Teaching english to saudi police cadets: An evaluation study

Abstract

This study evaluated the teaching of English to Saudi police cadets at King Fahd Security College in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The participants included three groups of stakeholders: six English teachers, sixteen former police cadets and 122 current police cades. Data collection instruments included a set of three short questionnaires and observation. The analysis of the results showed that the ESP course and teaching at KFSC is ineffective and inappropriate due to administrative and methodological factors. The current ESP course lacks the major principles associated with the teaching of English for specific purposes such as meeting the police cadets' actual needs and turning these needs into operational objectives that can be tested. Administratively, the three groups of stakeholders expressed their dissatisfaction with the course duration and timing. The study concludes with some important pedagogical implications for the improvement of the ESP course and teaching at KFSC. Today, the need for English as a foreign language has brought about a significant adjustment in the requirements of many educational systems, including police education. Thus, evaluation plays an important role in language education in general and ESP in particular since it answers various questions related to the feasibility and quality of English teaching courses and programs in terms of achieving the learning objectives and bringing about the intended outcome. However, despite the fact that evaluation is an indispensible tool in language education, it is still an overlooked area in both language teaching and research, especially in military and police contexts. Therefore, this study attempted to evaluate the ESP course used to teach English to police cadets at King Fahd Security College (hereafter KFSC).