Improving the Writing Skills of Saudi Students

Improving the Writing Skills of Saudi Students in English-Speaking Colleges

Learning a foreign language and using it to enhance a traveling experience is one thing, but using a second language for studies in higher education is truly difficult. Those who are able to accomplish their academic goals in a language that is not their first language achieve something quite remarkable. The purpose of this study is to explore the differences in Saudi students writing in Arabic and English, to research the perceptions of Saudi students regarding their experiences studying abroad and any effects on their writing in English that they attribute to living in an English-speaking country.

While there are many different aspects of English language that make reading, speaking, and writing difficult for students whose first language is not English, one of the most troublesome is cohesion. This paper will explore the concept of cohesion as it impacts the study and utility of English language by students who speak Arabic as a primary language. The focus of the paper is on cohesion in English language writing and reference is made to the taxonomy of coherence markers as described by Biber, et al. (1999) and Dilin Lui (2008).

Halliday developed an internationally recognized model of language the referred to as a systemic functional linguistic model. It stands to reason that the two primary attributes Halliday focused on are the semiotic system of meaning: 1) The meaning potential that enables people to exchange meanings through language, 2) the systemic attributes of language as a network consisting of interrelated options that may be employed to create meaning, and 3) the functional basis of language that is observed according to how language serves to communicate meaning, and so efficiently "reflects the multidimensional nature of human experience and interpersonal relations" via its multidimensional architecture.

Literature Review

The literature suggests that four primary drivers contribute to the poor English writing skills of Saudi students studying in the United States. These drivers have been identified as educational background, grammatical weakness, knowledge and understanding of English, less functional practice writing in English (Ansari, 2012). The educational background of Saudi students may be inadequate to higher order use of English leaving Arab students with only rudimentary knowledge of English despite the formal English language instruction they have received. Similarly, Alhaysony (2012) argued that Saudi students seldom practice using their English when writing either for their academic coursework or for personal reasons. Accordingly, the Saudi students don't have sufficient occurrences to put into practice the grammar rules for which they have received classroom instruction.

A common error that occurs is the writing of Saudi students for whom English is a second language is the misuse or absence of linking adverbials. Linking adverbials are intended to establish semantic connections between varying lengths of discourse. Conjunctions and linking adverbials differ primarily because conjunctions serve to make semantic connections at or below the level of the clause, whereas, linking adverbials serve to make semantic connections at several levels of language, including clause, sentence, and paragraph. It is apparent that the utility of linking adverbials is sufficiently great to locate them as necessary grammatical tools to be used for enhancing understanding and meaning in speaking, reading, and writing of the English language.

Cohesion falls within the broader construct of coherence and is generally referred to according to two distinct types of linking that can occur in a sentence or in a text: 1) Grammatical linking, and 2) lexical linking (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). Cohesion is what holds a text together and enables the reader, speaker, or writer to attribute meaning to the text (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). Grammatical cohesion is an artifact of structural content (Halliday & Hasan, 1976). Lexical cohesion is accomplished through background knowledge and lexical content. At least five general categories of cohesion can be used to create cohesive text: Conjunction, ellipsis, lexical cohesion, reference, and substitution (Halliday & Hasan, 1976).

Dilin Liu (2008) utilized a simplified version of Halliday and Hassan's (1976) original four-way classification system that included the following categories of linking adverbials (Las): 1) Additive -- emphatic, appositional, and comparative; 2) adversarial -- proper adversative, contrastive, correction, and dismissal; 3) causal -- general causal, causal conditional; and 4) sequential. Lei (2012) studied the use of linking adverbials as it occurred in the academic writing of Chinese students in doctoral programs. The textual analysis conducted by Lei (2012) comprised 20 doctoral dissertations in applied linguistics. As a control, Lei (2012) examined 120 published articles by professional writers on applied linguistics in six international journals dedicated to that area of study. The overall frequency of linking adverbials used by the Chinese students in their doctoral dissertations was greater than for the published, professional writers. In particular, Lei (2012) found that 33 linking adverbials were substantially overused by the Chinese doctoral students in their dissertation writing. Within the group of overused linking adverbials, the Chinese doctoral students were found to misuse two linking adverbials more than any others: these misused linking adverbials were identified as "actually" and "besides" (Lei, 2012). Moreover, the Chinese doctoral students tended to underuse 25 linking adverbials in their dissertation writing. The adversative adverbials caused the most difficulty for the Chinese doctoral students. Professional writers whose work was published in the journals of applied linguistics were substantially less likely to rely heavily on a limited set of linking adverbials than were the Chinese doctoral students when composing their dissertations for their academic programs. The findings by Lei (2012) have pedagogical implications for English Language Arts instruction in higher education for students whose first language is not English.

The pedagogical considerations of the work by Lei (2012) are addressed in detail in other literature and the findings do generally support the idea that EFL learners use more linking adverbials than native speakers and that this is particularly true of the additive type of linking adverbials (Fan, 2014). For instance certain linking adverbials that are taught in the formal classroom settings providing EFL instruction are awkward and non-concordant to native speakers of English (Fan, 2014). It is important that the materials used to teach English to non-native speakers are authentic with regard to the use of linking adverbials (Fan, 2014). This means that students whose first language is not English must be exposed to academic writing, such as dissertations, journal articles, and theses that have been composed by native English speakers and writers (Fan, 2014). Moreover, EFL language teachers must be diligent about providing advice on speaking and writing in English so that EFL students become proficient in their use of linking adverbials in concert with the habits of native English speakers and writers who follow particular patterns and create a concordance with the logical connectors they use (Fan, 2014).

Anderson (2014) also found differences in the use of linking adverbials that were highly nuanced, such as however, so, and yet, between the writing of first-year students and final-year students. Anderson (2014) observed that conversational adverbials occurred more frequently in the writing of first-year students. That is to say that the first-year students wrote in much the same way that they conversed, and that substantive progress was made in correcting this pattern over the semester when students were participating in their composition coursework.