awej 5 no.4 full issue 2014

AWEJ Volume.5 Number.3, 2014Perceptions of American Academic Discourse: Cases of Three SaudiMaddoxWatching TV. Watching really good programs on TV…When I watch TV, really goodprograms about policy [politics], about people teaching other people, about sciences,shows, news, it gives you really good academic language. (Hamza)Participants spoke extensively about presentation as one of the main activities for thedevelopment of their speaking and listening skills. Hamza pointed out that taking notes duringpresentation is something that helps him enhance his language learning.Presentations, taking some notes…that definitely help, so much helpful for speaking andeven for listening skills… See that’s [taking notes during presentation] helping you forlike listening and also speaking during the presentation, that’s really helpful. Listen toone story [presentation] and then the next day you come up and give your presentation,that’s really helpful. (Hamza)Amir spoke of debate as an invaluable activity to improve their speaking and listening skills. Hementioned that incorporating debate in class could be a really engaging activity for students.Debate really did help…Definitely. The exciting thing about it, the students gets engagedwith that idea, so if they to debate, they want to prove their point, so they talk more andeverything. (Amir)However, debates were only help in his IES classes. Amir expressed his desire to include debatein his university classes. He even shared a way that professors could conduct them in scienceclasses. He provides a specific example of how one could introduce debates into contentuniversity class:Even with organic chemistry or biology, you can debate. If you give two proposals for anexperiment, how would you like to proceed with the experiment…Each like make teams,and each one would come up with their own plan. But that’s gonna take a while, that’sgonna consume the class time, which is very short. (Amir)One dominant theme throughout the interviews and observation data was the role of theinstructor in students’ socialization into the American academic discourse. Students spoke of theimportance of instructors providing clear directions for assignments, focusing on the mostrelevant material, engaging students in the classroom, making learning fun, and demonstratinggood people skills. Students expressed the need to know a clear purpose, for which they weredoing certain tasks. Sometimes faculty was not explicit in their explanations of the assignmentrequirements and students were unsure of the instructors’ expectations. For instance, because ofthe diligent work of the instructor, Hamza was able to understand the value of reading andinvested much effort and time in it:It depends from teacher to teacher. OK, I had one teacher…She asked us to read a lot ofarticles, a lot of things, thought articles and stories. That helped us. Compared to otherteachers…She wasn’t like that, she was specific with reading…We worked hard todeserve a lot…I think that helped me with my writing. (Hamza)On the other hand, Hala’s instructor failed to explicitly explain the value of reading, and Halawas left with the impression that reading in English did not benefit her in any manner. When Iasked Hala what activities she considered irrelevant for her language development skills, sheresponded:I think that reading. When I was in IES, the teacher always told me “You have to read toimprove your writing when you read you know how to spell the word, you know how tocreate a sentence…. But cause I don’t enjoy reading in English, so when I do I feelboring [bored].Arab World English JournalISSN: 2229-9327www.awej.org106