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The purpose of the current study is to investigate post-basic English teachers` practice of critical thinking skills and the challenges they face while teaching skills in EFL classrooms. Three research questions were investigated to achieve this purpose: 1-To what extent do EFL teachers use classroom behaviors that nurture critical thinking at the post basic education schools? 2-Does EFL teachers' practice of classroom behaviors that nurture critical thinking skills vary according to gender? 3-What challenges do EFL teachers face when incorporating critical thinking in their classrooms?The sample was drawn from 12 post basic schools: 3 female schools, 3 male schools and 6 mixed gender schools. The total number of grade 11 and 12 English teachers in these schools is thirty: 15 males and 15 females. To accomplish the objectives and fulfill the purpose of the study, the study employed a questionnaire and an observation form to collect the data needed to answer the research questions. On looking at the post-basic EFL teachers' use of behaviors nurturing critical thinking skills, the study reveals that post-basic English teachers rarely use the behaviors that nurture critical thinking skills. The findings also show no significant difference between males and females in the use of the behaviors that most nurture critical thinking skills, except for one type of behavior. Moreover, the study results report some challenges that EFL teachers face when teaching critical thinking; these are related to the course book, to extra-curricular activities, to class size and to training.

The purpose of this study was to explore the types of spelling errors students of grade ten make and to find out whether there were any significant differences between males and fe- males with respect to the types of spelling errors made. The sample of the study included 90 grade ten students from four different schools in North Batinah. The researchers manipulated the use of a test that consisted of two questions: an oral dictation test of 70 words with a contex- tualizing sentence and a free writing task. The misspellings were classified into nine different types. The findings revealed that the most common spelling errors among Omani grade ten stu- dents were vowel substitution, then came vowel omission in the second place and consonant substitution in the third place. Male students omitted more vowels than female students while females made more true word errors than their male counterparts. In light of the findings, the study presents some recommendations and suggestions for further studies.

This study aimed to explore the level of critical thinking skills integrated into the tasks of the Omani English language curriculum of young learners. The study implemented a content analysis checklist that was based on the six critical thinking skills which were agreed upon by a group of international critical thinking experts and declared in the Delphi Report that was published by the American Philosophical Association (APA). The two textbooks of grade four, second semester (4B) beside the Teacher’s Book, were utilized as the sample of this analysis. Results of the study showed a low level of critical thinking skills integrated into the tasks of these textbooks as these tasks made up only (35.55%) of all the tasks in the textbooks. In addition, the self-examination subskill was highly represented compared with the other critical thinking subskills (20. 81%). Moreover, results showed that four of the critical thinking subskills (detecting arguments, analyzing arguments, presenting arguments, and self-correction) were absent from the tasks of both textbooks. Based on these findings several implications were addressed.

This study investigates EFL Post-Basic education teachers’ and EFL supervisors’ perceptions toward the importance of providing WCF and the practice of WCF including the techniques, focus, and follow-up methods. It attempts to examine the differences between teachers’ and supervisors’ perceptions on teachers’ WCF practices. The data was collected from 156 EFL teachers who were teaching Post-Basic education grades (11-12) and 62 EFL supervisors through using an online questionnaire. The two participant groups (teachers and supervisors) were randomly selected from three governorates in Oman: Muscat, Al Batinah South, and Sharqia North. The study findings reveal that both teachers and supervisors valued the importance of providing WCF on writing errors. The researcher found that EFL Post Basic education teachers commonly used unfocused indirect coded WCF technique. They mainly focused on forms, particularly the grammatical errors. It was also found that they often used one-draft approach after providing WCF. The supervisors’ responses showed that they had similar views on these practices. Thus, there were no statistically significant differences between the perceptions of the two groups regarding teachers’ WCF practices.