Investigating Quality Assurance Mechanisms in EFL Programs in the Sultanate of Oman: Challenges and Opportunities

: -In the Sultanate of Oman, there is increasing awareness of the need to establish and monitor quality assurance mechanisms in various branches of higher education (Carroll, Razvi, Goodliffe, Al Habsi, 2009). Without such activity, higher education outcomes will not be measurable against a set of identified criteria crafted to suit national policies and plans. Hence, the overriding motivation for this study is to identify the mechanisms used by higher education English Foundation Programs (EFP) to implement and uphold the standards for the English area of the Foundation Program (FP) identified in the standards document approved by the Ministry of Higher Education, which was prepared by the Ministry of Higher Education, The Oman Accreditation Council (OAC) (now Oman Academic Accreditation Authority, OAAA) and Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) with input from all higher education institutions across the country. The study also investigates the challenges facing these programs and the opportunities that are available for them. This is important because learning about the challenges will definitely shed light on the obstacles higher education face in achieving quality outcomes and will provide an indication on whether these are similar or different in institutions across the Sultanate. Such an endeavor will prompt us to find solutions to the challenges. In the same manner identifying the opportunities will encourage English programs to utilize them to help solve their problems and to capitalize on their strengths.