Dr. Niall Curry 

Assistant Professor and ASPiRE Fellow at Coventry University 

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Communication and collaboration in the language classroom  

Communication and collaboration in the language classroom. 

Owing to the varied nature of the content and language we teach, the focus on interaction and authentic communication in language learning, and the importance we place on socialised approaches to learning, 8contemporary English language teaching has become an increasingly complex practice. This complexity means that the language learning classroom, both online and face-to-face, has become an important space for responding to global movements on the future of education and skills and for developing 21st century skills and broader life competences. However, what this means in practice is not always so clear. Therefore, in this talk, I will draw on frameworks, such as the Cambridge Life Competences Framework, to illustrate how we can develop both communication and collaboration skills all while teaching the English language. Drawing on a range of existing materials, this talk offers both a rich understanding of the current face of life competences in English language teaching and practical advice and activities to bring life competences into your classrooms and schools. 

Mr. Vinod Kumar 

UTAS- Al Musanna 

 

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Hit the Right Chord - Enjoy your Research  

Dr. Mohsen Amiri & 

Dr. Abdulsalam Maktoum 

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Challenges, opportunities and the effective strategies of teaching English in the GFP 

Dr. Muthmainnah, S.PdI.  

Universitas Al Asyriah Mandar-Indonesia  

 

Does Technology through Funtainment-based Instruction Improve 4C skills Student 

Mr. Nabhan AlMamari 

English Instructor, Ministry of Education 

 
 

WhatsApp for Educational Purposes: Exploring Omani English Language Teachers` WhatsApp Use & Corresponding Beliefs 

My presentation would start by pointing out the extreme importance of research in Teaching & learning; How it is useful for teachers in their day to day teaching etc. Then I will focus on the "selection of one’s research topic: starting from refining ideas and moving on to ‘Planning the research design’. Next, I will be paving light on the significance of Boolean operators (And, or...etc.) which makes the researcher’s job half. I will demonstrate how it helps attaining an easy Literature review. After that, I will pave light on the tracking of various relevant databases with ease and how to narrow it down etc. How to reach to the literature most suitable for one’s research will be discussed.

The present study is to investigate the current major challenges of students in learning English in the GFP (General foundation Program) during offline and online classes. It is also proposing the best possible teaching strategies to minimize the current learning challenges of students in English and motivation. The data is taken based on feedback and face-to-face interviews from students and teachers. In this study, students from different levels, from GFP to higher diploma(alumnus) participated in the interviews. Key Words: Challenges, Opportunities, teaching strategies, Pandemic, motivation 

The Funtainment is one of several technology-enabled educational alternatives that have recently been used by Indonesian schools. This study focuses on a novel of Funtainment learning based on encouraging intentional interaction in the class to develop students' 21st 4C’s. To explore, Funtainment-based instruction in English also improves students' 4Cs. To gain the data, the questionnaire as the research instrument was distributed to the students of teacher training and education faculty, and their responses were analyzed in descriptive quantitative. This research was conducted at Universitas Al Asyariah Mandar, west Sulawesi, Indonesia. The results of the questionnaire showed that the students' responses and reactions to the funtainment based instruction on positive responses stage also improved their 4Cs.  

A growing body of research accentuates the potential of adopting social media platforms, including instant messaging applications in formal learning. This study aims to explore Omani English language teachers' use of WhatsApp in their teaching as well as their perspectives regarding its use. Twelve Omani English language teachers from various government schools were interviewed and a number of WhatsApp artifacts were collected. The data was analyzed using Thematic Content Analysis and focused on both the teachers’ beliefs and their use of the software. The study revealed that teachers’ employed WhatsApp for a number of educational purposes such as managing their classes, communicating with parents, improving particular language skills and providing ongoing assistance to support in-home learning. In addition, WhatsApp emerged as a means of developing and maintaining a Virtual Community of Practice (VCoP) in the participants' professional contexts which allowed for sustained continuous professional development of the participants. The research uncovered largely positive views regarding WhatsApp use to facilitate both English language teaching and promote out-of-class learning. The participants confirmed the user-friendly and practical aspects of the application which facilitates both teaching and learning processes. The practical implications of these findings are to support teachers in their agentive role and allow for the bottom-up mobile technology-reliant initiatives that support achieving educational results. 

Mr. Salah Al-Hanshi 

SQU 

 &  

Mr. Abdullah Al-Hashmi 

UTAS 

Transforming Learning and Teaching Experience through RoznaHub 

 

Mrs. Heba Qureshi 

UTAS-Ibri 

 

 

How to Enhance Students' Employability Skills? 

Ms. Khayar Al Amri 

UTAS-Salalah 

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Supporting Low-Achievers to Overcome Low-Achievement 

Mrs. RUKMININGSIH 

STKIP PGRI JOMBANG, INDONESIA 

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How Can a Beginner Publish a Paper in a Reputable Journal?  

This presentation is going to give teachers an idea about an emerging eLearning platform which is called RoznaHub. The focus will be on showing teachers some apps that can help teachers make classes active through interaction and collaboration. Teachers will have the opportunity to experience the one app called (Rozna Space) as students. Next, teachers will be given instructions on setting up accounts and starting using the platforms. Finally, some tips will be shared on how to best utilize RoznaHub.  To help improve the employability skills among students and enhance the achievement of Graduate Attributes (GAs) through innovative teaching methodology, I initiated the idea of 'Live Experience' of job interviews for the students of Public Speaking. This idea is developed after getting the feedback of students and also relevant stakeholders in the job market. Students learned how to deal with the stress and pressure of facing the panel members as they provided with the platform of formal walk-in job interviews. This helped the students in learning and polishing the required skills of appearing for an interview in a real-life scenario. Many interesting facts and results were identified as an outcome of this activity that I would like to share with the related audience.   The competence of the students is directly related to the performance of the students in the classroom. Usually, there are three categories of learners in a classroom, namely, high-achievers, mediocre-level students, and low-achievers, and there would be a big gap between the level of high-achievers and low-achievers. Despite the fact that the teachers try to facilitate learning as much as possible to make the learners grasp the knowledge easily, some may unable to make a remarkable growth in their learning. It may affect such leaners negatively, and the issue of low-achievement has to be addressed properly. The present study deals with finding out the reasons for low-achievement and proposing the ways and methods to support low-achievers so that this issue can be overcome easily. The study adopted the survey method to find out the reasons for low-achievement. The students and teachers in the foundation level in the English Language Centre, UTAS-SCT were the target population with regard to this study. A questionnaire that consisted of questions related to the possible causes of low achievement directly or indirectly has been administered to three groups in Level 4, Level 3, Level 2, and Level 1 respectively. Based on the responses to the questions, certain strategies are developed to overcome the issue of low-achievement. Keywords: Low-Achievers, competence, performance, knowledge, category  Publishing a paper in a reputable journal is a researcher’s dream, however, it needs such a great struggle for the beginner to publish in a reputable journal. While there is no denying the "publish or perish" culture of academia, it does not mean that journals do not value quality work for its own worth. It is believed that to publish a paper in a reputable journal, you need to have a good past in publication. Even if your work is worthy, it will be considered only if the author is recognized. How can a fresher get a good publication?. 

Dr. Tayba Al Hilali 

UTAS, Higher college of technology 

 

Research-teaching nexus: a call for rethinking ELT teachers’ role in the higher education context in Oman 

Ms. Fazilat Jahan 

UTAS-Ibri 

 

Hitting the right note Songs and Music in the EFL classroom 

Ms. Hind Elyas 

Niagara College, Tayaran National Aviation Academy 

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Lifelong Learning Skills in the 21ST Century Classroom 

 
Universities across the globe often strive to establish a solid and enriching nexus between research, teaching and learning. This involves recognizing how research informs both teaching and learning in higher education contexts. It also entails defining the role of teachers/practitioners as researchers who integrate research and teaching in order to initiate ‘research-informed teaching’ and ‘teaching-informed research’ environment, thus, creating a holistic academic who would navigate smoothly through different identities and roles in the academic field. With the emergence of the new university (UTAS) in Oman, it has become vital to revisit the concept of ‘research-teaching nexus’ and delineate its boundaries. Thus, this presentation will highlight this concept and calls for unpacking it to redefine the role of university teachers. It will also raise some questions such as: how can research-teaching nexus be defined in the given context? What is ELT teachers’ role in promoting research culture in higher education context? What are the challenges faced by ELT teachers in assuming researcher’s identity and conducting classroom-based research? What identity does the UTAS endeavour to achieve in light of research-teaching nexus? These questions will be addressed drawing on preliminary data analysis of focus group interviews conducted with English language teachers at the ELC, HCT. This discussion will hopefully have significant implications for envisaging the university’s priorities related to research and teaching, developing research culture within the university, and calling for more research on problematizing ‘research-teaching nexus’ concept within the higher education context.  Arabs love for song and poetry is no secret. Add to it the fact that music and language are processed in the same center of the brain. Hence, using music in English language teaching can make our classes more effective. This workshop focuses on ways to include song and music in ESL/EFL classrooms as a teaching tool. The activities go beyond the classic gap-filled exercises and cover exercises for pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and prosody.  The term 21st century skills refer to a broad set of knowledge, skills, work habits, and character traits that are critically important for students to succeed in today’s world. (Great schools Partnership, 2016) It is the responsibility of teachers to facilitate their students with real life skills and knowledge, help them become global citizens and make learning relevant, personalized and engaging. The Partnership for the 21st Century Skills identified 4 Key skills that are essential in the 21st Century Classroom and they referred to them as the 4Cs (2007). These skills include Critical Thinking, Creativity, Communication, and Collaboration. In this session I aim to provide the audience with a brief overview of the different 21st Century skills; “The 4Cs of 21st Century Skills and how they evolved to the 6Cs, a more holistic model. The session will also provide examples of different strategies that could be used in the classroom to help learners achieve the best possible outcomes in the classroom.   

Dr. Jean Marc 

Professor of Applied Linguistics and Multilingualism at Birkbeck, University of London 

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Balancing challenge and learners’ skills to generate positive classroom emotions in Foreign language learning 

I will talk about an emerging area of research in the field of foreign language learning, which was triggered by the introduction of Positive Psychology (Dewaele, 2022; Dewaele et al., 2019, Dewaele & Li, 2020). It has focused on the role of emotions in foreign language learning and their effect on performance, beyond the traditional focus on foreign language anxiety and includes new concepts such as foreign language enjoyment (Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014) and foreign language boredom (Li, 2021). Researchers have found that a student-centered approach stimulates positive classroom emotions, when teachers give a degree of autonomy to their students and encourage them to safely explore, play, and overcome challenges that only just meet their skills, without fear of ridicule. 

 

Contact UTAS-Shinas

Mailing Address
University of Technology and Applied Sciences - Shinas
Al-Aqur, Shinas
Sultanate of Oman,
P.O. Box 77
Postal Code 324
Assistant Vice Chancellor, UTAS Shinas Office
Tel: +968 2674 2811
+968 2685 2860
Student Admission & Registration Support
Tel.: +968 2685 2924
+968 2685 2925
E-mail for admission inquiries:
support.registration@shct.edu.om
Website & Technical Support
Tel.: +968 2685 2809
E-mail: support@shct.edu.om
Human Resources Concerns
Tel.: +968 2685 2929
+968 2685 2814
E-mail: HRDept@shct.edu.om
General Enquiries
Main Tel: +968 2685 2800
+968 2685 2900
E-mail: mmc@shct.edu.om or
visit the contact us page

 

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