Abstract
In this paper, I argue that English could be of more relevance to the Arabian Gulf if we conceptualized it as an educational forum for familiarizing students with socio-linguistic conventions relating to a wide variety of text types and for sharpening their critical awareness of the political implications of the uses of English. I make my case against the backdrop of a particular local context in the Arabian Gulf: the current BA programme in English at the College of Arts and Social Science, Sultan Qaboos University, the Sultanate of Oman. I maintain that the programme is predicated upon conceiving of English as a field (or rather fields) of knowledge, as academic disciplines of English literature, linguistics and translation, each with its own sets of concepts and frames of reference. As such, the programme both falls short of being fully theoretically coherent and fails to take into account the recent educational developments in Oman. Drawing upon the theoretical construct of discourse, I propose an outline of an alternative BA programme in English that revolves around the uses of English and their political implications.
Citation
Al-Balushi, K.M. (2010), "Teaching English as Discourse in Sultan Qaboos University", Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Gulf Perspectives, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 30-41. https://doi.org/10.18538/lthe.v7.n1.18
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2010 Khalid Mohammed Al Balushi
License
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
Acknowledgements
Publisher's note: The Publisher would like to inform the reader that the article “Teaching English as Discourse in Sultan Qaboos University” has changed pagination. Previous pagination was pp. 1-12. The updated pagination for the article is now pp. 30-41. The Publisher apologises for any inconvenience caused.