Teaching English in the United Arab Emirates

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The following comments are from teachers who have taught, or are currently teaching, in United Arab Emirates. If you are a teacher and have some advice to share, please add it here.

Anonymous on 23 May 2008

quote Teaching in the UAE is a very enjoyable experience. The students are not always motivated and can be rowdy, but if you have good classroom management skills, then you should be fine. I found that Emirati students have very good speaking and listening skills, but their writing, spelling and grammar is atrocious.

Tom on 26 August 2008

quote I've been teaching in Abu Dhabi for 10 years and have been teaching in the Gulf region: Oman and Saudi Arabia for nearly 17 years. My advice, particularly for teachers new to this region, is that in my experience, Arab students from this region are unlike students from many other parts of the world in many ways. First, they don't have many learning skills and don't have basic classroom skills. This is not their fault, they just haven't been taught how to learn. So, a steep learning curve there, for both students and teachers new to the area.

Second, RSA communicative 'touchy/feely' methodology just doesn't work for these students in my experience. They don't have independent learning skills and it's difficult to wean them off being overly dependent on the teacher. So, your teaching has to be very teacher-centred, at least initially, until they get used to you.

Third, you can command great respect from your students if they perceive you as being serious about your job and caring from them as individuals. You can have a laugh with them as well, just as long as they know you're the boss! Keeping this precarious balance between freedom and control, for me, has been the most challenging and rewarding part of the job. Some of the things you might have been taught in the RSA CELTA and DELTA, such as 'student-centred' classes, group-work and pair-work have to be approached much more slowly and carefully than they would with European students in an European setting, for example.

You have to respect the taboos of the culture and religion, so as not to offend anyone, which's true, of course, in any culture. However, it is especially true here. For cultural reasons it can be more challenging for a woman teaching here in the sense that a female teacher can, at least initially, find it hard to command the same respect as a man. My wife has been teaching here for the same length of time as me and she endorses me in this.

Finally, for teachers new to this region and used to teaching European students, don't expect the same level of learning skills, classroom skills or world knowledge [especially of the western world] in students of equivalent age. What you achieve with your classes is entirely up to to you. Progress can be slow because there are so many skills connected to language learning that they need to acquire, in addition to actually learning English!

However, It can be the most rewarding teaching experience of your life because in many cases you're bringing students from zero or near zero to a reasonable knowledge and ability in English over a period of a year, for example.