Developing proficiency in English writing has always been a challenge for L2 learners in general and Saudi learners in particular. Despite the widespread presence of English departments as a result of the sharp rise of Saudi universities in the previous decade, the numbers of outcomes or achievements in terms of skills are very discouraging. This paper aims to study this issue closely by investigating the most crucial elements that are likely to explain this weakness by reviewing the related empirical and theoretical studies in the Saudi context. This paper also aims to present to researchers a quick reference as to how English writing skills have evolved in Saudi Arabia in the recent past, and specifies the challenges faced not only by Saudi L2 learners but also professionals involved in English language teaching. Moreover, this paper provides the professional with an overview of all the pedagogical improvisations carried out so far in the Saudi teaching context and suggests a path for moving forward.
Desarrollar el dominio de la escritura en inglés siempre ha sido un desafío para el alumnado de nivel 2 en general y para el alumnado saudí en particular. A pesar de la presencia generalizada de departamentos de inglés en universidades saudíes desde la década pasada, los resultados y logros son desalentadores. Este artículo investiga de cerca esta situación, tratando de encontrar los aspectos que pueden explicar esta debilidad. Para ello se revisan los más importantes estudios empíricos y teóricos relacionados con el contexto saudí. Este trabajo presenta una panorámica general sobre cómo las habilidades de escritura en inglés han evolucionado en Arabia Saudita en el pasado reciente, y detalla los desafíos que enfrentan no solo el alumnado saudita de nivel 2 sino también los profesionales involucrados en la enseñanza del idioma inglés en este país. Además, se ofrece una visión de las principales innovaciones pedagógicas llevadas a cabo en este terreno y se sugiere un camino de desarrollo futuro.
Desenvolupar el domini de l’escriptura en anglès sempre ha sigut un desafiament per als estudiants de nivell 2 en general i per a l’alumnat en particular. Malgrat la presència generalitzada de departaments d’anglès en universitats saudites des de la dècada passada, els resultats i assoliments són descoratjadors. Aquest article investiga de prop aquesta situació, i tracta de trobar els aspectes que poden explicar aquesta feblesa. Per això es revisen els més importants estudis empírics i teòrics relacionats amb el context saudita. Aquest treball presenta una panoràmica general sobre com les habilitats d’escriptura en anglès han evolucionat a Aràbia Saudita en el passat recent, i detalla els desafiaments que afronten no sols l’alumnat saudita de nivell 2 sinó també els professionals involucrats en l’ensenyament de l’idioma anglès en aquest país. A més, s’ofereix una visió de les principals innovacions pedagògiques dutes a terme en aquest terreny i se suggereix un camí de desenvolupament futur.
Teaching practices in the area of ESL/EFL have been greatly evolved over the years. Various researches have touched upon the factors related to ESL/EFL teaching, but the results have failed to generate similar outcomes in different contexts. Saudi Arabia has implemented many reforms in educational sector, but the lack of desired English language skills, especially writing, among the undergraduate students is still a way below the global standards. Existing research has explored the popular existing practices critically, and has proposed the way forward.
Researches have investigated the factors related to ESL/EFL teaching and learning practices in isolation, such as teachers’ and learners’ perceptions, motivation, teachers’ and learners’ aptitude, L1 influence on ESL learning, cultural and social influence etc., but the existing research critically examines all the studies published in the context of Saudi Arabia, related to teaching writing, with reference to global perspective of ESL/EFL education. This paper reflects on all the factors related to ESL teaching and learning writing practices in the context of Arabic as L1 context in general and Saudi Arabia in particular. Moreover, it provides a quick reference to various stakeholders involved in English education in the kingdom.
While undergraduate students in Saudi universities are expected to have desired English language skills in order to further advance in their specialized areas of study, writing skill has proved to be the most challenging experience for the students as well as the teachers. The other factors like, teaching methodology, strategies and other cultural and social factors which directly and indirectly impacts the expected outcomes. There is a need to have a comprehensive view of the prevalent practices so as to identify each of the related factors in detail, to gain a better understanding of how writing is taught and what are the factors which influence their active learning.
It is believed that teaching English in Saudi Arabia began in 1928 (
Year |
World Ranking |
Average EE EPI Score of Saudi Arabia |
Average EE EPI Score of Middle East |
Position in Middle East |
Status |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2019 |
98/100 |
41.60 |
44.60 |
10/10 |
Very Low Proficiency |
2018 |
83/100 |
43.65 |
46.02 |
10/10 |
Very Low Proficiency |
2017 |
72/80 |
43.98 |
45.31 |
9/9 |
Very Low Proficiency |
2016 |
68/72 |
40.91 |
43.62 |
11/13 |
Very Low Proficiency |
2015 |
68/70 |
39.93 |
44.85 |
12/13 |
Very Low Proficiency |
As it is shown in above table, the rank of Saudi remained at the bottom for the last five years regardless of the costly attempts to reform education over the past five years. Moreover, half of the population in Middle East is under 30, so providing jobs to everyone is impossible for public sector enterprises. Therefore, Gulf States have carried out major educational reforms and have allowed most of the public as well as private institutions to westernize their curricula to switch over to English in most of their degree programs (
More specifically, many studies indicate an obvious weakness in the writing skills of Saudi learners (
It is crucial to study the context in which L2 learners learn English language, in order to better understand their level of English language ability, particularly with English writing. This paper will discuss the elements that have essential and direct impact on writing, and will elaborate on the significance of each element, to comment on how such factors play out in the Saudi context in an attempt to shed light on the writing weaknesses of Saudi L2 learners who major in English at Saudi universities.
Since teaching of writing in EFL involves various factors such as the interference of L1, the strategies and techniques followed in learning context, the role of instructors and their feedback mechanism to get the maximum output, motivation level of the learners in improving their writing skill which is relatively demanding and requires a lot of time to achieve a desirable fluency. For easy reading, the paper has been divided into various sections. Section 1 starts with a brief introduction of the EFL writing practices in general, which is further connected to the theoretical foundations of writing theories that are relevant in the Saudi context in section 2. Section 3 and 4 focus on the role of L1 and teaching strategies followed in writing classes in Saudi universities. Section 5 and 6 assess the role of instructors and the feedback mechanism they follow in their writing classes. These sections also reflect on the students’ concerns with regard to writing classes. Section 7 and 8 reflect on the motivation level of the students as well as teachers’ perception on the same. The status of English writing among learners majoring in English language is also discussed at length.
Writing emerged as a distinct area of scholarship in the 1980s when various theoretical models were proposed to account for teaching of writing in ESL context. A theory is meaningless unless it is physically realized or tested (
|
||
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L1 |
L2 |
FL |
The process approach |
The controlled-to-free approach |
There is no well-defined approach to teaching foreign language writing per se. |
The prose model approach |
The freewriting approach |
Audiolingual approach (dominant in 1950s and 1960s) It focused on oral language and treated writing as support skill. |
The experiential approach |
The pattern-paragraph approach |
Communicative approach (1970s) Notion of communicative competence applied both to writing and speaking. |
The rhetorical approach |
The grammar-syntax-organization approach |
ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines (1986). Emphasized on all the four language skills (Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing) |
The epistemic approach |
The communicative approach |
|
A linguistic system approach |
The process approach |
From
Theories |
Stages |
Dominant Ideas |
---|---|---|
Communicative Theory ( |
Stage 1: Controlled /guided approach |
Influenced by structural linguistics and behavioral psychology, proposed learning as habit formation |
Contrastive rhetoric Theory ( |
Stage 2: Current-traditional rhetoric approach |
Influenced by Kaplan’s Contrastive rhetoric ( |
Cognitive development theory ( |
Stage 3: Process approach |
Effective and efficient writing development (from pre to post stages of writing) |
Social constructivist ( |
Stage 4: Social approach |
Approximation with the discourse community |
Until recently, the communicative approaches have found to focus more on oral proficiency than writing. But the idea of ‘writing to learn’ has generated a new interest in writing across the curriculum, writing for academic purposes, in composition, and also in English as second/foreign language learning. Ample research indicate that basic language literacy can be developed by those who are already literate in a first language, but the studies suggest that Saudi Arabia ’s quality language learning in the first language impacts EFL as well. Until the nature of second/foreign writing is fully explored so as to assess how the students learn to write correctly, actual current practices in EFL classrooms will be slow to change.
The title of the paper suggests that the prevalent practices, with regard to writing in EFL instruction, are simply influenced by ‘learning to write’ approach, which is way behind ‘writing to learn’ strategies. In most of ESL settings, ‘writing to learn’ is seen a process wherein the learners are actively involved in varieties of contexts and domains of educational pursuit to engage in a discourse (
Writing has long been considered a support skill for learning grammar in foreign language instruction (
Writing theories related to L1 have developed into a number of different schools of thought: the expressive school of thought (
There are several reasons behind the dominance of GTM and ALM in the Saudi classroom. First, although teachers and instructors came from different countries and cultural backgrounds, they are otherwise similar in that they share the same cultural principles. Further, their academic backgrounds are similar since there are no significant differences among Arab universities. Second, Saudi culture supports the teacher’s dominance in the classroom since older adults are given the upper hand in every aspect of family life (
Though the process approach appears to beneficial with regard to Saudi L2 learners’ writing (
The 1950s witnessed the birth of contrastive analysis (
On the macro level, (
However, though Kaplan’s (
The participants of the study represented five Arab countries: Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. She concluded that the colloquial variety of Arabic –not Classical Arabic– has a significant influence on Arab students’ writing. (
Teaching writing to L2 learners who already have a complex and highly different writing system in their L1 will be difficult if we ignore the differences and the similarities between the two languages. Therefore, universal writing books will not be very useful for L2 learners because they, unlike L1, have already studied a writing system and will always use it as reference while they are learning L2 writing system.
John Dewey ’s (
Unfortunately, the dominant approach in teaching writing in Saudi Arabia in a second language context bases its fundamentals on a teacher- centered approach (Whitefield & Pollard, 1998, as cited in Grami,
Other reasons attributed to Arab L2 weaknesses in writing are educational policies, the organization of teaching materials and resources, and different levels of language aptitude and diverse linguistic backgrounds (
In addition, Arab learners have a major macro-linguistics failure when it comes to writing, due to different reasons such as unqualified teachers, inadequate teaching practice, and insufficient exposure to authentic texts in English (
Along with the effectiveness of using strategies, the importance of using the language outside the classroom has proven to be the crucial factor in developing writing skills (
The classroom environment cannot be separated from its cultural surroundings. In t he Arab world, the teacher is considered to be a permanent element who demands respect (
(
Teacher’s feedback on students' writing is considered to be a fundamental aspect of teaching L2 writing (
As a response to Truscott’s (
In conclusion, research shows that both instructors and learners realize the crucial role-played by teacher’s feedback in terms of improving L1 learners’ writing. However, applying the technique involving teachers’ feedback appropriately is still not used as extensively as it should be in Saudi classrooms because of the large number of students involved and because teachers and instructors are not trained and encouraged to provide feedback in the classroom. One technique that can be used to ease this difficulty is peer feedback, where students correct their classmate’s papers to save time, and allow instructors to focus on the critical mistakes. The obstacle of using peer feedback more widely in the classroom might be due to fact that this technique mainly relates to the collaborative learning method, and classroom s in the Saudi context are still controlled by the authority of the teacher, and because the dominant approaches in EFL classes are the audio-lingual and translation approaches.
In general, motivation has proved to enhance second language learning (
However, there are different types of internal and external motivation that can influence the process of learning L2 writing. Internal motivation is divided into integrative and instrumental motivation. Integrative motivation indicates that the learner’s interest in learning another language is driven by his /her sincere interest in that language and its culture. On the other hand, instrumental motivation comes from a specific goal associated with learning a task, such as having to interact with English speakers or achieving a job opportunity (
However, two studies that limited their population to undergraduate participants revealed contradictory results. (
Various studies have observed that that teachers are the strongest determinant of learners’ motivation (
As mentioned previously, most of the studies that investigated Saudi L2 learner's problems in writing have focused on or included public school students (age range from fourteen to eighteen years). Reasons might be that the English departments in universities do not have the same flexibility as public schools have regarding conducting studies. Also, the population of English departments is usually lesser than that found in public schools, which encourage researchers to focus on public school students for logistical reasons. However, the English departments in Saudi universities are the main source of English teachers as well as English L2 learners. Therefore, focusing on what is happening inside the classroom of these departments will give us a more in-depth view with regard to what happens in other educational institutions such as public schools, community colleges, and preparatory year programs. Three studies have focused on the writing dilemma faced by participants majoring in English in Saudi universities. The first one was conducted in Taif University, which explored the reasons for Saudi English-major undergraduate writing problems, and offered a solution (
The present researcher's experience in teaching writing courses for Saudi English-major undergraduates is in the line of Al-khariy’s (
In another study conducted at Qassim University, the researcher investigated professors’ and learners’ perceptions with regard to writing difficulties (
(
Regarding their experience of learning English writing in Saudi Arabia, all three participants agreed on major flaws related to studying in an English department at a Saudi university. First, the writing skill courses didn’t have a clear and a convincing plan leading to the development of good writing skill. Second, in general, there was insufficient practice of writing in the writing courses, and the instructors focused on theoretical aspects when they gave instructions on writing. Third, the instructors who taught the writing courses were neither specialized in writing nor ha d much experience in teaching writing. Finally, the participants were not benefited sufficiently by the different courses they had in writing. For example, they did not know the types of writing until they studied in the AELC. The students lacked motivation as the feedback provided by the instructors were not comprehensive and encouraging on their writing papers. Regarding their studying in the AELC and comparing it with their experience of studying writing in Saudi universities, all the participants revealed that they had a positive experience in the former, and their writing skill had improved with some variations. Two participants expected the course to be more helpful, but all the participants admitted that the overall experience in the AELC was better than the Saudi experience, (
|
|
---|---|
GTM |
|
ALM |
|
- |
|
Education policies |
( |
Lack of motivation among learners |
( |
Ineffective feedback mechanism |
( |
Lack of clarity in course syllabi |
( |
Lack of well-defined course objectives |
( |
Lack of learners’ autonomy |
( |
Low self-esteem and other affective factors |
( |
Lack of appropriate use of technology |
( |
Lack of professional instructors, lack of authentic texts |
( |
However, though many significant studies have shown that effective strategies exist in the teaching of writing, they have not yet found their way to the classroom. The need to establish an educational foundation for applying effective strategies is essential to improve the outcomes of the English departments; otherwise all the studies will be a waste of time and effort.
The root cause of weakness in L2 writing in Saudi Arabia was investigated by searching the outcomes of the most closely-related papers and research in order to prove that the bases of this problem is built on different layers. First, writing is a complicated skill, and the process of teaching it must not ignore important factors such as the learners’ L1. In addition to this, new theories of teaching writing to L2 have not yet found their way s into classrooms in the English departments in Saudi universities. Moreover, writing skills are still considered as a secondary course in the English department and is taught by non-certified and untrained instructors; most of the instructors hired have a background in literature, applied linguistics or linguistics, but not in specialized professional courses like Teaching of English to speakers of other language/English as second language/English as foreign language (TESOL/TEFL). Thus, the instructors’ methods with regard to teaching writing in Saudi EFL classrooms hinder the process of learning writing rather than supporting it and create a negative impact on the learners’ skills.
In an attempt to westernize the educational system, various reforms have been made over the last five years to enhance the outcomes of higher education in Saudi Arabia. Research do suggest that prevalent instructional practices like GTM and ALM are found to be less productive, so methods which are familiar to composition studies need to be put in use, so as to switch pedagogical principle from
Limited writing practices and lack of effective feedback are realized as the core component to be addressed by the writing courses; and, this is not limited to EFL instructors only, but the L1 teachers do need to have adequate training in teaching writing. Current feedback practices are more mechanical in nature. Therefore, collaborative learning method should be encouraged so that the learners enjoy autonomy over their learning process. Other than that, integrative motivation is also found to be a crucial factor in this context as the learners lack intrinsic motivation to learn a foreign language; this might be due to the lack of foreign language courses in various universities in Saudi Arabia and lack of job opportunities for foreign language interpreters and translators. These factors eventually have implications on the students majoring in English.
Through the reading of the studies and papers relating to this topic, it's obvious that skills courses, particularly writing skill courses, are considered to be secondary courses. This attitude may be understandable in English departments in English-speaking countries or in the countries where English is the second language, but not in case of Saudi Arabia where English is considered a foreign language and is not spoken outside the classroom. Moreover, the overall motivation behind students joining the English departments in Saudi Arabia universities is instrumentalist (