ABU DHABI // The culture of oral storytelling presents a challenge to those attempting to encourage reading in the region, experts say.
Dr Melanie Gobert, the past president of Tesol Arabia teachers’ organisation and co-founder of the Mena Extensive Reading Foundation, said she believed the lack of a culture of reading had a detrimental effect on education standards in the region.
“I’ve been teaching in Saudi Arabia and the UAE since 1993, and I’ve come to realise just how little Gulf Arab students read,” Dr Gobert said.
“A lot of this has to do with competition from technology – mobile phones, messaging, and online video games – but a lot of it has to do with the lack of a reading habit in the society because they are traditionally considered an oral culture, where stories and folklore are passed down by word of mouth.”
On Saturday, the Year of Reading Mini-Conference takes place at the Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi to address the continuing challenges of promoting a culture of reading, bringing together academics from around the emirates to tackle what is becoming an academic crisis, leaving pupils poorly prepared for higher education.
Dr Gobert said teachers such as herself, who have a lot of experience in the region, should impart to new teachers “how the lack of a reading culture or lack of reading impacts students’ performance from a very early age”.
There was not a culture of parents taking children to libraries, or reading bedtime stories, which compounded the problem.
Results speak for themselves, she said, and a lack of reading hinders students when they reach higher education.
The International English Language Testing System exam in reading uses a rating range of one to five.
Candidates from the UAE score on average 1.40 below the rest of the world in the test, and 0.40 below the rest of the Arabic test takers, Dr Gobert said.
On the general training module, UAE test takers score, on average, 2.6 less than the rest of the world, and 1.70 less than the average Arabic participant.
“In a previous research study that I conducted in 2008 on the reading habits of Emirati students, 41 per cent of the respondents reported that they did not read at all in Arabic or English outside the classroom,” Dr Gobert said.
One of the organisers of the conference, Dr Helene Demirci, co-chairwoman on the Mena Extensive Reading Foundation, said: “Without the basic tools of reading, studies in later life become much more challenging.
“With the advances in technology there is so much information to process in such a short time.
“If students lack the basic skills in reading, there are challenges in that students will not be able to keep up with the amount of new knowledge and information available and this could result in losing opportunities in the workplace.”
She hoped the conference would provide a forum for the presenters to share their successes in encouraging reading.
Bridie Farah, chairwoman of the Tesol Arabia Read special interest group, is also an organiser of the conference.
She said it was time to change the way educators educate.
“I think one of the biggest challenges is to find out what works and what doesn’t in schools and in higher education.
“I think, as with the rest of the world, that one of the major obstacles is finding ways to interest students and to excite them about reading.”
mswan@thenational.ae
