Innovation in Language Learning

Nowadays, poor academic performance is among the main concerns of teachers, syllabus designers, curriculum developers and the whole educational body. The issue becomes worse in non-English speaking countries where the medium of instruction at colleges/ universities is English but students are exposed to English for a limited number of hours before beginning their study at college/university. To answer the question ‘what are the causal factors that affect students’ poor performances in non-English speaking countries like Oman, 151 essays written by students who enrolled for post foundation program at University    of Technology & Applied Science-Salalah were examined carefully. The factors involved in students’ low academic achievements categorized into four macro types; student-related factors, teacher- related factors, family- related factors and some other factors such as marriage, health problem, toxic friendships and transportation problem. The findings show that while student-related factors have the highest impact on students’ performance, teacher-related factors had the lowest effect. The outcomes of the current study contributes to come to some conclusions among them are: 1) students need to understand subject matter they are taught, 2) tasks needs to be localized culturally, 3) students need to be present in class regularly, 4) college rules and regulations should be strict and 5) the competitive environment could be conducive and stimulating for surface learners to motivate them to reflect on their learning and spend more time for learning.