The Department of English at American University of Sharjah (AUS) will produce the new Bloomsbury Series entitled Teaching and Learning English Literacy and Academic Language Skills. Dr. Alessandro Benati, Professor of English and Head of the Department of English, and Dr. Ahmad Al-Issa, Professor of English and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at AUS, are co-editors of the new series, which will be launched in January 2020.   

Published by Bloomsbury, the series will provide tailor-made textbooks for English general education courses offered through an American-style of education.

These textbooks will be crafted to better teach, support, and assess skills related to critical reading, comprehension, textual analysis, critical thinking, employability, public speaking and writing research projects in English. They will also offer a suitable content-frame to teach these skills more effectively by emphasizing information literacy, critical thinking and reflection, diverse viewpoints, and core communication and knowledge skills which are central to the liberal arts.

Speaking about the series, Dr. Benati said:

“The new proposed series will be unique in the market as it will develop textbooks that are tailored to the needs of students studying in America degree programs in the Middle East.”

The first textbook of the series, entitled Writing the Research Paper:  Multi-Cultural Perspectives for Writing in English as a Second Language, will be co-authored by two faculty members from the Department of English: Dr. Khawlah Ahmed, Professor of English; and Dr. Philip McCarthy, Assistant Professor of English.