenging the discourse of disempowerment through critical dialogue transformative pedagogy, and the nature of language proficiency: language proficiency in academic contexts.
MonographDOI
Methods of critical discourse analysis
Ruth Wodak,Michael Meyer +1 more
TL;DR: Wodak as mentioned in this paper discusses the history, important concepts and the development between theory, method and politics between Theory, Method and Politics between the CDA's history and its development.
Book
Language and Culture
TL;DR: The authors surveys the research methods and approaches used in the multidisciplinary field of applied language studies or language education over the last fourty years, drawing on insights gained in psycho- and sociolinguistics, educational linguistics and linguistic anthropology with regard to language and culture.
Related Papers (5)
School reform, standards testing and English language learners
Armando Laguardia,Paul Goldman +1 more