Using Geertz’s Verstehen/ Einfühlen distinction, this essay begins with an overview of the travel writing and anthropological work about Oman, concentrating on the southern region of Dhofar. The author then situates Wilfred Thesiger’s classic Arabian Sands (1959) within these two genres as an example of a writer who is able to show unde…[Read more]

Do you remember how it felt to be a confused, foreign language student? The presenter will explain how five weeks as a full-time, beginning Arabic language student produced helpful insights into how Arabian Peninsula students are taught. These insights led to changed and improved pedagogical methods in English language classrooms.

The paper gives eight specific examples of the way Arabian, specifically Omani, culture impacts the learning environment. Teachers are encouraged to explain their own understandings on such classroom issues as lateness, cheating, class participation and asking questions in order to avoid possible misunderstandings. In addition, the author promotes…[Read more]

Encouraging students’ creativity is helpful for students and teachers. Writing essays about “Driving Fast is Dangerous” leads to restless, inattentive students. It is also more difficult to try to explain grammar and composition rules with an unexciting model. But if you ask: “If you planted your heart, what would grow?” you can be sure to get pa…[Read more]

The benefits of using literature in teaching and learning a foreign language are numerous. It not only embodies contextualized language, but also portrays human experience in breadth and depth and hence, through it, learners can be exposed to different cultures, with shared or unique beliefs, traditions and life styles. Given these advantages,…[Read more]

My paper explores how to choose literature texts which solve the dual purpose of teaching English skills (speaking, reading, writing and listening), as well as teaching students to look at poems, short stories, novels and dramas as relevant to their own life, full of characters who they already know and situations they recognize. I argue for the…[Read more]