Appropriating BANA Teaching Approaches to Suit TESEP Contexts: A Case Study in a Saudi University

This article briefly looks at the practice of appropriating Western teaching methodologies into the Arab world. It accounts for recent and historical attempts to do so and evaluates the success or otherwise of such practice. The paper adopts Adrian Holliday's (1994) distinction between British, Australian and North American (BANA) context and Tertiary, Secondary, and Primary English language education (TESEP) where the context of the current study fits. The paper argues that appropriating Western methodologies risks alienating the culture from which these teaching approaches come. Since one reason for learning a language is to become familiar with its culture, one may question the need for adapting its teaching methodologies by simply separating it from its cultural values in the first place. The question is that shall one protect his or her cultural identity by dismissing the cultures of other dominant languages? This is a conundrum that cannot be easily saved but one that needs looking at nonetheless. The paper looks at a widely used series of textbooks in a TESEP context and attempts to see if adapting ow local contexts can shape BANA methodologies.