Problems and Challenges in the Teaching of English in Unaizah, Saudi Arabia: A Case Study

Abstract

This study focuses on Unaizah, Saudi Arabia, and specifically sorts out all the Problems and Challenges encountered in the process of teaching English as a foreign language locally. English in Saudi holds an important position in the country’s education system, but even so, many English learners have long failed to develop the ability to communicate smoothly in English. The specific bottlenecks are concentrated in four areas: understanding English, speaking English, writing standardized academic English, and independently solving problems using English beyond specific scenarios such as classrooms and exams. This study adopts a mixed-methods Case Study design to investigate the Problems and Challenges faced by local English language teaching from seven different dimensions. These seven dimensions are: the status of learners themselves, the situation of instructors, the overall curriculum design, the methods of assessing students, daily teaching practices, the use of technological tools in teaching, and the broader socio cultural environment. The research plans to collect data from three groups of people in several selected educational institutions in Unaizah. Four specific methods will be used: distributing questionnaires for respondents to fill out, conducting semi-structured one-on-one interviews, carrying out on-site observations of teaching processes in English classrooms, and sorting out and analyzing various official documents related to teaching. The collected data will be processed in two categories: quantitative data that can be converted into numbers will be analyzed using descriptive statistics; qualitative data that is mainly based on text records will be coded and categorized according to different themes to sort out common patterns. Past relevant Existing Saudi research has pointed out that several types of problems limit the advancement of communicative language teaching: grammar-centered teaching models, excessive reliance on using Arabic in English classrooms, too few opportunities for students to access real English usage scenarios, insufficient professional development support for teachers and assessments that only focus on memorizing knowledge points. Relevant conclusions can be found in (Khan, 2011; Seghayer, 2011; Alrashidi & Phan, 2015).This study expects to produce empirical evidence that fits the actual local conditions of Unaizah, and on this basis proposes improvement strategies adapted to the local context. These specifically include providing long-term and continuous professional development support for teachers, promoting communicative and task-based teaching methods, introducing formative assessment, Create English usage scenarios for students, and optimize the integrated application of technological tools in teaching. The conclusions of the final study will be used to support local English teachers, school administrators, and education policymakers to improve English language education in Unaizah and other regions in Saudi Arabia with similar conditions to Unaizah.