The EFL unit in QU-HS

The EFL programme part of the PMP is designed and delivered by the EFL unit in QU-HS. The EFL programme was designed locally and adopts international EFL materials such as American Headway (Soars and Soars, 2005) and the Azar-Hagen Grammar Series (Alamri, 2008; Azar, 2011). The aim of the programme as stated in the English Language Curriculum (see appendix 2: 1) is:

…to provide students with extensive daily practice in academic reading, vocabulary, oral communication, grammatical structures and writing. It also aims to help [the] students acquire the language skills necessary for pursuing careers in the health sciences and undergoing practical training in an environment where English will be the principal medium of instruction and communication.

Based on their results on an in-house English placement test that is administered at the beginning of the PMP programme, students within each group (medicine/AMS) are further divided into smaller groups. In the PMP, medicine students are referred to as pre-med and AMS students are referred to as pre-AMS. The average number of students per EFL classroom is fifteen, so the student-teacher ratio in the EFL programme is 15:1.

The EFL programme has twenty male instructors; twelve are native English speakers (NES) and eight are non-native English speakers (NNES). Nine of the NES instructors are from the United States of America (USA) and three are from Canada. The majority of NNES instructors are from Jordan (six), while two are from KSA. The EFL instructors’ years of teaching experience range from three to twenty-five years. All the NES instructors hold EFL teaching qualifications from their country of citizenship (i.e. the USA and Canada). The NNES instructors, particularly those from Jordan, hold EFL teaching qualifications from Jordan. The Saudi instructors possess EFL teaching qualifications from the UK and the USA.

The EFL programme in QU-HS is taught through eight modules. These modules are taught for at least fifteen hours per week over three academic semesters: three modules in the first and second semesters and two modules in the third semester (see appendix 1 for details of the programme structure). Each

module aims to develop specific linguistic skills, although some aim to develop more than one skill.

In the first semester, there are three modules: ‘Communication Skills’, ‘Language Structures and Drills’ and ‘Academic Reading and Vocabulary’. The ‘Communication Skills’ module includes two courses: five hours per week of ‘Oral Skills’ and four hours per week of ‘Supplementary Reading and Discussion’, as well as an ‘Introduction to Writing’. This module aims to develop the linguistic communication skills that the students need in order to be able to communicate effectively in an English-medium setting. It focuses on developing the students’ listening, speaking, reading and writing skills for communicative purposes. Discussions in written or oral forms are encouraged in this module, and the focus is on fluency rather than accuracy. The ‘Language Structures and Drills’ module, which is taught for five hours per week, aims to improve students’ accuracy and language usage. It raises students’ awareness about the different structures/grammatical points of the English language. The third module is ‘Academic Reading and Vocabulary’, which is taught for five hours per week and aims to develop students’ ability to read academic texts in English and to critically evaluate and analyse them. In addition, it aims to enrich the students’ vocabulary and enable them to understand different academic styles of written texts.

In the second semester, similar but more advanced modules are taught, except for the ‘Communication Skills’ module. The components of the ‘Communication Skills’ module change: the ‘Oral Skills’ part is reduced from five to three hours per week while the ‘Supplementary Reading and Discussion’ part is also reduced from four to two hours per week, and the ‘Introduction to Writing’ part is substituted with three hours per week of ‘Workshops on Academic Writing’. The reduction in the Oral Skills component as well as Supplementary Reading and Discussion is based on the assumption that the

students’ targeted skills in these areas will be sufficiently developed to the extent that they will not need much guided discussion and reading compared to when they began. The introduction of the ‘Academic Writing’ component is also aimed at increasing the challenge for the students and smoothing their transition from writing for general communication purposes to more structured academic writing.

In the third semester, only two modules are taught. ‘Language Structure and Grammar’ and ‘Academic Writing Skills’ are merged into a seven-hour weekly module called ‘Advanced Grammar and Rhetorical Writing’; four hours are allocated for teaching structure and grammar and three hours for developing the students’ academic writing skills. The second module comprises seven hours per week of ‘Advanced Reading and Vocabulary’. This is divided into two components: four hours per week are allocated to developing students’ academic reading skills and three hours per week are devoted to introducing the students to medical jargon and terminology.

The structure of the EFL programme in QU-HS is different from the one students have been used to in their schools. In their pre-university EFL learning, students often studied all the academic language skills from one book and sometime practical skills such as listening and speaking were not taught at all. In the EFL programme in QU-HS, different courses are assigned for the equal development of academic and practical skills, i.e. speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

In relation to teaching approach, it seems that the EFL programme at QU-HS does not have a clearly stated approach that each teacher should follow. However, reading through the general objectives of the EFL programme (see appendix 2 for details of the English language curriculum) as well as the specific aims of different EFL modules such as ENG 101 (see appendix 3 for

details of the ENG 101 module) and ENG 102 (see appendix 4 for details of the ENG 102 module), one could infer the appropriate communicative nature of teaching from these modules. This suggests that students are taught using modules so that they best achieve the stated aims and objectives of the EFL programme.

The assessment of the EFL programme in QU-HS is heavily reliant on exams, as is shown in the English Language Curriculum document of the PMP (see appendix 2). In addition to passing the final exams of each module, comprising 40% of the total grade, students are also expected to pass various written quizzes during the term, which comprise 50% of the total grade. Although exams have huge significance in the EFL programme, there are two other ways in which students can also accumulate marks to gain a total grade. These are from classroom participation and through homework. This mode of assessment, which comprises 10% of the total grade, is not described in any detail in the course outline. It is left to the instructors to implement it in the way they see fit. Exams are based purely on the information contained in the textbooks used and thus teachers have to cover the material that influences the different teaching and learning practices (Al-Roomy, 2013).