ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English Education 

Volume 7, Issue 2, June 2019 

p-ISSN 2301-7554, e-ISSN 2541-3643 

https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/ERJEE 
 

47 

 

EFFICACY OF METHODOLOGICAL PRACTICES UNDERTAKEN BY 

SAUDI ENGLISH TEACHERS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS DURING THEIR 

FORMATIVE PHASE 
 

Majed Othman Aba Hussain 
College of Education, Majma’ah University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 

Email: m.abahussain@mu.edu.sa 

 

Muhammad Iqbal 
Department of English, College of Education, Majma’ah University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 

Email: m.Iqbal@mu.edu.sa 

 

Imran Khan 
Department of English, College of Education, Majma’ah University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 

Email: imkk2020@mu.edu.sa 

 
APA Citation: Hussain, M. O. A., Iqbal, M., & Khan, I. (2019). Efficacy of methodological practices undertaken 

by Saudi English teachers in public schools during their formative phase. English Review: 

Journal of English Education, 7(2), 47-54. doi: 10.25134/erjee.v7i2.1774. 

 

Received: 28-01-2019 Accepted: 30-03-2019 Published: 01-06-2019 

 
Abstract: The main focus of this article is to evaluate the practices involving various approaches and 

methods that the novice Saudi English Teachers (SETs) employ in classrooms, and to see how far these are 

successful in attaining the desired results. It also takes into cognizance the chasm between the measures taken 

by Saudi Ministry of Education to modify the curriculum to develop “communicative competence” and the 

actualization these measures in the classroom pedagogy. The dichotomy eventually brings to bear upon the 

learning outcomes of the students who fail to achieve the required proficiency in communicative skills. The 

study necessitated a qualitative approach (grounded theory) in which previous literature was ransacked. Data 

was gathered through structured interviews, surveys and documents analysis. The rudimentary results showed 

that SETs rely more on conventional teaching methods despite the State’s thrust on Communicative 

Language Teaching (CLT) that tends to be more student-centered, cooperative and collaborative.  

Keywords: communicative competence; grounded theory; teaching approaches; teaching methods.  

 

INRODUCTION 

The importance of teaching English in Saudi 

schools has grown tremendously over the last two 

decades. This impetus largely emanates from the 

process of globalization in which communication 

by means of English dominates commerce, trade, 

social media, research and publications 

(Flowerdew & Peacock, 2001).  Saudi 

government is also very keen to give incentives 

to both learners and teachers by allocating a huge 

amount in the budget exclusively for teaching 

and learning English (SAMA, 2015). However, 

despite all the efforts, Saudi schools are not able 

to yield the desired learning outcomes. One of the 

major reasons for this problem is ascribed to the 

infirmities in the method and practices of 

teaching and learning English. Inadequate 

training of the teachers, flawed inappropriate 

teaching methods and teacher-center environment 

in the classroom hamper the process of attaining 

proficiency in English for communicative 

purposes (Fareh, 2010). 

Taking cognizance of these challenges, Saudi 

Ministry of Education (MoE) has taken multiple 

drastic measures to bring about reforms in the 

existing education system, specifically in 

teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) 

elaborating its general goals and targets in Saudi 

Arabia (Alhajailan, 2006). The reforms included 

the designing of news textbooks based on 

Communicative Teaching Method (CLT), 

training the teachers abroad, improving the 

process of English teaching and learning in Saudi 

schools under English Development Project 

(ELDP) in 2007, and collaborating with British 

and American publishing companies 

(Alabdualkarem, 2007).  Besides, seminars and 

conference were also held to address the problem 

of inadequacy in TEFL (Rahman, 2011).  

Nevertheless, the problem persists for lack of 

employing Communicative Language Teaching 

(CLT) by the English language teachers who 

continue to rely more on traditional methods. 

Hence, it is worthwhile to explore the prevailing 



Majed Othman Aba Hussain, Muhammad Iqbal, & Imran Khan 
Efficacy of methodological practices undertaken by Saudi English teachers in public schools during their formative phase 

48 

 

situation for finding the facts to tackle the stated 

problem in a better way.  

The introductory phase 

Alesghayer (2011) alludes to the fact that 

teaching and learning of English language had 

been in practice in some areas prior to becoming 

a component of scholastic curriculum in 1944. 

The same is marked by the introduction of EFL 

to Saudi educational curriculum. The thrust of the 

prescribed textbook had been on reading, writing, 

grammar and translation. The teachers, therefore, 

resorted to Grammar-Translation Method (GTM) 

combined with rote learning of English words 

translated in the first language (Alhajailan, 2006). 

However, in late 1950s, GMT began to receive 

harsh criticism, and resultantly, the Saudi 

educationists responsible for policy making 

shifted to develop oral skills through teaching 

and learning English (Alseghayer, 2011a). 

The reformative phase 

This phase commenced around 1958. Again, 

Alhajailan (2006) makes an overview of the 

changes that occurred onward. School system 

was reorganized. In order to improve the oral 

skill of the students, new textbooks – ‘Living 

English for the Arab World’, ‘A Traveller’s 

Cheque’, ‘The Pearl’, and ‘Round the World in 

Eighty Days’ – were introduced. These books 

had been used for two decades mainly using 

Audio-Lingual Method (ALM). All this got 

inspiration from the EFL/ESL theories that 

emerged during the World War II, largely 

emphasizing oral practice, pronunciation and 

mechanically teaching and learning a new 

language (Richards & Rogers, 2001). According 

to Hall (2011), at that time, ALM was a popular 

method as it offered an amalgam structuralism 

and behaviorism. However, the validity of this 

method embraced questioning during 1970s in 

Saudi Arabia as well exactly in line with 

criticism of this method the world over. Linguists 

like Chomsky came up the conviction that 

imitation and drilling cannot enable children to 

speak a language outside the classroom as it is 

imbibed with gross irregularities in practical life 

(Karunakran & Babu, 2013). 

The communicative phase 

Once again, the studies conducted by Alhajailan 

(2006) and Alseghayer (2011a), show a shift in 

Saudi Ministry of Education policy when “a new 

textbook entitled ‘Saudi Arabian Schools 

English’ was introduced in collaboration with 

Macmillan Press in 1981 onward, adopting 

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) 

approach in the curriculum” (Howatt 1984). The 

textbook contents dealt with some theme, 

function or notion with a variety of interactive 

activities (pairing and sharing, group tasks and 

discussions) to enable the learners to 

communicate in real life situations.  In 2004, 

another text book ‘Say It in English’ with more 

interactive activities was prescribed in the syllabi. 

The same year, English was introduced as a 

compulsory subject in the elementary section. 

The year 2008 witnessed the launching of new 

program namely “English Language 

Development Project” (ELDP) that aimed to 

streamline the existing English curriculum in 

collaboration with Macmillan, McGraw Hill, 

Pearson Longman and Oxford University Press 

(British and American textbook publishers for 

EFL and ESL). This was in pursuance of 

principles devised for CLT, i.e. “a language is a 

system for communication; it should have an 

integration of communicative activities in all the 

units and all such activities should emanate from 

the contents, function and meaning” (Howatt, 

1984; Berns, 1990; Brown, 2007; Hadley, 2001). 

Riyadh, Saudi Ministry of Education (2015) did 
say that the new textbooks, if handled 

professionally by the teachers, can give a boost to 

the confidence of the students and enable them to 

use English to communicate competently with 

people in real life. 

Communicative language teaching approach 

and communicative competence 

A peep into already available literature on the 

subject reveals that Communicative Language 

Teaching (CLT) evolved in the 1970s visualizing 

language as a system for communication leading 

the learner to attain communicative competence 

(Hymes, 1971; Halliday, 1973; Richards & 

Rodgers, 2001). Two components – “What to 

teach” and “How to teach” – are emphasized in 

CLT (Harmer, 2001). Littlewood (1981) also 

impressed upon the need of systematic focus on 

functional as well structural dimensions of 

language. Then, Chomsky came up with a 

distinction between ‘competence’ and 

‘performance’ – the former referring to the 

grammatical system for generating infinite 

sentences, and the latter referring to the 

communication of knowledge that underlies 

(Newby, 2011). Chomsky’s concept was further 

rationalized by Canale and Swain (1980) to 

encompass four elements i.e. grammatical 

competence, socio-linguistic competence, 

discourse competence and strategic competence. 

The mastery of all these concepts is, therefore, 

essential for the teachers to implement in the 



ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English Education 

Volume 7, Issue 2, June 2019 

p-ISSN 2301-7554, e-ISSN 2541-3643 

https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/ERJEE 
 

49 

 

classroom and also regulate the role of the learner 

for that matter. 

Teacher’s and learner’s role in CLT 

Breen and Candlin (1980) envisages the role of a 

teacher in CLT as a facilitator, a guide, and an 

organizer. Rather than being authoritative, the 

teacher should work as a “co-communicator, an 

analyst of needs, an organizer of resources, a 

facilitator of activities and a learner (Larsen-

Freeman, 2001).  The learner in CLT is, however, 

expected to be a negotiator of meaning, a 

discoverer as well as contributor of knowledge 

and information (Hu, 2002).  Brown (2007), too, 

thinks that “the learner in CLT classes should 

actively participate in the classroom proceedings 

based on leaner-centered, cooperative and 

collaborative learning processes.   

 

METHOD 

“Which methodological practices do Saudi 

English Language teachers in their formative 

year in state schools use in their classrooms?” 

and “How successful are these?” are the 

questions that warrant two-pronged investigation; 

i) exploring and describing the existing situation, 

and ii) interpreting why this happens (Punch, 

2009). According to Birks and Mills (2011), such 

a research inquiry has to understand “reality” in 

terms of ontology (What is the nature of reality?), 

epistemology (What is the relationship between 

the researcher and the participants?) and 

methodology (How can the knowledge be 

gained?). Out of multiple methodologies 

handling naturalistic and interpretive inquiry, 

grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) has 

been chosen as rigorous and systematic 

methodology of data collection and data analysis. 

The population of this study comprises 

Schools of Education, Schools of Arts, and 

Schools of Language and Translation.  As for 

sampling, a strong group of 114 Saudi English 

language teachers from the above mentioned 

three channels was targeted. Besides, the 

supervisors who monitor the SETs performance 

and the lecturer who teach teaching methods in 

teachers’ training program have been consulted 

for building a comprehensive picture of the 

reality. 

Employing the procedure of Grounded 

Theory, data was gathered by two means – i) data 

generation and ii) data collection. For generating 

data, interviews were conducted with participants 

in close proximity. This gave a better 

understanding of what goes on (Birk & Mills, 

2011). For collecting data, “elicited materials 

such as questionnaire” were used. Besides, 

documentary sources like official documents, 

reports and textbooks ransacked to dig out the 

facts relating to the issue that is under scrutiny in 

the study. In order to ensure the reliability of the 

questionnaires, a preliminary survey was 

conducted by sending them to a small segment of 

the sample comprising only ten teachers with an 

interval of two months to check if the items in the 

questionnaire yielded the identical responses 

showing consistency irrespective of the time 

passage (Punch, 2009). For internal reliability, 

independent variables were limited to the 

preparation that Saudi English teachers make 

before joining the public schools just to focus on 

their formative years. Content validity was also 

ensured by covering all the dimensions and 

getting them vetted by a set of experts.   

 

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 

The evaluation of a change necessitates an 

appraisal of the existing practices carried out by 

the people responsible for introducing new 

measures (Bowers et al., 2007). It is also debated 

that the implementation of a new teaching 

method is dependent upon the teachers’ role 

played in the classroom (Chowdhury, 2012). The 

data gathered during the research demonstrated 

that SETs were primarily transmitter of 

knowledge in the formative phase of their career. 

Thirty-six teachers who responded to the 

questionnaire and 8 who were interviewed, 

admitted their role as knowledge transmitters. For 

instance, one of the responders said: 
“I think I am mostly doing the transmitter role. I 

spend most the lesson time in lecturing and 

explaining grammatical rules.” 

While doing so, not only did they turn out to 

be the most trusted source of knowledge, but also 

become the determiners of classroom activities. 

The statement of one teacher goes as follows: 
“I have to prepare and execute most of the 

classroom activities……myself, and I rarely share 

this job with my students because I believe they are 

not capable of doing such a job with their limited 

English.”  

Another fact that came to the fore in the 

collected data deals with the massive dependence 

on text books for transmitting knowledge.  The 

transcription of one of the interviewee goes like 

this: 
“I abide by what is in the text book, and most of 

my activities are also around the textbook material 

and my questions also most test what students have 

acquired from the text book.” 



Majed Othman Aba Hussain, Muhammad Iqbal, & Imran Khan 
Efficacy of methodological practices undertaken by Saudi English teachers in public schools during their formative phase 

50 

 

Heavy reliance on lectures by the teacher was 

found in the responses of the questionnaires and 

interviews. Forty-two teachers while responding 

to a question as well as to an inquiry in the 

interviews related to their role as a lecturer 

avowedly admitted to have followed lecturing 

style whatsoever. As an instance, the reply of a 

teacher is reproduced below: 
“Generally, for the most of the class time, I have 

to use lecturing or demonstrating as a teaching 

style. I present the main topic, write the important 

words on the board, explain grammar rules, 

translate the new words, read the text and ask 

some questions for verification.” 

Managing the class by a teacher is highly 

challenging in schools, in particular (Fantilli & 

McDougall, 2009). Six years of experience of the 

researcher in Saudi school as a supervisor, 

exhaustive discussion with the colleagues, and 

the date gathered (91% of samples of the 

interview) revealed that the authoritative role of 

the teacher is a ‘must’ to control the students in 

Saudi schools.  A slight latitude on the part of the 

teacher in the class resulted in chaos and a noise.  

So, even pair and group activities are avoided as 

the administrators of the school lay stress on 

strict discipline and quietness. Surprisingly, only 

5% of the interviewees acknowledge their role as 

a facilitator. 

As outlined in Table 1 below, the 

questionnaire results show that 41 Saudi English 

Teachers (SETs) resorted to teacher centered 

approach at the outset of their career in EFL 

classroom, whereas only 4 teachers preferred to 

adopt student-centered approach in their teacher 

practices. Similarly, the percentage of teachers’ 

interviews turned out to be the same.

 

Table 1. Dominant teaching practice 
Sample Teacher-centered approach Student-centered approach Total 

Teachers’ questionnaire 41 4 45 

Teachers’ interview 11 1 12 

 

In addition, “traditional structured based 

approach” is followed in Saudi schools English 

classes primarily aiming at meaningful language 

(Maria, 2006). The information derived by means 

of questionnaire and interviews displays a routine 

that is repeated in the classroom, i.e. the teacher 

presents the lesson as a lecturer, reads the text, 

translate the difficult words, writes the new 

words on the board, pronounces them, teaches 

grammatical structures, and gives some exercises 

for practice. Finally, a few questions are asked by 

the teacher to get feedback about what has been 

taught. The number of students participating in 

the proceedings is also very limited, devoid of 

any conversation for that matter. The remarks 

given by a teacher in the interview are worth 

mentioning here: 
“Generally teaching techniques have more 

reliance on using the board for writing and 

presenting information.  My thrust remains on 

providing the learners with adequate information 

and asking them to jot down the key points in their 

notebooks. Much of the lesson is devoted to 

teaching grammar and new or difficult words as it 

my conviction that the skills improve students’ 

writing ability.” (Transcription) 

The answers also indicate that only one skill 

or sub-skill (such as grammar, translation, 

vocabulary, pronunciation etc.) as illustrated in 

Figure 1 is focused during the lesson. 

 
Figure 1. Skills or sub-skills give more emphasis in teaching practice 

 

 



ENGLISH REVIEW: Journal of English Education 

Volume 7, Issue 2, June 2019 

p-ISSN 2301-7554, e-ISSN 2541-3643 

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51 

 

As per the above figure regarding the 

weightage received by main skills and sub-skills 

like grammar rules (6 out of 7), explaining 

textbooks and translation into Arabic language 

(5.5 out of 7 respectively) got the highest priority 

whereas the main skills of communication, i.e. 

listening, speaking, reading and writing receive 

less importance (1.9, 1. 2, 3.9, and 4.9, 

respectively). Likewise, the replies to Question 1 

in the interview and Question 9 in the 

questionnaire, demonstrate that majority of the 

participants (around 95%) use deductive method 

in which grammatical rules are explained by the 

teachers and notes are passively taken by the 

learners. Translation of new words into Arabic 

language is also resorted to drive the meanings 

home. 

The aforementioned findings clearly show 

that Grammar-Translation Method (GMT) is 

largely practiced by the Saudi English Teachers 

(SETs). This fact is accentuated by the data 

gathered wherein 42 teachers as participants in 

the questionnaire and 11 out of those who were 

interviewed declared explicitly or implicitly the 

massive use of GMT as a teacher practice. 

Similarly, reading and writing skills get greater 

weightage for the sake of the final exam. 

Listening and speaking, however, receive the 

least weightage for want of language labs and 

authentic material, and also because the final 

exam assessment ignores them. The teacher’s 

responses to Question 10 (questionnaire) and 

Question 1 (interview) reveal the integration of 

oral skills not communicative objectives but for 

structural reinforcement of the language. This 

also involved mainly the Audio-Lingual Method 

(ALM) for repetition and controlled-drilling for 

accurate pronunciation of individual words rather 

than expressions, as is termed by Richards and 

Rodgers (2001). As such, Saudi English Teachers 

(SETs) blindly rely on the textbook contents, 

repetition, memorizing, drilling, and rote-learning 

just to make the students get through the exams, 

making the whole process teacher-centered. 

A critical analysis of the findings simply leads 

one to conclude that methodological teaching 

practices undertaken by Saudi English Teachers 

(SETs) largely revolve round transmitting 

knowledge.  What the SETs do in the classrooms 

is set to achieve this objective. Even, roles played 

by the teachers and students, materials for 

teaching and assessment methods are directed to 

transmission of knowledge only. So to say, the 

concept of “education as a product” rather than 

“as a process” is in vogue (Welker 1992; Nunam 

1988). In other words, “mimetic teaching” as 

termed by Jackson (1986) cited in (Christopher, 

2012) is focused more wherein one person (the 

teacher) endeavors to transmit knowledge to 

another person (learner) with precision and 

smoothness by means of drilling, controlled 

practice, rote-learning and deductive methods. As 

the flow of knowledge is fully controlled by the 

teacher and the student has to tap it passively on 

the other end, Broughton (1994, p.22) terms it 

“teacher-dominated interactions” as a kind of 

practice. Then, transmission of knowledge is 

coupled with Grammar-Translation Method 

(GMT) as the meanings of words and the 

explanation of grammatical structures are 

rendered in Arabic language. Now this 

knowledge is worthless unless it is memorized 

through drilling and oral repetitions that fall 

within the purview of Audio-Lingual Method 

(ALM). 

Moreover, since the main concern of SETs’ 

teaching practice is the amount of knowledge that 

has to be transferred to students, the process is 

confined to teaching isolated skills what is 

termed as ‘synthetic approach’ by Wilkins 

(1976). Although the language skills are taught 

by SETs separately, they also vary in terms of 

importance. The skills pertaining to grammar and 

translation are focused more as compared to 

listening, speaking, reading, and writing. This 

goes in line with Alseghayer’s (2011b) findings 

showing that English teachers who teach in Saudi 

schools devote their teaching practices as 

follows: 32% to grammar, 30% to translation, 

17% to reading, 12% to writing, and 9% to 

speaking. This could be referred to the traditional 

approach in which first priority is given to 

grammatical competence for the sake of laying 

foundation of language proficiency, and then the 

four basic skills are introduced (Ozsevik, 2010). 

In summary, the aforementioned practices 

undertaken by Saudi English Teachers (SETs) in 

Saudi schools pertain to the methods that are 

traditional in their approach assigning a dominant 

role to the teacher and marginalizing the 

interaction of learners, concerning more with the 

ultimate product of teaching rather than focusing 

on teaching-and-learning process in which 

cooperative and collaborative learning plays a 

key role leading to a student-centered 

environment. Figure 2 below gives a clear picture 

of the current teaching practices that the SETs 

adopt in the classrooms during their formative 

years.



Majed Othman Aba Hussain, Muhammad Iqbal, & Imran Khan 
Efficacy of methodological practices undertaken by Saudi English teachers in public schools during their formative phase 

52 

 

 
Figure 2. The current SETs’ teaching practice 

 

The size of the circles on the left in the above 

figure shows the amount of emphasis given to 

various skills. Grammar (G) and Translation (T) 

as discrete skills are given more weightage by the 

teachers as compared to oral skills which receive 

less importance. The gaps in oval circle on the 

left also allude to the fact that the skills are taught 

in isolation without any integration. The 

presenter of these skills is the teacher who plans 

and organizes them in teaching process 

arbitrarily. The students’ role seems to be 

peripheral in the classroom like empty containers 

waiting for tapping the flowing knowledge and 

information about the targeted language. Hence, 

the eventual outcome is the accumulation of 

knowledge as the final product. 

One may raise a question hare as to how 

Saudi English Teachers (SETs) tend to employ 

traditional teaching practices and methods in the 

classroom for teaching English. The answer lies 

in the fact that various factors involving teachers’ 

belief and experiences shape their cognition 

concerning the process of teaching (Borg, 2003). 

As EFL learners at school, SETs had been 

watching the teaching style of their own teachers 

– Lortie (1975), Lavoire and Roth (2006) term it 

as “apprenticeship of observation” following the 

cannons of traditional and behavioristic methods. 

Even the findings about pre-service programs 

aiming to change the existing practices of 

teaching and introducing innovative techniques 

for making language learning easy in the Saudi 

school classrooms could not produce the desired 

results (Hong & Pawan, 2015). The models 

followed by SETs led them to evolve their own 

theories which do not correspond with modern 

demands of teaching and learning a foreign 

language like English in Saudi Arabia (Molina, 

Cañado, & Agulló, 2013).   

 

CONCLUSION 

Saudi English Teachers (SETs) in the formative 

phase of their career largely use traditional 

methods while practicing teaching in EFL 

classrooms. Though marked with diversification, 

these methods mainly revolve round Grammar-

Translation Method (GMT) and Audio-Lingual 

Method (ALM). Communicative Language 

Teaching (CLT) methods as ambitiously driven 

by the Ministry of Education, Saudi Arabia, are 

seldom practiced by SETs despite having 

undergone several training programs. As a result, 

communicative purpose of EFL learning is not 

materialized. However, what the Saudi English 

teachers do in EFL classrooms, do have some 

positive indicators. As CLT is flexible enough to 

embrace certain segments of traditional methods, 

deductive teaching of grammar (GMT) does 

develop ‘linguistic competence’. Simultaneously, 

developing oral skills by means of controlled 

practice and repetitive drills (ALM) for teaching 

discrete skills could help the learners to enhance 

their communicative competence at a later stage. 

After all, linguistic competence is a concomitant 

of communicative competence. Even the pre-

service programs do contribute as the building 

blocks of the teaching process for communicative 

purpose.   

It is also concluded that reluctance on the part 

of the Saudi English teachers (SETs) to 

implement CLT as teaching practice is not 

merely because of their perceptions and past 

experience but other formidable socio-cultural 

factors also hamper this pursuit. A formal study 

to explore such factors is also recommended.  

 

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