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Being fluent in English is of a paramount importance in U.A.E.That is what explains the high demand on English training courses in this area.However,U.A.E students face some issues when it comes to learning the English language. For starters,there is the matter of being shy.The Emirati student is often shy by definition and as we all know,learning a language efficiently depends heavily on interaction and participation in the class.So,for a teacher to get those learners to talk,it could take ages.This can slow down their progress and in turn,discourage them.Cultural factors might as well get in the way for them.In fact when you learn a language,you are also entitled t learn the culture of the country that speaks the language and it is no secret that the English culture,being a western culture,is extremely different from the Arabic muslim culture adopted by the U.A.E residents.Unfortunately,difference is not an advantage in our case.In other words,Teaching the language in a proper way requires using English books. As we said earlier,those manuals will definitely reflect and represent the western culture in some of its aspects.The big issue here is that these aspects can be seen offensive in a conservative country like U.A.E even if it is perceived innocent somewhere else.For instance,the pictures of high school children dancing in a party would be seen as inappropriate.The reading comprehension texts that involve romance would be intimidating.Some might say: Why should this be a problem? the manuals can be customized and the offensive content can be cut all together. yet,this is not as simple as it seems.it is rather time and money consuming. Another issue is the pronunciation. Most of the Emirati students find difficulties pronouncing English correctly and sometimes it would come with a very heavy accent.You could till from the first letter they utter that they come from a gulf area and no matter how hard they try to work on that,it still resists.The reason behind this problem is that most of them learn the language at a late stage of their lives.That is to say,the best time to master a language is the early years of childhood.To be more precise,it happens best between the age of 3 and 10.However, the U.A.E students do not tend to learn English during this period.More attention is given to subjects like math,science and Arabic.They start realizing that English is important when it is too late.For example,they would enroll at an English course because they have to pass an IELTS test or because there is a job that requires that.So,clearly taking the class seems to be more like a burden to them not something they would enjoy.Thus,How can you expect them to learn at ease to pronounce properly?Moreover,let's not forget about grammar. It is the biggest challenge for U.A.E learners.The arabic grammar logic is far different from the English one.It is no wonder than that they would sometimes complain that it does not make sense for them.It takes a huge effort from the tutor to explain and make it sound reasonable to them.Overall,teaching and learning English in U.A.E can be pretty hard given all the above circumstances.Nevertheless,a smart teacher can always create a motivational atmosphere and make the learning process a very lovely journey that his students would long to embark upon.
