Designing a teacher orientation course for English as a foreign language faculty at Saudi Arabian universities: the case of a private university in Riyadh

This study took place at an English language Centre (Foundation Institute at a university) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to address the problem of English instructors’ attrition. After studying the related literature, that connects the faculty attrition to the implementation of a purpose-made faculty professional development programmes, it was evident that popular TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) courses that instructors had attended prior to their joining the university were unable to answer this problem. The purpose of the present research is to interrogate the top-down model of educational expertise and to improve educational provision in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher education. A mixed methods approach was conducted to research the topic and relevant instruments were designed. After careful local stakeholders’ mapping, students who joined the Foundation, students who finished the English programme at the Foundation, and English instructors at the Foundation were selected. A 93 Likert-scale items questionnaire was distributed to 170 students who joined the Foundation Programme, and a series of interviews were conducted with 24 students who finished the English programme and 9 EFL (English as a Foreign Language) instructors. After collecting the data, these were analysed using descriptive statistics for the quantitative data and grounded theory to find the major themes in the interviews. The major findings from the quantitative data reveal that Saudi students of English are motivated to learn English, despite their poor English language learning experiences during basic education; while the qualitative data suggest that EFL students are low language learning strategies users. Finally, the findings show that the EFL instructors are not aware of either the Saudi Arabian educational context, or the Saudi culture before arriving in the Saudi Kingdom, and they would welcome an induction before they join the Foundation Centre. The data from the three research instruments were used to inform the design of a unique of its kind bottom-up orientation course, based on the specific sociocultural context that prepares newly-employed EFL instructors more efficiently for dealing with Saudi students, informing them about effective teaching English methods and materials development, and dealing with administrative issues.