HAPPY ISLAMIC NEW YEAR!

According to the Hijrah calendar (based on the year Muhammad left unwelcoming Mecca for more welcoming Medina), January 9 is Day 1 of 1429. By coincidence, it falls close to Western New Year this year, but every year the 11-day-shorter Islamic calendar begins 11 days earlier and works its way completely around the Western calendar. All Omani government offices get that Wednesday off, including our national university, Sultan Qaboos U. But no one bothered to let us know for sure there was a three-day holiday until just this morning, the day before the weekend! Typically Omani. I'm still thinking of ways to take advantage of this sudden windfall!

Students left town after finals December 31 for the rest of January, so our workload has taken an instant change for the better. Once final grades were in, there was no let-up for me, however, as the Materials Writers Group (WG) had meetings daily with the Curriculum Development Unit. In my Christmas Day posting, I mentioned I had been appointed to this group (a big coup career-wise) and now am finally getting into the thick of it.

I and two other teachers, Claire from Ireland and Jane from Zimbabwe, were the three finalists for the three open positions on the WG. We have been assigned to work on units for a new Level 3 Writing and Language Use textbook to follow up on the new Level 2 book, now almost finished. One of the original group members, Louise, has patiently taken us under her wing as we get started developing the units based on a second-language learning theory advocated by two visiting British materials design experts Brian and Hitomi Thomlinson.

The major goal of their approach is to first come up with reading texts that are “engaging”, i.e. capture students’ interest, and then build from there. So, at this very early stage we are leafing through scores of potential texts to find 3-4 we think are engaging and appropriate for our rather low level. A few ideas we've had so far are articles on Tariq Al-Barwani, an Omani computer whizkid that our students find inspiring, the new Burj Al-Arab skyscraper being built in Dubai, soon to become the world’s tallest building, some consumer electronics item they all like, and something about luxury cars (another particularly male interest here). It’s still very, very early in the process, however.

Good news on the living front. After begging the Housing Department since August to be allowed to live off campus (campus is dead and too far from any events), they finally decided December 30 – the day in between our Writing and Reading final exams – would be the ideal day for the move. Since I’ve been pressing them for so long, I didn’t want to appear ungrateful at the timing, so I decided to bite the bullet and go along with their date. In the end, it added lots of extra stress in the middle of testing and grading, but now I am happily living three blocks from the coast in Athaiba – a suburb about halfway back towards downtown Muscat. It's in a “transitional” neighborhood obviously based around one of the original settlements on the coast with traditional walled compounds, goats roaming around free munching at garbage heaps, and roosters crowing. Expanding into this remnant of old Oman are hundreds of new walled villas with sidewalks, two-car garages and TV dishes.

No change in my mailing address however. I can still be reached at:

Dr Paul Sundberg
Language Centre
Sultan Qaboos University
PO Box 43
Al-Khod, PC 123
Sultanate of Oman

011-968-92 86 74 18 (cell number)