Challenges of English Language Teaching in Yemeni Primary and

Secondary Schools

Sabri Thabit Saleh Ahmed

Ph.D. scholar
Department of English
Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Aurangabad 431001

Abstract:
In the recent decades, English has become an indispensable part of the Yemeni primary
and secondary school curriculum. It is not only a matter of being a compulsory subject
within the school curriculum but it is also an area of study that many students/ pupils want to
develop. Many Yemeni parents have recently recognized the importance of English as a key to
science, technology and business in our modern world and want their children to get mastery
over English. Unfortunately, though its recognized importance by teachers, schoolmasters,
students and parents, the outcomes, especially within the rural Yemeni context, are still low and
most students can’t cultivate a good level of English during their pre-tertiary education due to
many challenges that obstruct English language teaching in the Yemeni schools.
This study was an attempt to survey challenges of English language teaching in AL-
Dhalea primary and secondary schools from the viewpoints of 20 EFL senior teachers and
supervisors for the purpose of identifying such challenges and suggesting some solutions and
strategies for better English language teaching. Findings show that large classes, lack of
teaching aids, teachers’ low proficiency in English and their limited experience with
communicative language teaching are considered as major challenges of English language
teaching in the concerned Yemeni primary and secondary schools.
Keywords: English Language Teaching, Challenges, AL-Dhalea, Primary and Secondary
Schools

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 1- Introduction:
With the rise of English as a global language in the last decades (Crystal, 2003), English
language teaching has become one of the most important fields of study for many researchers
and scholars. Researchers attempt to practice new teaching techniques and to apply theories of
linguistics, psychology and education to English classrooms. There are many theories appeared
in the second half of the last century that recommend new functional techniques and approaches
in language teaching (Hymes, 1972; Halliday 1973; Canale & Swain, 1980; Littlewood, 1981).
The main aim behind these theories is how to prepare the language learners to be competent
users of their target language whenever they need to communicate in real life situations.
In the context of Yemen, there are many challenges that EFL primary and secondary
teachers still face today in their teaching of English language and that is why students complete
their pre-tertiary education with very poor English skills. Such challenges should be investigated
as a pre-step towards providing solutions and strategies for better English language teaching in
the future. Here comes the significance of this simple work in investigating the challenges of
English language teaching in AL-Dhalea governorate from the viewpoints of a group of senior
EFL teachers and supervisors.

1-1: Objectives of the study:

This study attempts to achieve the following objectives:
- To survey the major challenges of English language teaching in AL-Dhalea primary and
secondary schools.
- To provide solutions and strategies that may help in overcoming such challenges and
establishing a better English language teaching.

1-2: Significance of the study:

This study is significant as it deals with the challenges encountering English language
teaching in Yemeni schools. Identifying the challenges of English language teaching in AL-
Dhalea primary and secondary schools is a pre-step towards setting remedial action plan that
contains some suggestions and strategies for better English language teaching that may help
students in achieving the objectives of their language learning in pre-tertiary education. The

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outcomes of this study will be of a significant value to English language teachers and supervisors
in these schools and for the ministry of education as it will provide them with a list of challenges
that obstruct English language teaching in this governorate with some remedial plans and
strategies for overcoming such challenges.

2- A brief history of English language teaching in Yemen

Yemen is a country that was created in 1990 by the unification of two independent
countries called People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen) and Arab Republic of
Yemen (North Yemen). As the two countries had undergone completely different political
scenarios during the 19th and 20th centuries, the education systems and English language teaching
had also undergone different scenarios in the two countries. While South Yemen was occupied
by the British colonizers during the period 1839 till 1967 who introduced some education and
their English to some schools they run in Aden colony, the situation was different in the north
where Imam has isolated his people from education and made it limited to his clerks and some
prestigious families and records, according to my knowledge, show no presence for English
language teaching in North Yemen till the revolution age.
During the 1960s onwards, the education systems in the two countries suffered from
some difficulties due to the lack of teachers and schools. Both countries depended on Arab and
Indian teachers for teaching English and other subjects in primary and secondary schools. In the
1970s, Aden University in the South and Sana’a University in the North were established to
prepare teachers for Yemeni schools in the various subjects and to provide education to Yemeni
nationals in various fields of science and arts.
So far as English language teaching in the 1960s onwards is concerned, English was
introduced as a compulsory subject within South Yemen school curriculum starting from the 5th
year of the unity stage to be taught for eight years till the final year of the secondary stage while
it was introduced as a compulsory subject starting from the 7th year of the primary stage in North
Yemen to be taught for six years till the final year of the secondary stage. In the 1990s, with
unification event, the education systems of the two countries were unified too and English was
introduced as a compulsory subject within the school curriculum starting from the 7th year of the
primary stage to be taught for six years up to the third year of the secondary stage. Though the
country had undergone a civil war in 1994 due to the failure of the Unification agreement and
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South Yemen declared its restoration of its independent state, the victorious North Yemen could
control the South by its military force and kept the country unified with a unified education
system. The Yemeni ministry of education introduced a new series of courses of English in the
1990s called ‘Crescent English course for Yemen’ which are communicative-based courses and
give an equal space for language four skills (Ahmed & Pawar, 2018: 302).

EFL teaching in Yemen as the situation in some other Arab countries still face many
challenges such as poor teaching and traditional methodologies, large classes, students’ low
motivation to learn English and limited teaching materials (Fareh, 2010; Khan, 2012). Such
challenges may exist in many contexts where English is taught as a foreign or second language.
Goss (1999) has shown that teachers and low-quality teaching, large classes, and inadequate
learning facilities are among challenges obstructing Japanese EFL from attaining high
proficiency in English. Cheng and Wang (2004) have also shown that large classes, unique
centralized examination-driven educational system and teachers’ low proficiency are among
challenges of English language teaching in their Chinese context of study.

3- Research Methodology:
This study is an exploratory descriptive study that aims at surveying the challenges of
English language teaching in AL-Dhalea primary and secondary schools from the viewpoints of
EFL senior teachers and supervisors of AL-Dhalea for the purpose of suggesting some remedial
action for overcoming ELT challenges and improving teaching. It was carried out in 2018
academic year.
1- Participants:
The participants of this study are 20 EFL senior teachers and supervisors of AL-Dhalea
primary and secondary schools. Though there are many primary and secondary schools in AL-
Dhalea governorate and in each school there are one or more teachers of English language, the
study is approached from the viewpoints of 20 EFL senior teachers and supervisors who have
good experience with English language teaching in AL-Dhalea primary and secondary schools.
2- Research instruments:
A questionnaire consists of two open questions was submitted to 20 senior EFL teachers and
supervisors of AL-Dhalea primary and secondary schools. The researcher has preferred to use

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open questions to get comprehensive details about that challenges encountering English language
teaching in AL-Dhalea from hypothesizing some challenges in a kind of a close-items
questionnaire as such a kind of questionnaire serves more to validate the presence of some
specific challenges than to survey all challenges. In addition to these two open questions
responded by the sample, the researchers have also carried out what’s up written discussions
with five senior teachers and supervisors of the same sample to get more details about the
findings.

4- Discussion of the Findings:

This study is basically an attempt to answer these two questions:
- What are the major challenges of English language teaching in AL-Dhalea primary and
secondary schools?
- What can be done to overcome such challenges and establish a better English language
teaching?
Responses from the senior EFL teachers and supervisors refer to several challenges that
obstructing English language teaching in AL-Dhalea primary and secondary schools. Here I will
discuss these challenges under major headlines as follows:

1- Lack of teaching aids and materials

All the participants have agreed that there is a lack or unavailability of teaching aids in
most schools. They mentioned that language laboratories are not available even in the major
schools of the city. Most of these schools don’t have any auditory or visual teaching aids
necessary for language teaching such as cassettes, recorders, computers, projectors…etc.
Teachers in the same time don’t spend any efforts to provide pictures or drawings that may help
in teaching vocabulary and grammar and they depend basically on traditional methods of
teaching through the excessive use of the mother tongue ( Arabic). The textbooks prescribed for
teaching English in these schools are not provided to each student and in many schools, two or
more students are usually requested to share the same textbook. Such a situation where teachers
use only chalks and boards to teach English is considered as one of the challenges of English
language teaching in Yemeni schools understudy.

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 2- Large classes:
Most of the teachers who responded to the questions of this study have identified large
classes as one of the major challenges that interrupt English language teaching in AL-Dhalea
primary and secondary schools. Teachers have also argued in what’s up discussions that large
classes are a challenge to teaching generally and English language teaching in particular. They
added that the number of students is increasing every year but there is no parallel increase in the
infrastructure of schools. According to participants’ responses, the number of students in each
classroom can be more than 50 students. Such crowded classes are considered as a big challenge
for EFL teachers as they face problems in class control and they find it so difficult to teach
communicatively. Group work can help English language teaching in such larges classes but
teachers’ inputs show that group work is rarely used in few of these schools while most schools
don’t employ group work activities at all.

3- Teachers’ low proficiency in English and their limited experience with

communicative language teaching:
Many of the participants in this study have agreed that many teachers of English in their
schools lack the communicative competence in English and have limited experience to teach
communicatively. They argued that in some schools, teachers of English are not English majors
and have only limited grammatical and lexical competence while they are completely ignorant of
communicative language teaching. In the other hands, though majority of EFL teachers may
have a diploma or bachelor degree in English, they lack proficiency to teach spoken English and
are not sufficiently aware of communicative language teaching. They usually prefer traditional
methods of teaching in their classes as they find them easier to run. The reason behind this is that
many English teaching programs provided by the Yemeni faculties of Education don’t prepare
student-teachers well to be competent and qualified teachers of English. Such poor proficiency in
the part of the teachers will then be reflected in their teaching in these primary and secondary
schools and constitutes an obstacle to language teaching and students’ achievement.
There is no doubt that the proficiency of the teachers in English and their awareness of
communicative language teaching are keys to their success in teaching. So if the teachers lack

6
proficiency, they cannot give what they themselves lack. In the context of this study ‘AL-
Dhalea’, teachers are considered as the main source of knowledge and their classrooms are the
only environment for practising English as there is no use for English outside classrooms and
most students are deprived of access to other sources such as private institutions and internet. So
the proficiency of the teachers and the way in which they teach are considered as major factors in
the success or failure of any language learning and teaching program.
The researchers fully agree with responses that emphasize the importance of setting
criteria for recruiting teachers of English for these schools based on proficiency level and that the
ministry of education should provide some workshops and training to refresh EFL teachers’
knowledge in English language and to keep them updated with new trends in language teaching.

4- Overemphasizing written skills at the expense of oral skills

Teachers’ responses have also shown that teachers’ lack of focus on teaching oral English
skills is a challenge for English language teaching in most of their schools. In what’s up group
discussion, teachers have emphasized that due to large classes, lack of teaching aids and the low
proficiency in the part of the teachers, teachers of English in most of these schools tend to teach
grammar and reading skills while oral skills i.e. speaking and listening are totally ignored. Such
ignorance of oral skills led to incomplete competence in the part of the students. It is for this
reason that the products of these schools are always poor in spoken English even if some of them
are good in the basics of English grammar and have a good lexical repertoire.
As we have mentioned earlier, the current textbooks prescribed for these schools
‘Crescent English Courses for Yemen’ are communicative-based courses in which all the skills
are given equal space but unfortunately in the teaching process written skills are usually
overemphasized at the expense of oral ones and this affects the learning and teaching process as
whole at the end. The main reason behind this lies in the challenges mentioned earlier such as
teachers’ low proficiency and their limited knowledge of communicative language teaching.

5- Cheating habits in the final year of primary and secondary school

Some participants of this study have also considered the cheating habits in the final
ministerial exams of the secondary and primary stages as one of the major challenges to school

7
education generally and English language teaching in particular. Some students, according to the
participants, ignore their learning in these two critical years and such ignorance affects their
overall competence in English and creates a challenge for English language teaching.

6- Lack of motivation
Students’ poor motivation to learn English has also been considered as one of the
challenges of English language teaching. Responses show that due to the current economic
situation and unemployment, some students think that there is no need to spend efforts in
learning English as it will be of no use in their future professional life. They think that there is no
other place for them other than the recruitment in the army where English is not required.

In the above discussion, major challenges of English language teaching in AL-Dhalea

primary and secondary schools have been summed up based on the viewpoints of 20 EFL senior
teachers and supervisors participated in this study. Some other challenges are also raised in some
responses of few participants such as: 1- Time constraints i.e. the time given for English within
the school curriculum is not adequate for practicing language, 2- Ineffectiveness of English
textbooks prescribed for primary and secondary schools, 3- Late beginning to teach English as
Yemeni students start learning English within school curriculum at 7th year i.e. when they are
approximately 13 years old, and 4- Exam-oriented learning as learning of English is more
limited to passing the exams for most students.
It seems that these challenges are not only challenges for English language teaching in
the schools of this governorate but can be generalized to so many schools of the country and
some other similar contexts. Some similar studies which have been done in other contexts where
English is taught as a foreign or a second language led to somehow similar conclusions regarding
the challenges of teaching English (Fareh, 2010; Fatiloro, 2015 & Kalia, 2017).

In the part of the solutions to the above challenges, participants’ responses show many
suggestions to the ministry of education in order to overcome the earlier-mentioned challenges.
So this study, based on participants’ inputs and the researcher’s experience in the field of
teaching English as a foreign language in the Yemeni context, recommends the following

8
solutions for a better teaching of English in Yemen primary and secondary schools generally and
the schools under this study in particular: 1- the number of students in the classroom should not
exceed twenty-five students, 2- setting proficiency test for the teachers of English when
recruiting EFL teachers, 3- organizing workshops and training for EFL school teachers to
refresh their knowledge in English and to provide them with new trends in language teaching.
These training and workshops should be provided by native teachers of English or national
experts in the field of ELT, 4- applying communicative language techniques such as role-plays,
group work, pair work and cooperative learning in English classes, 5- provision of adequate
auditory and visual teaching aids and materials such as cassettes, recorders, projectors,
computers, textbooks, language laboratories if possible …etc., 6- putting an end for cheating
habits in the ministerial exams,7- establishing new teaching classrooms for some schools to suit
the increasing number of students, 8- sending those unqualified teachers who are currently
teaching English in some schools thought they are not English majors to English language
education programs to qualify them in English language and 9- making English a compulsory
subject within school curriculum from the early age (first year of primary stage).

5- Conclusion and Recommendations

This work has investigated the major challenges of English language teaching in AL-
Dhalea primary and secondary schools from the viewpoints of 20 senior EFL teachers and
supervisors. The findings revealed that the major challenges that English language teaching in
AL-Dhalea primary and secondary schools encounter are: large classes, lack of teaching aids and
materials, teachers’ low proficiency in English and English teaching, overemphasizing written
skills over oral ones, lack of motivation to learn English and the cheating habits in the final years
of the primary and secondary stages. For the purpose of overcoming such challenges, the study
has recommended the Yemeni ministry of education to: a- limit the number of students in EFL
classroom to 25 students, b- set proficiency test for the teachers of English when recruiting them
for schools and sending those unqualified teachers who are currently teaching English in these
schools though they are not English majors to English language education programs for
qualifying them in English language c- organize workshops and training for concerned schools
EFL teachers to refresh their knowledge and to provide them with new trends in language
teaching, d- provide auditory and visual ELT aids such as cassettes, recorder, computers,
9
projectors, pictures, drawings, textbooks (English laboratories) to the concerned schools, e- put
an end for cheating habits in the ministerial exams, f- establish new teaching classrooms for
some schools to suit its population, g- encourage applying communicative language techniques
such as role-plays, group work, pair work and cooperative learning in teaching English and to
include English subject within the curriculum starting from the first year of primary stage. The
study also recommends EFL teachers of the concerned schools particularly and Yemeni schools
generally to forget traditional ways of teaching grammar and lexis in their English classes and to
apply communicative language teaching techniques where all skills and sub-skills are taught.
English classes should be more student-centered and their overall aim should be to enable
students to use English for communication rather than learning about its grammatical and lexical
systems.

References:

Ahmed, S. T. S. & Pawar, S. V. (2018). “Communicative Competence in English as a

Foreign Language: Its Meaning and the Pedagogical Considerations for its Development”. The
Creative Launcher, Vol.2 (4), 301-312.

Canale, M., & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of com-municative approaches to

second language teaching and testing. Applied linguistics, 1(1), 1-47.

Cheng, L., & Wang, H. (2004). Understanding professional challenges faced by Chinese
teachers of English. TESL-EJ, 7(4), 1-14.

Crystal, D. (2012). English as a global language. Cambridge university press.

Fareh, S. (2010). Challenges of teaching English in the Arab world: Why can’t EFL
programs deliver as expected?. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2(2), 3600-3604.

Fatiloro, O. (2015). Tackling the challenges of teaching English language as second

language (ESL) in Nigeria. IOSR Journal of Research & Method in Education, 5, 26-30.

Goss, B. (1999). Challenges of Learning English in Japan. "Intercultural Communication

Studies". Vol. 8, 145-148.
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 Halliday, M. A. K. (1973). Explorations in the Functions of Language.

Hymes, D. (1972): "On communicative competence." Sociolinguistics, 269-293.

Kalia, P. (2017). "English language teaching in India: Trends and challenges. International
Journal of Engineering Applied Sciences and Technology. Vol. 2, Issue 3, 33-37.

Khan, I. (2012): "Teaching and learning of English: An exploratory study of difficulties

and strategies." British Journal of Social Sciences, 76-93.

Littlewood, W. (1981). "Communicative language teaching: An introduction". Cambridge

University Press.

To cite this paper:

Note: This paper has been submitted to an international conference entitled: “Dialoguing
Ahmed, S. T. S. (2018). Challenges of English Language Teaching in Yemeni Primary and Secondary Schools. GRIN Verlag,
Borders:
Academic Vital
paper, Issues
pp. 1 -11. In Humanities, Commerce, IT and Management” - October 2018.
https://www.grin.com/document/444271

Aurangabad city, India

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Cite paper: Ahmed, S. T. S. (2018). Challenges of English Language Teaching in Yemeni Primary and
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