Date of Award
10-2006
Culminating Project Type
Thesis
Degree Name
English: Teaching English as a Second Language: M.A.
Department
English
College
College of Liberal Arts
First Advisor
James Robinson
Second Advisor
Marya Teutsch-Dwyer
Third Advisor
Robert H. Lavenda
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License.
Keywords and Subject Headings
Sharing behaviors, Saudi students, intensive, English, ESL
Abstract
For more than three semesters, the Saudi students of the Intensive English Center (IEC) have had what could be viewed as interesting kinds of sharing behaviors, manifesting themselves in ways that teachers have started to notice. These behaviors have gone on for some time and they seem to have increased with the number of Saudi students coming to the IEC over the past 2 years. The students have been observed helping each other on tests, forging homework, and plagiarizing. What makes this situation difficult is that the students are not American, so they cannot clearly be judged under a set of rules that they have no knowledge of. Some could say since they are here, they must learn how to be American. The problem with this is that while they can be shown the path, only they can choose to walk it. This paper attempts to explore this issue in depth and seeks to identify if there is a primary cultural reason for the behaviors, or if there another explanation for it.
The study was completed in the spring term of 2006 during the month of April. The study followed the classroom lives of the Saudi Arabian students in the Intensive English program. The methods used to find data during the study were participant observation in the anthropological/ethnographic sense, as well as interviews with the students and surveys given to the teachers of the students.
The research brought to life a concept of bonding or friendship among the Saudi Arabian students within their own group and also other students of Arab background. What was observed is that they worked together on homework outside of school, as well inside of school, and helped each other on tests during class. They could be seen copying each others homework, speaking in Arabic during tests, and generally disregarding any concept of individual work. This disregard, however, is not seen as misplaced in their home Arab culture as it is couched in friendship. This friendship may mean doing things that you know are not necessarily right to keep the group together for example: lying or cheating.
This working together strengthened the bonds between them and also gave them a leg up in facing the outside forces put on each of them. In this way it created a difference in comparison to American culture. For Americans it is usually each individual against the system, for the Saudi Arabian students, it was the group against the system: The betterment of all rather than the one.
For all of the Saudi students, various factors contributed to the friendships and bonding between them. For example, scholarships required that they must maintain good grades or be sent home. A mistake in school leading to expulsion, loss of scholarship or worse could mean shame and dishonor for the family which could reflect badly on those around them, family and friends alike.
At the end of the research, the most clearly defining reason for the sharing behaviors of the Saudi Arabian students was their own ideas of friendship brought over from their home country. Other important but less significant reasoning for the behavior was that it was seen as clever for them to do such things or their cultural based definitions are different from U.S. academic ones: for example, plagiarism.
The last question asked and one of the most important is to figure out: Are they really learning anything at all when they share all the work? It is not answered here, but one way to potentially stop the behaviors could be to have more intimate friendship based relations in the classroom and perhaps students in the same friendship based situations would start to do work more individually.
Recommended Citation
Tacker, Jason E., "Sharing Behaviors of Saudi Students in an Intensive English Environment" (2006). Culminating Projects in TESL. 63.
https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/tesl_etds/63
