Constructing Grammar Instruction in the Omani ELT System: A Critical Literacy Perspective

Debate in the literature has been ongoing about whether to teach English language grammar explicitly, implicitly or integrate both approaches to achieve optimal learning. This research paper, hence, discusses this issue from an ideological perspective with a particular reference to the Omani English language teaching (ELT) education system. The paper triangulates data from various semi-structured interviews made with different agents involved in the Omani ELT education system, the pertinent literature, The Philosophy and Guidelines for the Omani English Language School Curriculum, which I will herewith refer to as the National English Language Policy/Plan (NELP), other policy texts and the English language national syllabus – Our World Through English (OWTE) Teacher’s Guide. The critical discussion revealed various contesting ideologies about teaching grammar in the Omani ELT system and the crucial role of teachers in the effective policy implementation or otherwise. The study has important implications for other similar contexts around the world

Evaluation of Some Trace Elements Pollution in Sediments of the Tigris River in Wasit Governorate, Iraq

         تهدف  الدراسه الحاليه بصوره الرئيسيه  الى  تقييم التلوث بالعناصر الثقيلة(Mn, Sr, Ba, Cr, Ni, V,    Zn,  Ta,  Rb,  Cu,  Co,  Pb,  Ga,  Mo,  Nb,  Br,  Cd)   ودراسه الجيوكيمياء في  رواسب نهر دجله في محافظه واسط, / العراق . درست هذه العناصر بالاضافه جيوكيمياء الرواسب المتضمنة المعادن للرسوبيات  لثمانية عشر  عينه حيث تمت النمذجة في اذار 2017. تم  دراسة تقييم تلوث المعادن الثقيلة باستخدام مؤشر جيو –التراكم الارضي  (I-geo) ، عامل التلوث (CF) ومؤشر حمل التلوث (PLI) ، حيث تم تطبيق I-geo على نطاق واسع كمقياس للتلوث في منطقة عينات الرواسب. دليل لتراكم الجيولوجي قد طبق بشكل واسع كمقياس لدرجه التلوث في ترسبات نهر دجلة بينما دليل حمل التلوث يمثل عدد المرات التي خرجت  بها العناصر الثقيلة الحد المسموح بها وتشير الى التلوث الكلي  في النموذج المعين في المنطقة الواحدة بالعناصر الثقيلة للدراسة الحالية.  نتائج  العوامل الاحصائية للرواسب بينت ان  ترسبات نهر دجله وللبزول  المجاورة له التي تصب بالنهر هي ملوثه بالعناصرTa, Ni,  Cr, Cd, Mo,  بشكل عالي , وبشكل متوسط لكل من Co, Sr, Cu, Mn, V, Nb,  وهي غير ملوثه بالفلزات  Pb, Br, Ba, Ga, Rb, Zn . مستوى تراكيز العناصر النادرة في رواسب البزول التي تصب بنهر دجلة كانت اعلى مما هو عليه رواسب النهر في كل من Ta, V, Ni, Cu, Ga, Br, Sr , Mo.The main objectives of present study are to evaluate the trace elements pollution in the sediment of the Tigris River and drainage canals in Wasit Governorate, Iraq. Assessment of trace elements pollutants were conducted for 18 sediment samples collected in March 2017. Trace elements were analyzed in sediment Tigris River samples in Wasit Governorate. This metal pollution was evaluated using geo-accumulation (I-geo) index, Contamination Factor (CF) and Pollution Load Index (PLI). According to  these statistical indices, the sediments collected from Tigris River in the study area are highly polluted with Titanium (71.9 ppm), Nickel (226.6 ppm) Chromium (425.2 ppm), Cadmium (2ppm) and Molybdenum (15.8 ppm) while  the sediments  were moderately polluted with Cobalt (25.1 ppm), Strontium (839.3 ppm), Copper (56.2), Manganese (106.1ppm), Vanadium (135 ppm), Niobium (9.79 ppm). However, the sediments of the Tigris River is not polluted by Lead, Barium, Gallium, Rubidium and, Zinc.  Metals concentration levels in the sediments of the drainage canals that discharged into the Tigris River showed higher concentrations  than  the Tigris sediments in Ta, V, Ni, Cu, Ga, Br, Sr and Mo

Federalism: Necessary Legal Foundation for the Central Middle Eastern States

The Central Middle East—comprising of Syria, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan—is in need of a legal foundation defined by a constitutional umbrella that governs it as a whole. This is a proposed broad structure of such legal foundation that serves regional legal and economic needs and includes recognition of human rights. The need for such restructuring is evident from the persistence of regional conflict and instability. Conflict and instability have been constants in the region in general and certainly in the listed five states. The issues include political instability, terrorism, continuous threats of fundamentalism, and pervasive disregard to human life and human rights. Israel has had strife with all the four neighboring peoples and states. Meanwhile, political instability either reigns or undermines each of these neighboring states. This article does not attempt to argue the correctness or fairness of what manifested in the first half of the 20th century; it does, however, argue that the political structure and how it continues to be is part of the reason for the conflicts and the instability. This Article presents federalism for the five states as the necessary political structure and legal foundation, as the one option that allows the five states to co-exist, to recognize human rights as we define them today, and to allow for economic and cultural growth. This Article also argues that such a structure must begin from within, with the support of the great and global powers including the United States and Russia

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN CONTEXT: INVESTIGATING IN-SERVICE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS FOR SYRIAN TEACHERS OF ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE DURING TIMES OF MILITARY CONFLICT

The purpose of this study is to research how teaching practices and in-service professional development of English language teachers’ in Syria have been affected during times of military conflict: what impact English language teachers in Syria perceive the professional development programs they are required to attend have on their teaching and the learning environments they provide for their students, and how this perceived impact relates to the country’s current military conflict; and to explore the ways that teachers can be assisted to enhance their in-service professional development in a country experiencing a military conflict. Thus, by probing these two issues, this study provides the foundation for the initiation of pedagogical change based on a systematic approach towards in-service teacher training programs, exploring the training needs of teachers in light of the current military conflict, and on the Syrian teachers of English as a Foreign Language own perspectives on both these programs and their in-class practices. The importance of this research grows from the scarcity of empirical data on the EFL Syrian teachers’ previous or current practices in their classrooms and in regard to the in-service training they have received. In order to comprehensively address the complexity of the research questions, a mixed method research design using both quantitative and qualitative methods was applied. This allowed for triangulation of data, in order to achieve greater validity and reliability in the study. The methods were designed to be closely related to each other to ensure a fully integrated research design. The questions were investigated through a mixed method approach using a structured survey and teachers’ journal-logs. Concept mapping of teachers’ responses to the open-ended question in the survey served as a check on researcher bias and allowed respondents in the survey population to identify and name clusters of the participants’ responses. The research revealed that the designers of the in-service development programs for Syrian teachers of English as a Foreign Language overlooked the fact that public education is a system in permanent interaction with various individuals with different needs, facing different challenges in different environments. The survey respondents did not believe that the Ministry of Education’s approaches to engage the EFL teachers and their students have been effective. The study revealed that Syrian EFL teachers were not trained to recognize or deal with classroom issues related to or affected by the military conflict. In more general terms, teacher respondents were skeptical about centralized in-service development programs. Therefore, there is a need for a design structured upon the micro attributes and analysis of the specific EFL teachers’ needs in the context of their actual classroom environment. This can occur by involving the teachers in what needs to be included in the programs. This research adds to both international literature on the theme of education in conflict areas in general, and to Syrian EFL teaching during times of military conflict in particular. This research is unique in that it was conducted and completed while the military conflict was still ongoing, unlike most retrospective studies that are conducted after conflicts have been resolved. Another distinctive element of this research, methodologically speaking, is that up to this date, there has not been any empirical research that has examined Syrian in-service EFL programs or their effectiveness from the EFL teachers’ perspectives prior or during The study provides a solid foundation for a systematic redesign of Syrian EFL in-service development programs in a manner that addresses both the teachers’ needs and the students’ language-learning needs while taking into consideration the immediate class environment and broader military conflict

Schema Theory And L2 Reading Comprehension: Implications For Teaching

Reading is a multileveled and interactive process in which readers construct a meaningful representation of text using their schemata.  While it has been known for some time that both content and formal schemata are necessary for a complete understanding of written texts in a reader’s first language (L1), and has been suspected to be true in a reader’s second language (L2), it is still an area that has been generally ignored by both researchers and classroom teachers.  The purpose of this paper is threefold.  The first is to give a brief overview of some of the literature that deals with schema theory as part of a reader centered psycholinguistic processing model for both native and non-native readers.  The second goal is to show how familiarity with the subject matter (i.e., content schema) as one aspect of schema theory, affects L2 reading comprehension.  The third goal is to discuss the implications of schema theory in L2 classrooms

Measurement of Life-saving Training Impacts on Health Care Professionals Retention and Competence: and Patients' Outcomes

This review focused on exploring the significance of CPR impacts on health care professionals' retention abilities and the possibilities of transferring the learning to boost their competency while applying CPR. Considering life-saving training as the most prioritized healthcare professional needs signifies the need to evaluate the actual training impacts on the patients' outcomes. The life-saving training impacts evaluation relies on knowledge retention and the ability to show an adequate competency level while practicing in the clinical field. However, the training specialists' and education experts' failure to link the life-saving training to patients' outcomes would lead only to cyclical and traditional training attempts. The paper reviews the approaches for increasing the direct patients' impacts from CPR. It is an instrumental review to magnify the required training and instruction potentials to maximize learning transfer. Many sections in the review explored similar deficits that we would face in the life-saving modules due to focusing on delivery and instruction without aiming at the outcomes and learning transfer to the patients. This review paper provides an evidence-based approach to explore the specific gaps in training life-saving training programs and explore structured mechanisms for providing life-saving training in hospital settings. Keywords: training impacts, training retention, competence, patients' outcomes DOI: 10.7176/JEP/12-10-03 Publication date: April 30th 202

CONCEPTS OF INFORMATION LITERACY AND INFORMATION LITERACY STANDARDS AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE UNIVERITIES IN THE STATE OF KUWAIT

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the experiences of undergraduate college students attending a public and a private university in the State of Kuwait to understand how they develop their understanding and valuing of information literacy and information literacy standards. Data from student and faculty interviews and student research papers were gathered and analyzed using NVivo. The students' reflections on their prior experiences with research shed light on how the students formed and shaped their concepts on information literacy and their application of selected Information Literacy Competency Standards. Information literacy was not comprehended fully by the students and held different meanings to the participants in this study. The students articulated specific aspects of information literacy and displayed a fragmented understanding of the concept. The themes that emerged focused on the students' research experiences before information literacy instruction, definitions of information literacy, information literacy as a process, influences on developing information literacy skills, documentation, and expectations. The study was conducted with 24 female and male students attending a private university and a public university in Kuwait. Further research needs to be conducted on larger populations locally and regionally to assess student levels and understanding of information literacy as well as the standards in order to design effective holistic approach information literacy instruction

Training English Language Student Teachers to Become Reflective Teachers

Reflective teaching practice has become a central theme in professional growth at the pre-service teacher education level almost everywhere. English language teaching (ELT) teacher trainers, like any other teacher trainers, have a powerful role to play in fostering reflection in their student teachers through the approaches and strategies they incorporate in their training, which can have implications related to the perceived worth of reflective practice. This quantitative study describes the responses of 90 final-year ELT student teachers and eight of their trainers at Sultan Qaboos University in the Sultanate of Oman, to a survey about the roles, approaches and strategies used to help the student teachers to reflect on their teaching. The results show that while the trainers have helped their student teachers to develop as reflective teachers, there are certain practices and aspects adopted by the trainers that need to be reconsidered, as they can have negative implications for teacher preparation

Web-Based MSc Project Evaluation Management System

Web-based Project Evaluation Management System bring the advantage of saving time and resources over the traditional paper and pencil scan sheet method. In order to enhance the performance of the current final project evaluation process in CAS this study proposes developing a web based evaluation management system to replace the current paper forms. Implementing this system will enable the evaluation results to be entered, presume and retrieved anytime anywhere

RMSRS: Rover Multi-purpose Surveillance Robotic System

أصبح تطوير إنترنت الأشياء (IoT) وإنترنت الروبوتات (IoR) أكثر وأكثر مشاركة في حياتنا اليومية. إنه يخدم مجموعة متنوعة من المهام بعضها مهم في الحياة البشرية مثل المراقبة في الوقت الفعلي عن بعد لتجنب المخاطر في الاماكن الخطرة . الهدف الرئيسي من نظام المراقبة المتنقل الذكي هو تطوير نظام مراقبة للكشف عن الأماكن المشبوهة والمستهدفة للمستخدمين دون أي خسائر في الأرواح البشرية. تعرض هذه الورقة تصميم وتنفيذ منصة مراقبة آلية للمراقبة في الوقت الفعلي بمساعدة معالجة الصور ، والتي يمكن أن تستكشف أماكن الوصول الصعب أو المخاطرة العالية. يتدفق البث المباشر الآلي عبر كاميرتين، الأولى ثابتة مباشرة على الطريق والثانية ديناميكية مع إمكانية الإمالة. كلتا الكامرتين لديها قدرات المعالجة الصورية لتحليل وكشف وتعقب الكائنات بالإضافة إلى عدد قليل من الوظائف الرسومية. المكونات المذكورة أعلاه مبنية على قمة نظام المركبات الرباعي مع عزم دوران عالي لتوفير القدرة على الحركة في المناطق الوعرة. يستند هذا العمل إلى الراسبيري باي ويمكن التحكم فيه عبر الواي فاي محليًا أو عالميا عبر الإنترنت. تظهر النتائج إنشاء روبوت ذو إمكانات عالية ومنخفض الكلفة نسبيًا مع الكثير من الميزات والوظائف التي يمكن أن تؤدي مهام متعددة في وقت واحد ، وكلها مهمة للغاية بالنسبة لمشاكل المراقبة ، والتي يتحكم فيها المستخدم من مسافات بعيدة ولفترة طويلة.The development of the internet of things (IoT) and the internet of robotics (IoR) are becoming more and more involved with our daily lives. It serves a variety of tasks some of them are essential to us. The main objective of SRR is to develop a surveillance system for detecting suspicious and targeted places for users without any loss of human life. This paper shows the design and implementation of a robotic surveillance platform for real-time monitoring with the help of image processing, which can explorer places of difficult access or high risk. The robotic live streaming is via two cameras, the first one is fixed straight on the road and the second one is dynamic with tilt-pan ability. All cameras have image processing capabilities to analyze, detect and track objects plus few other graphical functions. The components mentioned above built on top of the four-wheel vehicle system with high torque to provide mobility on rough terrain. This work is based on Raspberry Pi and can be controlled over Wi-Fi locally or publicly over the internet. The results show making a high potential, relatively low price robot with lots of features and functions that can perform multiple tasks simultaneously, all are crucial to surveillance and monitoring problems, controlled by a user from far distances and for a long time