There is a serious problem in the field of English teaching and learning in the Arab sector which is reflected in the poor results of the Bagrut in English and in the low level of proficiency and of professionalism of the English teachers. We need a professional English department to train them for the complex demands of the field of the 21st century. Our department, which is composed of highly skilled experienced staff, can undertake this mission.
The English department emphasizes both the professional and the pedagogical domains . The English language is used as an international language. This is clearly reflected in our general teaching methods in all our courses. The proficiency courses incorporate various cultural topics.
The courses of literature and social interactions are primarily designed to expose the students to integrative types of literature. All courses belong to one of three categories: writing courses, oral proficiency courses, and reading courses.
In the first year, the emphasis is placed on fluency and accuracy and the error analysis process which is developed in the academic writing courses and the oral performance skills. The students are exposed to a wide variety of courses pertaining to theoretical background to English language learning such as introduction to the linguistics, phonetics and phonology, oral skills, writing skills and reading strategies.
In the second year, the students are expected to study courses which would improve their pronunciation and the skill of social interaction such as speaking skills, grammar, advanced writing skills and reading strategies.
In the third and fourth year, students are required to take written proficiency courses on an academic writing level. The students are required to write a seminar paper on one topic within these courses, such as creative writing, advanced grammar, modern novel and language acquisition.
This paper is integrated with the writing, oral proficiency and reading courses. They are presented orally in front of the students, in addition to submitting them in a form of a written paper.
The students are required to do a lot of reading: intensive reading and extensive reading which is basically designed to enrich their language, broaden their horizon and deepen their awareness of different types of cultures and genres.
The students observe lessons with the teacher trainer and analyze them in depth to benefit from the comments made by the teacher trainers and their colleagues. Moreover, they are requested to write reports on these lessons and submit them to their pedagogical trainer to be checked for the application of practice into the teaching methods they have acquired in the framework of the theoretical studies.
In addition, students regularly observe their colleagues’ lessons and by the end of the day they analyze and conduct a comprehensive discussion on these lessons to learn from their positive and negative feedback.
Students are expected to analyze case studies to acquire experience in lesson preparation performance and the process of assessing teaching units.