Existing initiatives purporting to promote teacher research are often found to be inadequate to encourage EFL teachers to engage in research due to the fact that they impose a top down, expert model approach to research engagement. This study reports on a pioneering programme at Sultan Qaboos University Language Centre in the Sultanate of Oman which has adopted a bottom up, practitioner-based approach to research. Drawing on questionnaire and interview data, the article examines the teachers’ perceptions of their experiences in initiating and carrying out teacher research using this programme. The findings indicate that whilst contextual constraints similar to those cited in the literature remain unyielding, the research support programme has been effective in supporting teachers to initiate and lead their own research studies. This success is discussed in relation to the programme’s basis in a practitioner practice to theory model versus expert theory to practice models of teacher research engagement. As EFL teacher research is increasingly gaining popularity and acceptance worldwide, the study has implications for EFL institutions looking for effective ways to promote teacher research engagement in a collegial way.
English Language has become a global and required language across all fields around the World. With this demand on the language, more teachers and practitioners are involved in the teaching process. So many of them take the job of teaching English as a career to teach native and non-native speakers which is not an easy task and it is not problem free. Among the difficulties teachers face when they teach English are attitude, students' behavior, pronunciation and grammar to mention a few. This research paper reports on the cultural and linguistic challenges that Western faculty encounter when they teach English in an EFL context at Sultan Qaboos University. Data for this study were collected through a structured interview (written form) with western teachers in the Language Centre at Sultan Qaboos University. It is hoped that the findings of this paper will add to the EFL literature, offer and suggest some practical and pedagogical implications to western teachers teaching English as a foreign language. It is also important that by learning the results, both new and experienced teachers alike are going to be enlightened about how to tackle these barriers in the classroom and how to teach their students more effectively. Further, a greater attention and consideration should be directed to the development of classroom materials and effective selection of teaching strategies. Setting
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