‘I AM NOT WHO YOU THINK I AM’: EMIRATI STUDENTS PERCEPTION OF AND ATTITUTE TOWARDS THEIR PRACTICE OF ACADEMIC WRITING (original) (raw)

Arab EFL Learners' Writing Dilemma at Tertiary Level

There is a general belief among researchers and speakers at conferences and symposia that Arab EFL Learners are primarily responsible for their weak writing performance. Educational policies usually evade criticism. This study is an attempt to show that educational policies can have their role in the learner's writing problems. Viz. it posits that for the most part writing problems can be caused by the employment of outdated approaches and resources. To this end, content analysis has been applied to existing writing courses in three Arab Universities. The examination of these courses has revealed that English Departments adopted approaches and materials characteristic of the 1940s and 1950s. Thus, unless the new the developments into the linguistic and writing theories and approaches are incorporated into the writing syllabus, Arab EFL learners will continue to experience writing problems.

An Investigation Study of Academic Writing Problems Faced by Arab Postgraduate Students at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM

—This study aimed to investigate the academic writing problems encountered by Arab speaking postgraduate students at Universiti Technologi Malaysia (UTM). There are two research questions of this study. The first question involved the identification of mistakes that Arab speaking postgraduate students commit in academic writing at UTM. The second question dealt with the problems Arab speaking students' perceived in academic writing. The data for the study were collected through distributing a set of questionnaires and writing task. The respondents of this study were 85 Arab speaking postgraduate students who come from different Arabic countries like Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Libya, Palestine, and Syria who enrolled for the academic session of 2011/2012. A snowballing technique was used to determine the samples of this study. A set of the questionnaires were distributed to 80 of the respondents to reveal their opinions towards the causes of academic writing problems. Another 5 students were given a writing task which was to write two short paragraphs regarding their fields of works. The students' writing was sent to an expert of English language to identify the mistakes made by the students. The findings of the study nevertheless could be used to recommend effective teaching approaches to teach academic writing that are currently used by English language teachers and specialists.

An investigation of Arabic speaking learners’ difficulties in the academic writing course

2017

Academic writing skills are of vital importance to the success and complete any academic majoratthe university level, yet the development of such skills is a challenge for many Arabicspeakingstudents, particularly those who graduated from schools where English is not thelanguage ofinstruction. It is essential to develop and evaluate strategies that can supportacademic writing skillsfor Arabic speaking students. This qualitative study evaluated a threecredit hours academic Englishcourse for academic writing intervention strategy designed tosupport Arabic speaking students atAbu Dhabi University. Data from the course showed twomajor areas of difficulty for participantsrelating to academic writing: difficulties constructingdifferent types of correct sentences inEnglish, and problems elaborating and supporting newparagraphs ideas in English. Theparticipants showed an improvement in terms of organizationand lay out of essays. Courses likethis intervention successfully meet the basic acad...

Writing Problems and Strategies : An Investigative Study in the Omani School and University Context

Asian Journal of Social Sciences Humanities, 2014

The aim of this paper is to identify and investigate the gaps in English language teaching and learning that exist between post-basic schools and universities in the Sultanate of Oman. The gaps were examined in relation to the problems that school and university language learners encounter when writing in English and to the strategies they follow to overcome these problems. The examined problems concerned writing a correct English sentence; putting the ideas together in a coherent way; choosing the right vocabulary to express ideas and having ideas about the suggested topics and deciding how to start an essay/paragraph. Approaches to writing in the context of English as foreign language informed the study. The study involved a sample of randomly selected 1114 school students and 317 university students from Muscat, Batinah South and Dhakeleya regions of Oman. The results indicate that both groups of students acknowledge that they have problems when writing in English (mean score 3.78 and 3.85). Data regarding writing problems suggest that majority of school and university students struggle with lexical and content aspects of writing, however university students' perceptions of the kind of problems they encounter and of the strategies to address them are more assertive. The study recommends alignment of school and university writing curricula with emphasis on ideas' development, content knowledge, critical and creative thinking.

Writing in a New Environment: Saudi ESL Students Learning Academic Writing

2014

This qualitative case study sought to gain a deeper understanding of the obstacles that students from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia face when learning English in a writing course that implements critical thinking and writing process pedagogy. The study took place over five months at the Virginia Tech Language and Culture Institute in spring 2012. While ten participants--six female and four male Saudi Arabian ESL students--participated in this study, these findings focus primarily on one male and one female student. The aim of this focus was to give a rich and in-depth description of the two students. Two main queries guided this study: 1) How do sex differences affect Saudi students’ perception of their teachers’ and peers’ authority? 2) How do those perceptions affect their development as writers and critical thinkers when learning in an intensive writing course at the high intermediate level? The researcher documented data through three sources: classroom observation, interviews wit...

Saudi Learners' Perceptions of Academic Writing Challenges and General Attitude Towards Writing in English

Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2022

Second language (L2) academic writing is one of the most fundamental, yet sophisticated skills for university students to master. It requires the ability to not only create ideas using sentences, but also construct meaningful, logical and comprehensible texts. Thus, understanding students' attitudes towards L2 writing and exploring the challenges that they experience while composing texts are necessary for L2 teachers and curriculum designers. The overall goal of this study is twofold: (1) to investigate students' perceptions of the difficulty that they experience while writing academic texts in English and (2) to explore learners' attitudes towards writing assignments in English. The goal here is to explore these issues using data obtained from 109 Saudi university students. Data were first collected using a questionnaire and then quantitatively analysed. The results show that students tend to perceive academic writing as challenging and adopt a mildly to moderately positive attitude towards writing in English. These findings offer some implications for teachers and curriculum designers to improve the L2 academic writing skills of students.

Academic writing challenges at Universities in Saudi Arabia and solutions

Abstract: A teacher of English always faces a challenge to teach the writing skill to the foreign language students especially at the UG level. As one of the language skills, writing is excelled only when the other three language skills are excelled. It is the combination of process and product. It involves mastery in grammar and vocabulary to present the message. It requires self-knowledge to express the thought process. It is felt a dry exercise, only used to write the exams. Though the students have the knowledge in English finds it difficult to express. Most of them depend on rote system to get through the examination. If the teacher is asked to teach the students whose English knowledge is absolutely poor at the UG level, it becomes a challenge. We tried all the traditional methods and modern methods to teach writing here in our university, and found out the reasons for the problem. The reasons may not be new, when we compare with that of Indian university students‟. But the difference is here the students do not feel it as a challenge. In India, students force themselves to learn writing for official purposes. This paper tries to present the methods that have been used to teach the foreign students whose mother tongue is Arabic. Key word: L

Strategies of Teaching Writing at Saudi Tertiary-Level Institutions: Reality and Expectations

2021

Teaching writing in English is a particularly daunting task for EFL teachers. Much of it concerns teaching accuracy in text production, development and thought expression which is usually not the teachers’ stated aim. Thus, teachers’ perceptions to the teaching of writing and the actual classroom practices need examination, which is the aim of this study, a prerequisite to recommending pedagogical changes to bridge the gap that exists between educational aims and outcomes so far as the teaching of writing to EFL learners in Saudi tertiary level educational institutions is concerned. The study applies a quantitative approach via a survey conducted with one hundred EFL teachers at Imam Mohammed Ibn Saud Islamic University (IMBSIU, henceforth), Qassim University and King Khaled University, Saudi Arabia. Results suggest that inadequate English resources and inefficient teaching methods are, in general, the main causes of poor writing skills. Further, the teachers perceive limited lexis,...