awej 5 no.4 full issue 2014

AWEJ Volume.5 Number.3, 2014Perceptions of American Academic Discourse: Cases of Three SaudiMaddoxDiscussion and implicationsThis study inquired about spoken academic discourse SLS of three Saudi-Arabian undergraduatestudents in the US. The interviews with participants elucidated that they had little opportunity forspoken academic interactions, and consecutively little opportunity for academic discourse SLS.Unfortunately, I was only able to observe Hala’s and Hamza’s biology lecture classes, whichconfirmed findings from the student interviews. Unarguably, the goal of lecture is to delivercontent, and unsurprisingly the opportunities for interactions are scarce. Therefore, it would beinteresting to observe students in their practical or laboratory classes to obtain more concreteideas about participants’ SLS.Curiously, when participants did have a chance to speak up or respond to professor’squestions, they chose to stay silent. Although Amir had plethora of opportunities to participate inwhole-class discussions during his presentation class, and both Hamza and Hala could haveanswered a question posed by their professors, they never spoke up. This finding illustrates theimportance of instructors’ and professors’ awareness of Saudi Arabian and other internationalstudents’ “silence” and the need to think of creative ways to engage students and allow them toexpress their “voice” because many of the Saudi Arabian students can bring valuableperspectives on issues discussed in class based on their background and culture. So, the missionis twofold: to allow Saudi Arabian students to be full members of the discourse that theyparticipate in as well as to allow the American students to broaden their horizons by hearing newopinions, as Leki (2001) was also advocating.The nonlinearity of the process of socialization is evident from discussions withparticipants where they elaborate on their experiences outside of the academic classroom, forinstance learning English at home via educational TV programs. The realm of the classroom isnot the sole space for socialization and academic language development. Similar to Kobayashi’s(2003, 2005) research, this study demonstrated that socialization of the discourse is a non-stopprocess, whether it is through collaboration with students outside of the classroom, or throughwatching educational programs on TV and simply conversing with the native English speakersand gaining confidence in talking in the English language.Similarly to findings from previous research (Barnawi, 2009; Leki, 2001; Lee, 2009;Morita 2004, 2009), participants felt that they were less competent than their American peers dueto linguistic difficulties. Unlike in previous studies (Zappa-Hollman, 2001, 2007) participants didnot report on any sociocultural issues. Although they chose to stay silent in instances where theycould have spoken up, they didn’t express feelings of inadequacy or discomfort due to a newacademic cultural environment. This confidence could be explained by the fact that they spent asignificant amount of time studying at IES, where they began their process of socialization intonew academic culture.The theory of SLS (Duff 2007, 2010) stresses the importance of the instructor’s role inthe process of international students’ socialization. In line with the tenets of the theory andfindings from previous research (Kobayashi, 2003, 2005; Yang, 2010), this study suggested thevital role that the instructor plays in Saudi Arabian students’ socialization. Instructors mustunderstand that these students are coming from a very different education culture and might havetrouble with verbalizing their difficulties and challenges. This means that faculty should be mademore aware of the needs of international students, specifically Saudi Arabian students. Forinstance, students expressed that often the objectives were not clear to them. Instructors could bemore precise in setting expectations for international students.Arab World English JournalISSN: 2229-9327www.awej.org108