Teaching Academic Writing in English at Arab Universities: Considering the Contexts

Abstract

Academic writing has been a contested area of tertiary English-language education throughout the world. At universities in Arabic-speaking countries, where English is studied as a foreign language, there is a tendency to accept pedagogical theories and practices developed elsewhere, particularly in first- and second-language environments. The unique position of academic writing at Arab universities is first examined by focusing on the perspective of two communicative contexts: the speech community (where Arabic is the main language) and the discourse community (in which the novice student is supposed to be “conversing” with international scholars). Anomalies concerning misconceptions about these contexts and the relations between them are then considered in regard to three areas of conflict: between reading and writing, Arabic and English, and skills and content. On the basis of experience and examples, mainly from Qatar and Oman, it is argued that closer integration is required in each case, which involves changes in teaching programs and administrative structures. Bringing together areas of study that have tended to remain separate can result in what has been termed a “pedagogy of possibility”, one that makes the teaching of academic writing more responsive to the needs of both speech and discourse communities. .