Thirteenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

There has been an increased interest among researchers concerning the relationship between faith and English language teaching in the context of the global spread of English; however, to this date, very few studies have focused TEFL and Islam. In light of the wider socio-political, ideological or religious issues connected to the global spread of English, this study draws on the experiences of six Muslim EFL teachers, commonly referred as “native speakers”, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by qualitatively investigating their representations of Islam and TEFL. Based on a non-realist rhetorical analysis of interview data, the study explores the participants’ worldviews and their positionality as native speakers, Muslim EFL teachers in the KSA, thereby exploring how Islam impacts their professional practice. The study concludes that language teaching issues are inextricably intertwined with broader issues such as religion, thereby arguing that the links between religion and language teaching need to be explicitly addressed within the TESOL arena.