Prospective Teachers Connecting through Innovation for Target Language Development

This paper examines the context for 35 prospective teachers of English language teaching (ELT) at the Muscat Intermediate Teacher Training College (MITTC), Sultanate of Oman, and looks at the problems that they encounter in becoming competent in English. An extracurricular program was implemented at MITTC to help the prospective teachers to develop their English language repertoire by focusing on two distinct modes of language: "General English" (GE) and "Professional English" (PE). The paper goes on to examine and evaluate the perceptions of the participants to their GE and PE development through three types of self-reported surveys. Results indicated that the program was effective and successful and that the activities enriched the prospective teachers' linguistic competence in English. Another important finding was that more emphasis needs to be laid on speaking through the design of more activities that deal with practicing speaking at the GE level.