Being an English teacher for Arab students compels me to alter the traditional methodologies of ELT. I find this to be more challenging and interesting. In our institution we offer 200 hours of English classes. The trainees have already completed their college degrees. Here our teachers have to meet the students everyday for 1 hour. The reality is the trainees are not ready to listen to your grammar teaching and worksheets every day. The teacher is under tremendous pressure when the trainees start complaining about the monotony. The conventional English language teaching experience does not help you here. Sometimes the teachers are totally ignored by the trainees. If you walk-in with a bunch of worksheets every day, you can hear ‘oohhh’ and ‘aahhh’. When you start teaching with all your passion for the profession, you hear the muffled voice ‘ It’s boring’. You feel that your respect has started melting down. And the worst part is that trainees give various tips for you in the feedback forms. Don’t be misled by them because if you start following them, soon they get bored of them too. I have had the experience of being unwanted by some trainees not because I was not up to their expectation but because they were not interested in anything.

Arab students need more attention in pronunciation. I started working on this. I asked them to listen to English news channels like BBC. But most of them came out with the complaint that they didn’t find time for that. In the class hours, I taught them the pronunciation of words. It produced some result. But then, they didn’t want serious pronunciation classes. I bought some CDs and made them listen. But that helped them enhance their listening skills. One day, my friend gave me a talking book – storybook with cassette. It was Oliver Twist. We made copies of the first two chapters of the story and introduced Charles Dickens in the class. Most Arab students have never heard of the English writers. I gave an introduction about Dickens and workhouses. As I played the cassette, the students followed the story – reading and listening. I paused every now and then and explained. . Many students started discussing the various aspects and characters of the story, which encouraged me.

After discussion, I asked them to read the story aloud along with the cassette to check the difference. Many enjoyed reading along. They were able to understand the pronunciation mistakes they made. I found this method to be effective in teaching pronunciation. As the story is interesting, the learners show a lot of enthusiasm to learn more.

The teacher plays a vital role in introducing this method. Students lose their patience as they keep listening to a story. So the teacher has to come up with more examples and real life situations to keep up the enthusiasm of the class. The students are more interested in discussing some general issues with the teacher. The teacher should relate his own experience with the story. The teacher’s ability to keep the interest is tested here. After each paragraph, explain new words. Help them to use in their own sentences. The next day you walk into the class, the students really want you to continue the story.

We get wonderful feedback from the students as they keep using the names of the characters. Once a girl said, ‘Don’t behave like Bumble’. You can understand the power of this technique. The stories create the interest to learn the language better. This method helped us. Why don’t you try and give us your feedback?