Arts & Sciences Program

Faculty & Staff

Mary Hatakka Lecturer, Communication Email: mhatakka@pi.ac.ae Phone:+971 2 607 5205 Office: 4109 (Umm Shaif)

Academic Qualifications

• MA, University of Helsinki, 1991
• Commenced studies in EdD program at University of Exeter (Dubai) in November 2006

Experience

Mary has been teaching English for Specific purposes (Business, Science and Technology) academic English and critical thinking for over 20 years. She started her teaching career in Finland, where she is from, teaching technical English at a college of further education, the Helsinki Adult Education Centre and the Helsinki Polytechnic. The latter trains students to become engineers for prominent Finnish companies such as Nokia. Part time teaching at FINTRA, the Finnish Centre for Business Training, made her become interested in cross cultural training and business communication. Transferable skills and self esteem issues also became of interest during PD courses at the University of Helsinki. During this time Mary was a member of the National Board of Language Teachers (SUKOL) in Finland and participated in the development of the national languages curriculum for vocational youth and adult education. From 1999 onwards Mary has worked abroad at the HCT, the University of Modena, Italy, the German University in Cairo and from January 2005 at The Petroleum Institute. She has also co-authored a series of five intermediate level textbooks on English for technical purposes currently in use in Finland and an advanced one on the same topic for courses run at the University of Modena.

 
Research Interests

Current research interests include improving reading proficiency, study skills, transferable skills, critical thinking and cross-cultural matters. These are issues that students at The Petroleum Institute face constantly in studying in a foreign language, using textbooks written aboard, mainly in the US and Mary aims to look into them further during the course of her EdD studies.