Pedagogies: An International Journal

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Arab sojourner expectations, academic

socialisation and strategy use on a pre-sessional
English programme in Britain

Anas Hajar

To cite this article: Anas Hajar (2020) Arab sojourner expectations, academic socialisation
and strategy use on a pre-sessional English programme in Britain, Pedagogies: An International
Journal, 15:3, 221-239, DOI: 10.1080/1554480X.2019.1696200

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1554480X.2019.1696200

Published online: 25 Nov 2019.

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PEDAGOGIES: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
2020, VOL. 15, NO. 3, 221–239
https://doi.org/10.1080/1554480X.2019.1696200

ARTICLE

Arab sojourner expectations, academic socialisation and

strategy use on a pre-sessional English programme in Britain
Anas Hajar
Graduate School of Education, Nazarbayev University, Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This paper reports on a phenomenographic investigation of Arab Received 29 January 2019
sojourners’ international academic experiences in terms of their expec- Accepted 26 June 2019
tations, academic socialisation and their strategy use during a ten- KEYWORDS
week pre-sessional English language course at a UK university. The Pre-sessional programmes;
qualitative data collected from a written narrative and three subse- learning strategies; academic
quent semi-structured interviews revealed how the participants’ socialisation;
expectations and strategic learning efforts in the new context were Arab sojourners;
influenced by their learning goals, together with their past language phenomenographic inquiry
learning experiences. Many held a utopian vision of automatic lan-
guage development and meaningful interactions with locals once they
were in the host environment. The analysis of the data also showed the
dominance of highly supportive co-national peers, reluctance to
engage in intercultural interactions and a clear preference for “native
speaker” tutors. The participants gradually began to identify proximal
goals by responding positively to strategies meditated by their writing
tutors. They did so because academic writing requirements constitute
the main form of assessment in their upcoming postgraduate pro-
grammes. The findings of this phenomenographic study have practical
implications for the improvement of pre-sessional English courses and
also provide directions for future research.

Introduction
As one consequence of globalisation and internationalisation, there has been a dramatic
increase in participation rates in study abroad programmes. The UK Council for International
Student Affairs (2018) reported that 310,575 international students from outside the European
Union registered at UK universities in the 2015–16 academic year. Researchers and educators’
investigations of international educational experience have grown exponentially in recent
years as evidenced by, for instance, the launching of a new journal by John Benjamins in 2016:
Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International Education. Although
research on diverse populations of student sojourners is on the rise, study abroad specialists
(e.g. Jackson, 2019; Kinginger, 2015) note that relatively few studies have delved into the
learning experiences of Arab students who sojourn in an English-speaking country. In parti-
cular, there is a lack of research that qualitatively explores their social ties, situated strategy
use, and underlying motivations, both in and out of the classroom. With these gaps in mind,
the qualitative study reported in this paper aims to raise awareness of the academic

CONTACT Anas Hajar anashajar85@yahoo.com

© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
222 A. HAJAR

socialisation, expectations and strategic learning efforts of a group of non-English major

students from the Middle East who participated in a ten-week pre-sessional English for
Academic Purposes (EAP) programme before joining their postgraduate subject programmes
at a UK university.
Many international students begin their lives in an English-speaking country on a pre-
sessional EAP programme. This type of programme is usually their first contact with the
English-speaking education system, and potentially, with the host culture. In the UK, EAP
programmes generally run for between 4 to 15 weeks prior to the beginning of the
academic year (Górska, 2013, p. 192). The main goal of pre-sessional EAP programmes in
a study abroad context is to prepare international students for the English language require-
ments of the university they enrol at. In addition to linguistic benefits, these courses can help
international students to familiarise themselves with the social and cultural context of the host
country, along with future subject tutors’ expectations and style of teaching (Dewaele,
Comanaru, & Faraco, 2015, p. 96). Therefore, international students need to exercise their
agency through deploying certain learning strategies in order to capitalise on their experience
of studying and living in a native English-speaking community. The concept of learner agency
refers to, in this paper, individuals who are capable of thinking, wishing and acting when they
recognise the significance of a specific activity to overcome certain contextual constraints and
accomplish their ultimate goals (Hajar, 2019).
With the paradigm shift from viewing learning as an individual cognitive process to
perceiving it as a socially organised activity that is inseparable from its sociocultural locus
in time and space, a number of socially-oriented researchers (e.g. Gao, 2010; Gu, 2019;
Hajar, 2019; Palfreyman & Benson, 2019; Thomas & Rose, 2019) stress the salience of
capturing the mediated and dynamic nature of learning strategies using qualitative
methods. In this sense, learners’ strategy use is portrayed as something emerging from
the mediational processes of particular learning communities. These processes include
artefacts, practices, and the relationships between people. This sociocultural perspective
is reflected in phenomenography, a qualitative methodological approach that lays bare
the processes of how a particular group of individuals discern, understand and experience
a given phenomenon in the lived world (the how-aspect) (Hajar, 2017).
In what follows, related study abroad research will be discussed before providing
details about the current study, including its aims, a description of the participants,
methodology and data analysis. The findings relating to the factors that influenced the
participants’ expectations and strategy uses will be presented in substantial detail. The
paper concludes by providing some limitations to the present study and offering sugges-
tions for future research and the improvement of pre-sessional EAP programmes in study
abroad contexts.

Theoretical considerations
The literature on international education is abundant with definitions of the construct
“study abroad”. Schartner (2015, p. 11), for instance, defines study abroad as “a temporary
sojourn of pre-defined duration, undertaken for educational purposes”. Studying abroad
has the potential to contribute to the personal, sociocultural, linguistic, and academic
development of student sojourners. Consequently, international students need to be
perceived as complete people with whole lives instead of separating their minds, bodies,
 PEDAGOGIES: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL 223

and social behaviours into separate domains of inquiry (Coleman, 2013). This view has
spawned a rise in the “social turn” in education, which challenges the assumption that
learning is the by-product of an individual mental process, paying scant attention to
social, political and cultural factors (Hajar, 2018). This focus has been combined with
a growing number of in-depth qualitative studies, which seek to uncover the situated
experiences of international students in their new cultural settings. Such studies are
primarily concerned with student sojourners’ formation and development of social net-
works, use of learning strategies to face the hurdles in the host country and their
expectations and changing goals influenced by environmental factors. Many of these
studies have drawn on sociocultural frameworks such as Activity Theory (e.g. Allen, 2013;
Gao, 2010), communities of practice (e.g. Giroir, 2014; Morita, 2004), issues of investment
and identity (e.g. Hajar, 2017; Norton, 2013), and the role of the future vision of the self as
a motivating force (e.g. Du & Jackson, 2018; Hajar, 2019).
Drawing on the Activity Theory perspective, Allen (2013) traced the development of
the self-regulatory strategies (e.g. goal-setting strategies, motivation maintenance strate-
gies, and language learning strategies) of three American university students as they
studied French in both the U.S. and France. Allen (2013, p. 67) found that her participants
articulated broad initial goals (e.g. “greatly improving my speaking ability” and “sounding
like a native”) without identifying concrete sub-goals or strategies that they intended to
employ in pursuit of their stated end goals in a study abroad context. More specifically,
they expected L2 improvements “to emerge organically” through immersion without
considering the need to make sufficient efforts or personal investment (Allen, 2013,
p. 68). In-depth interviews with international students in the UK have revealed similar
expectations and aspirations (e.g. Montgomery, 2010; Schartner, 2015).
Guided by Dörnyei’s (2009) L2 Motivational Self System, Du and Jackson (2018)
examined the evolving English learning motivation of a group of Mainland Chinese
undergraduate students prior to and after their arrival in Hong Kong. Du and Jackson
(2018) found that the ought-to self which stemmed from avoiding a possible negative
future outcome dominated the motivational orientation of most participants during their
stay in their homelands. They viewed examination results as the sole, standard measure of
their English proficiency. After their arrival in Hong Kong, the participants recognised the
financial, social and symbolic capital of English in the new context. Hence, they all
envisioned their ideal L2 selves as competent English speakers for various purposes.
Nevertheless, the participants in Du and Jackson’s (2018) study disclosed limited informa-
tion about how they invested their agency and the strategies they deployed to accom-
plish their ideal end-state and desired identities. Hajar (2017), drawing on Norton’s (2013)
conceptualisation of motivation as investment in language learning, qualitatively exam-
ined the strategic learning efforts of two postgraduate Syrian students at a UK university.
Hajar (2017) revealed how the strategy use and L2 identity development of learners in
similar contexts might be influenced by the education policy and distribution of
resources. More specifically, the adjustments of one participant raised in a well-off, well-
educated family and educated at outstanding private establishments prior to the host
environment were less taxing than for the other participant who came from
a disadvantaged background in Syria. The former’s positive prior language learning
experiences helped him to build a positive linguistic self-concept in the UK, using diverse
effective learning strategies.
224 A. HAJAR

Relatively few studies to date have focused on pre-sessional EAP programmes, and the
main goal of the existing studies was to investigate their impact on international students’
International English Language Testing System (IELTS) scores (e.g. Green, 2007) or their
opportunities to interact with members of the host community outside class (e.g. Copland
& Garton, 2011; Jarvis & Stakounis, 2010). Copland and Garton (2011), for instance,
conducted a mixed-methods study to understand the nature of the extramural English-
speaking encounters of 42 Asian students taking part in a 15-week pre-sessional EAP
course at a UK university. The researchers found that most of the participants’ English-
speaking interactions were “service encounters”, particularly in the accommodation
office, mobile phone shops and banks. Most encounters were very brief, lasting less
than five minutes. Participants’ expectations and aspirations of establishing interpersonal
bonds with host nationals were not achieved. Only one encounter was with a British
citizen and the rest were primarily with co-nationals or international students from other
parts of the world. Copland and Garton (2011) recommended that international students
receive instruction in learning strategies that could help them to deal with service
encounters more effectively (e.g. strategies for clarification, paraphrasing and consulting
classmates). Consistent with the findings of Copland and Garton (2011) study, Jarvis and
Stakounis (2010) indicated that while their participants undertaking a five-week pre-
sessional programme at a UK university aspired to establish meaningful ties with locals,
they described their interactions with the British beyond the classroom as superficial and
restricted to brief service encounters. The participants ascribed their difficulty in making
British friends to the lack of support offered from their host institution, together with their
limited knowledge of local accents and fear of making mistakes.
With the above research and findings in mind, there is a lack of information concerning the
academic experiences of international students enrolled in pre-sessional EAP programmes,
their underlying learning goals, strategy uses and perceptions of their tutors and peers.
Therefore, this phenomenographic study was carried out to understand the international
educational experiences of newly-arrived Arab university students from diverse countries
(Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the United Arab Emirates) during their attendance at
a pre-sessional EAP programme at a UK university. Particular attention was paid to their
expectations, academic socialisation and strategy uses inside the classroom.

Study details
Study aims and research design
To the best of my knowledge, there is no empirical study that has specifically explored the
international education experiences and strategy uses of University Arabic-speaking sojour-
ners while undertaking a pre-sessional EAP programme at a UK university. Drawing on
sociocultural approaches to understanding language learning, this qualitative study aimed
to answer the following research question: What factors appeared to influence the participants’
strategic learning efforts when they took part in a pre-sessional EAP course in the UK?
The study has a qualitative methodological framework called phenomenography.
Etymologically, the term “phenomenography” derives from the Greek words “phainomenon”
and “graphein”, which mean “appearance” and “description” respectively (Hasselgren &
Beach, 1997, p. 192). “Phenomenography” as a combined term represents the description of
 PEDAGOGIES: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL 225

things as they appear to us. It was developed by Marton (1981) to capture similarities and
variations in relation to the way a group of individuals perceive a given phenomenon
(Åkerlind, 2012, p. 117).
Phenomenographers adopt a non-dualistic, relational ontological position by empha-
sising that the subject (the learner) and object (the phenomenon or problem handled) are
not separate, and an individual’s understanding of a phenomenon is the internal relation-
ship between them (i.e. “the experiencer” and “the experienced”) (Marton and Booth,
1997, p. 113). In this sense, the only world where an individual can communicate is the
one which they experience. However, an individual’s conceptions or understandings of
a particular phenomenon from this methodological stance are not genetically inherited
by individuals, but are “socially constructed and reconstructed through the person’s
ongoing experiences and relationships with their world” (Lamb, Sandberg, & Liesch,
2011, p. 676). This non-dualistic stance is compatible with the sociocultural perspective
that informed this study, which suggests that the study abroad experience is largely
shaped by each individual’s unique history and continuing interactions with a multitude
of contextual realities (e.g. assessment modes, peer mediation and tutors’ teaching
practices) in the community in which they are working or studying (Hajar, 2017).
There is a close relationship between the ontological and epistemological underpin-
nings in phenomenography, because “descriptions of conceptions” are used to unearth
“the nature of knowledge”, which is the basis of phenomenographic epistemology.
Because of the non-dualistic ontological position taken in phenomenography, phenom-
enographic epistemology rests on a constitutionalist view of knowledge which focuses on
the content of an individual’s descriptions which reveal how they experienced a given
phenomenon (Prosser & Trigwell, 1999). From epistemological phenomenography, with-
out awareness there can be no knowledge of a phenomenon. This notion pertains to the
principle of intentionality of awareness, which implies that knowledge cannot exist in
a context independent of a knower and an individual’s awareness is always directed
towards something other than itself i.e. it has an object (Martin, Prosser, Trigwell,
Ramsden, & Benjamin, 2002, p. 104). The concept of the intentionality of awareness or
goal-orientation is central to the present research study which views learning strategies as
goal-oriented learning activities undertaken by situated individuals. Since phenomeno-
graphers are concerned with the individual’s awareness and their expression of how they
experience reality, phenomenography embraces a second-order perspective (i.e. how the
individual conceives their world). The world from a second-order perspective is described
through the awareness and reflection of the subjects. Therefore, the present research
aims to capture the participants’ awareness and inherent variation towards their interna-
tional educational experiences and strategy use from their own viewpoints.

Participants
The sample used in a phenomenographic study is purposive in that participants should be
specifically sought out and have shared experience of a given phenomenon. Purposive
sampling can give the best data to contribute to the constitution of the full extent of the
various ways of experiencing the phenomenon . The present study centered on seven
participants, four males and three females between 23 and 26 years of age. They came
from five Arab countries (Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and The United Arab Emirates),
226 A. HAJAR

and had not lived outside their homeland before coming to the UK. All of them were non-
English majors who began their English language learning in Grade 5 in a public primary
school when they were 10 years old. None of the participants was known to the researcher
prior to the data collection stage. They came to pursue their postgraduate studies in the
UK in the same area as their undergraduate specialisation.
The initial access to the participants was gained through the help of the director of the pre-
sessional preparatory English programme that the students attended at a UK university. The
director arranged a meeting between the Arab students attending the course and myself at
the beginning of the pre-sessional EAP programme. In order to build a positive relationship of
trust with the students, I provided relevant information about myself in Arabic. During the
meeting, I explained in simple terms the significance and the purpose of the study. Seven out
of the nine Arab students showed interest in participating in the study. Their pre-sessional EAP
programme was divided into two five-week phases. The first phase was called “English for
General Academic Purposes” as it provided a broad focus on all of the language skill areas
required for academic purposes (i.e. listening, speaking, reading and writing), along with some
skills that the learners could make use of later in their master’s courses, such as avoiding
plagiarism, using dictionaries and accessing/citing references. The second phase was called
“English for Specific Academic Purposes” because it paid specific attention to the students’
needs in their future MA courses and subject-specific reading. Only two participants (Lana and
Yosef) were obliged to take this pre-sessional EAP programme as a requirement to gain
admission to the MA programme; the others had already obtained the required score on the
IELTS test (i.e. a score of Band 6), but chose to take the course. To protect the participants’
privacy, pseudonyms are used and their profiles are provided in Table 1,

Data collection and analysis

Following the ethics review procedures at the UK university, the participants were invited to
participate and informed about the study and their rights as participants. They were given
the opportunity to ask questions and told that they could withdraw at any time. None did.
I asked the participants at the first meeting to write about themselves, their past language
learning experiences, their reasons for coming to the UK to study, and their own expecta-
tions for their stay abroad. They were allowed to use the language with which they felt most
comfortable. Apart from Hanan, the other participants used Arabic to write their essays. To
help them write their essays, they were given a set of questions (See Appendix 1). In the
current study, this method enabled the researcher to enter into the life-worlds of the
participants through their own expositions and to construct subsequent interview questions
relevant to each person’s situation. (see Appendix 2 for a sample of interview questions.)

Table 1. Participant profiles.

Name Gender Age Nationality Educational background
Riham Female 25 Emirati BA in Gynecology
Hanan Female 24 Iraqi BA in Business and Management
Lana Female 24 Syrian BA in Agricultural Engineering
Ameer Male 23 Jordanian BA in Business and Management
Yosef Male 23 Saudi BA in Industrial Engineering
Sultan Male 23 Saudi BA in Industrial Engineering
Bassl Male 24 Syrian BA in Dentistry
 PEDAGOGIES: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL 227

Three subsequent rounds of individual semi-structured interviews (as is customary

in phenomenographic research) were conducted with each participant, from July to
September 2014. The interviews took place face-to face in public areas, namely, the
university library and coffee shops. This was primarily because the participants came
from conservative societies and it was thought that some of them, especially the
women, would be more at ease and willing to be interviewed in public places. Each
interview lasted 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes. All of them were conducted in Arabic in
order to help the participants express their ideas confidently.
The data analysis in phenomenographic research, as Åkerlind (2012, p. 116) explains,
aims at developing a hierarchical set of qualitatively different but logically related cate-
gories. The categories and the relationships between them present the “outcome space”,
the graphical representation of the participants’ conceptions. In order to discover the
participants’ international educational experiences and strategy use, the current study
was informed by Dahlgren and Fallsberg (1991) model for analysing phenomenographic
interviews. The analysis was iterative and in stages, which included familiarization, con-
densation, comparison, grouping, labelling and contrasting. The researcher became
familiarised with the data through reading and re-reading the interview transcripts after
they had been translated into English. After the process of familiarisation, the interview
data were condensed together and initial codes in relation to the focus of the inquiry were
generated. For this purpose, a “selected reading approach” (Van Manen, 1997) was used,
meaning that as I read the transcripts, I highlighted the significant statements that
seemed to capture the influences of diverse contextual factors on the participants’
strategic learning efforts. Similar statements were grouped together into conceptions.
In order to enhance the reliability of the study, a “coder reliability check” was used by
sending the initial codes along with the participants’ transcripts to another coder after
obtaining the participants’ permission. The second coder is a prominent researcher in the
field of English Language Teaching (ELT) and familiar with Arabic. The other coder and
I met three times to discuss and compare our coding processes.
The categories of description we identified were: “participants’ expectations and altering
learning goals” and “the impact of formal social actors” including pre-sessional EAP tutors’
practices and peer mediation. Following this, the subthemes within each category were
identified, after testing them against the coded data and the entire dataset. The graphical
representation of the produced categories of description (i.e. “outcome space”) is presented in
Figure 1.

Findings
Participants’ expectations and learning goals
A systematic review of the data found that in the first six weeks of their stay in the
UK, almost all the participants seemed to have lofty goals, with little thought given
to how they might achieve them. Apart from Sultan, they articulated relatively far-
reaching goals, without identifying the strategies that they intended to embrace to
achieve those goals. The following extracts typify the participants’ unrealistic expec-
tations for their sojourn:
228 A. HAJAR

Impact of formal social actors Participants’ expectations and altering

learning goals

Peers’ Preferring “native speaker” Proximal goals Unrealistic goals

mediation English language tutors

Having a Having a
strong and Pre- Influence Focusing Having Having
superficial
purposeful sessional of past on the meaningful automatic
relationship
relationship English language writing interactions language
with strategies
with co- tutors’ learning with locals development
Asian practices mediated
national experience
fellows fellows by tutors

Expanding
Treating
students’
students as
awareness of
“real people”
the importance
of technologies

Figure 1. Outcome space of the present study.

Extract 1:
My expectation about life in the UK was 180 degrees different. In the first few weeks of my
stay in the UK, I thought I would just see British people and my English would improve
automatically by building close relationships with British people and speaking English for 24
hours a day. Unfortunately, none of my flatmates or classmates was British. (Lana, 2nd
interview)

Extract 2:
When I came to the UK, I expected that my English would become like a native speaker’s and
I’d be acquainted with the British culture after a short period in the UK. I did not know that
almost all the students attending the pre-sessional course would be from East Asia . . . My
classmates are Asian and Arab. (Yosef, 1st interview)

The above extracts suggest that most participants felt disillusioned because they
expected to be befriended by British nationals from the moment of their arrival in the
UK, and that their English would improve automatically. Unlike the other participants,
Sultan reported that he was equipped with some useful information about the nature of
pre-sessional EAP course and student life in Britain before coming to the UK from previous
Saudi individuals who had studied in UK universities. For this reason, he was more
realistic. Sultan said:

Extract 3:
Before my arrival in the UK, I met some Saudis who had studied in the UK. They told me
Chinese students represented the dominant group in the pre-sessional English courses.
Although I wanted to meet many British people once I arrived in the UK, I expected to see
many Asians on campus and in my class as well. (Sultan, 2nd interview)

This finding resonates with Hajar’s (2019) suggestion that international students
should equip themselves with some details about student life in the host environment
 PEDAGOGIES: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL 229

before their study abroad. They can do so through, for example, working with returning
students to help them set realistic goals in the pre-sojourn stage (Hajar, 2019). Many
participants during the second phase of their pre-sessional EAP course displayed their
growing awareness of the fact that community integration takes longer, and accordingly,
they started to set concrete goals by reacting positively to the writing strategies mediated
by their tutors. They did so because they realised academic writing requirements would
constitute the main form of assessment in their upcoming master’s programmes. The
participants made the following comments:

Extract 4:
I realised that it is hard to develop friendships with locals in this course. I am now focusing on
improving my academic writing for my master’s programme. It would be disappointing for
my parents if I did not get high marks in my master’s modules . . . I used to study from ready-
made notes for the university exams in Saudi Arabia . . . the tutor here taught us some useful
writing strategies such as how to enhance cohesion in our writing by using appropriate
linking words. We also learnt how to avoid plagiarism through citing and referencing.
(Osama, 2nd interview)

Extract 5:
In the United Arab Emirates, my university teachers didn’t teach me how to write an academic
essay because the exam questions were multiple-choice . . . Writing classes were useful to me
because I have to write ten assignments for my MA programme. I want to live up to the
expectations of my family, relatives and friends back home . . . I have recently discovered that
plagiarism means cheating. To avoid this, I learnt I had to change the tense of the sentence, to
use synonyms and to mention the original source. (Riham, 3rd interview)

The above interview extracts indicate that the participants responded positively to the
writing strategies taught by their tutors such as finding resources, making references, sum-
marising texts and avoiding plagiarism. They showed signs of understanding that assessment
modes required embracing different learning strategies. These extracts also revealed the
participants’ driving force in relation to avoiding the possible negative consequences of
failure and returning home in disgrace. It can be inferred that the impact of family members
back home, mostly parents, on the participants’ future self-guides and strategy use after
arrival in the UK did not disappear in spite of them being geographically distant. As a result,
the participants seemed to be driven by their ought-to L2 selves (Dörnyei, 2009).

Impact of formal social actors

Tutors’ practices
The interview data revealed that the participants, apart from Hanan, preferred being
taught English by native-speaker tutors. They were pleased and “felt lucky” to be taught
by “native speakers” who, as articulated by the participants, treated them as “real people”.
Their tutors did this by prominently acknowledging and valuing their opinions and
answers, in addition to encouraging them to bring their own real world into the language
classroom by, for instance, allowing them to choose the topic of their oral presentation
and discuss with their classmates what they had listened to on English radio. In this sense,
genuine endeavours were made by the tutors to create a bridge between inside and
230 A. HAJAR

outside the classroom. These tutors also passed on some effective strategies such as
listening to English radio and watching English movies (i.e., cognitive strategies), learning
new vocabulary in some meaningful context (i.e., metacognitive strategies) and cooperat-
ing with others (i.e., social strategies). When asked about their perceptions of the tutors
teaching on the pre-sessional programme, most participants compared their teachers’
teaching practices in their homelands with those on the pre-sessional programme:

Extract 6:

We are here in Britain to capture the true pronunciation of English. I was lucky since my two
tutors were British . . . my Arab teachers of English in Syria used to pronounce words
incorrectly and were strict . . . my tutors here sometimes had their soft drink with us during
the break and we had fun together. (Lana, 1st interview)

Extract 7:

My English teachers in Saudi Arabia were Arabs. They taught us only from the assigned
books and used Arabic a lot . . . on this pre-sessional course, one of my tutors sometimes
asked us to listen to the radio every day as homework to discuss together later in the
classroom. She’s British. She gives us opportunities to express our ideas. (Sultan, 1st
interview)

The above extracts signify the importance of removing the “communication wall”
between teachers and students to increase the academic engagement and well-being
of students. In this sense, the participants’ social strategies and their talking time inside
the classroom increased in response to their tutors’ behaviour. The same extracts reveal
that the participants’ preference of being taught by British tutors was largely affected by
their negative experiences with most Arab teachers of English in their home countries.
Unlike the other participants, Hanan was the only one who displayed no preference in
terms of the nationality of her pre-sessional English tutors. She attributed this to her
satisfaction with what had been taught by many of her Arab teachers of English in Iraq.
She asserted that she studied in outstanding private schools and some of her teachers
were native-like and held master’s degrees in English language teaching from British or
American universities.
The data analysis also showed that the teaching practices of participants’ tutors played
a pivotal role in expanding their awareness of the importance of innovative technologies
as an essential part of their study. When asked about their perceptions of the learning
resources available to them on the pre-sessional course, most participants drew compar-
isons between the classroom environment on this course and that in their homelands.
Ameer, for instance, declared that

Extract 8:

In Jordan, the university teachers sometimes used PowerPoint in the classroom . . . our
reading tutor here gave us some websites that provided numerous news items. Each news
item was also accompanied by an audio track. So, one could develop listening and reading
skills together . . . we also deposited our homework in a shared folder in Dropbox with our
writing tutor (Ameer, 3rd interview).
 PEDAGOGIES: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL 231

Extract 9:
In Syria, my teachers didn’t use any technology. After coming to the UK, I noticed that
technologies were used heavily here . . . I needed to check my emails frequently and sub-
mitted my homework online . . . the tutors played videos in the class. They also gave us tens of
useful free websites to improve our English and uploaded the teaching materials on the
course website. (Lana, 3rd interview).

The above extract reveals the increased integration of technologies into the partici-
pants’ conceptualisation of language learning. These technologies such as word proces-
sing, electronic dictionaries, PowerPoint, Dropbox, Mendeley Desktop and SkyDrive were
largely mediated by their tutors.

Mediating agents: peers

Most participants reported that they had a superficial relationship with their Asian
counterparts on the pre-sessional EAP course. Riham, the Emirati participant, mentioned
that her sporadic communication with some East Asian classmates caused her English to
deteriorate because of their insufficient repertoire of English vocabulary. She stated that:

Extract 10:
I spoke slowly with my Chinese and Vietnamese classmates. This made me feel my English
was getting worse . . . I had to use simple words with them. If a learner does not practise the
less common vocabulary items, they will forget them. (Riham, 2nd interview)

The above extract includes references to Riham’s lack of enthusiasm for socialising with
her Asian fellows. She also expressed her awareness of the importance of the “learning by
doing” philosophy by acknowledging the importance of using new words in her daily life
to maintain them. Hanan, the Iraqi participant, also indicated that she was reluctant to
work with her Asian classmates on a group oral presentation because they were not
sufficiently co-operative:

Extract 11:
The duration of the presentation was 7 minutes for each student within the group. I started
preparing for the presentation immediately after being told about it by my tutor. It was about
animal rights. We went to the city centre and spoke to British people. It took too much time
when I did it with other members because they were unwilling to do their parts, and they
insisted on me doing the interviews on their behalf. I said to them we were here to practise
our English . . . For this presentation, I jotted down the key points on a sheet of paper and
I replaced some words that were difficult to pronounce with simple ones . . . .I focused more
on my tutors’ feedback than my peers. (Hanan, 2nd interview)

The above interview extract reveals the way in which Hanan deployed some metacog-
nitive and social strategies such as being prepared and using simplified forms, organising
her schedule, identifying the purpose of a task and favouring language use and commu-
nicative activities. Notably, Hanan, along with most other participants, downplayed the
value of their classmates’ oral and written feedback. More precisely, they were less
conscientious in carrying out the cooperative activities introduced by their tutors, describ-
ing them as “fun”, “time wasting” and “sometimes unimpressive”. The following interview
extract illustrates this point:
232 A. HAJAR

Extract 12:
The collaborative activities assigned by our tutors sometimes made learning more fun for me.
However, I often didn’t take them seriously as I had already obtained an unconditional offer
for my MA programme . . . I listened to my colleagues’ opinions when completing some tasks
together but their input wasn’t so helpful, compared to the tutor’s comments (Sultan, 2nd
interview).

This finding related to the indifferent behaviour that many participants exhibited in
dealing with cooperative activities could be attributed to two main causes: (1) the mark
was unimportant to many participants, since they already had an unconditional offer for
their MA programmes; and (2) the pre-sessional English course was only attended by
international students, who were essentially accustomed to striving for final examination
results as in their homelands. This finding recalls Carson and Nelson (1996, p. 11–12)
argument, namely that students who are accustomed to teacher-dominated pedagogy
often consider peer feedback as less effective because the tutor is deemed to be the only
source of knowledge that can be trusted.
In order to buffer the effects of loneliness and helplessness in Britain, most participants
built strong and purposeful relationships with their co-nationals attending the same pre-
sessional English course. They consulted their Arab nationals for any academic or personal
issues. Bassel, the Syrian participant, for instance, described how his Arab friends in the UK
alleviated his sadness and worries over his family back home due to the political turmoil
taking place in Syria. In this regard, Bassel stated that:

Extract 13:
Two of my Arab friends on the pre-sessional course always showed their concern for the
safety of my family in Syria due to the civil war taking place there . . . It’s easier for me to use
Arabic when talking about my ordeal . . . I also rehearsed my oral presentation relating to this
course in front of them. (Bassel, 2nd interview)

In this sense, the strongest social network of the participants was their co-national
network. Conversely, the participants’ multinational networks constrained their language
use to some extent, on the grounds that the Asian students constituted the dominant
group on the pre-sessional EAP course and were described by some participants as
introverted and less competent English speakers.

Discussion
The findings presented above reveal how the participants’ expectations and strategic
learning efforts in the new context were influenced by their learning goals, together with
their past language learning experiences. Due to the participants’ limited preparation for
the study abroad experience, in the first period of their stay in the UK, they (excluding
Sultan) had an idealised, rather than a tangible ambition, as they articulated unrealistic or
unfeasible goals. For example, many of them expected to be befriended by British
nationals from the moment they arrived in the UK, and thought that they would be
able to speak English like native speakers after spending a short time in the UK without
undertaking any particular strategies. They likened this process to a child’s attempts to
acquire their mother tongues. According to Ryan and Mercer (2011, p. 170–171), there is
 PEDAGOGIES: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL 233

a strong belief among many student sojourners that “if the learner can go abroad to this
perceived ‘perfect’ language learning environment, then learning should occur naturally,
without the need for any effort or conscious reflection on the part of the learner”.
Coleman (2013) also addressed this point:

Language learning through study abroad relies on the expectation that massive exposure to
the L2 will lead to L2 acquisition, exposure both in interaction with native and expert
speakers of the L2 and non-interactive input from the L2 environment. (Coleman, 2013, p. 26)

These idealistic notions, as Gao and Lamb (2011, p. 6) argue, can lead to sojourners’ limited
exercise of their agency to reach their desired goals, and a belief that an extended period of
time in a country where the target language is spoken can effortlessly validate their new
identity as language users. In view of this, there is a need for research-inspired language and
intercultural interventions in all phases of study abroad to avoid maladaptive behaviour, such
as the setting of unrealistic or impractical goals. This is because without pedagogical inter-
vention, study abroad experience alone may not lead to significant development in global-
mindedness or the second-language learning of students. Interventions may take many
forms, including designing and implementing pre-sojourn L2/intercultural workshops; sharing
returning students’ experiences with those who plan to venture abroad; using guided, critical
reflection during the study abroad period; monitoring class interaction; organising “buddy
schemes” (linking new arrivals with local counterparts) and offering re-entry workshops to
help returning students set new learning goals and use the strategies needed (Jackson, 2018).
The above discussion underlines the significance of designing pedagogical interventions in
the pre-sessional EAP courses to avoid international students’ exaggerated expectations of
their sojourn learning and to enrich their strategic learning. This is because learning goals can
best be achieved by “real action and participation (i.e. exercise of agency)” (Gkonou, 2015,
p. 196). As shown in the current research, the participants attributed the difficulty of establish-
ing interpersonal bonds with the British to their lack of knowledge about the nature of the
pre-sessional EAP course, i.e. that it is designed only for international students. In this sense,
the barriers to meeting British people and the superficiality of their interactions with them
stemmed from both institutional and personal shortcomings. More specifically, study abroad
programme administrators and policy makers in higher education institutions see interna-
tional students as potential customers who pay full-cost fees, and thus student recruitment
teams aim to recruit more each year. In this regard, the representatives of the host institutions
suggest on their institutional websites and in their promotional material for international
students that their institution represents the best place for them to become “more global-
minded and interculturally competent while enhancing their L2 skills in an exciting, often
pristine, environment” (Jackson, 2018, p. 367). Further, the pre-departure orientation in home
countries organised sometimes by host institutions largely focuses on issues relating to health
and security, without providing international students with adequate intercultural guidance
or strategies for the use of the host language in different settings. It can be inferred that
international students’ opportunities to meet and build constructive relationships with their
host nationals relate not only to the former’s motivation, but also the willingness of the
receiving community to facilitate integration (Hajar, 2019). Due to the absence of British
students on the pre-sessional course, most participants (apart from Hanan) expressed their
preference for British native-speaker tutors in UK, because they were almost the only available
resource for practising and improving their English and intercultural competence.
234 A. HAJAR

The participants’ position in terms of their preference for being taught by British tutors
was also the outcome of their negative experiences with most Arab teachers of English in
their homelands. They indicated that most of these teachers had poor pronunciation,
tended to use Arabic more than half the time, had little patience with student errors and
their interests were not taken into account. Therefore, they felt “lucky” to be taught by
British tutors. These tutors engaged with them as “people” by creating opportunities for
them to express themselves using English (Ushioda, 2011). This was accomplished by
organising out-of-class projects and introducing digital and mobile technologies and
social media into the educational setting (see Palfreyman, 2012). This finding is in agree-
ment with that of Cross and Hitchcock (2007) who examined Chinese students’ attitudes
at a UK university. Their study revealed that most participants tended to view their role in
English classes in China as being confined to absorbing the knowledge given by their
Chinese tutors of English “like a memory stick”, whereas they likened their relationship
with their “native speaker” English language teachers in the UK to that of “a traveller and
a guide” (Cross & Hitchcock, 2007, p. 9).
In addressing the point of preferring “native speaker” English language teachers, Lamb and
Budiyanto (2013, p. 29–30) in their study of a group of young adolescent learners in provincial
Indonesia reported that the Indonesian teachers of English viewed “native speaker models as
the prestigious professional variety, and learners picked up that message”. The learners also
found “difference exciting” (Lamb & Budiyanto, 2013, p. 30). Lamb and Budiyanto (2013, p. 30)
further suggest that as “scarce commodities will find their own price” in the market economy,
many private sector language institutions in developing countries pay high salaries to “native
speaker” English language teachers in order to attract them. Nevertheless, a number of
researchers (e.g. Holliday, 2015, 2018; Kumaravadivelu., 2016; Rivers, 2011) have challenged
the myth of “the native speaker” as the ideal teacher. They advocate the strengths of non-
native local teachers of English, on the grounds that these teachers have a good knowledge of
the learners’ home sociocultural context and language. Rivers (2011, p. 843) in her study of
120 Japanese English language learners, found that relying on “native speaker” English
language teachers to provide models of teaching practices “serves to train students in the
development of less favourable attitudes toward English language speakers of other racial,
national and ethnic backgrounds”. It may even reinforce a “heightened sense of anxiety and
inferiority among the students” (Rivers, 2011, p. 843). Interestingly, one point that needs
further consideration pertains to international students’ perceptions of “non-native speakers”
teaching English on a pre-sessional EAP programme.
In this study, most participants felt that their future could be at risk if they did not develop
their writing skills, since academic writing requirements constituted the major form of
assessment in their destination postgraduate programmes. The participants’ concerns about
improving academic writing recall the point raised by Górska (2013). According to Górska
(2013), “the inability to write academic texts puts international students in danger of failing
their courses, and may lead to interruption of studies or, more gravely, to their abandoning or
being dropped from their programmes”. This finding shows how Dörnyei’s (2009) ought-to
self dominated the motivational orientation of most participants during their attendance the
pre-sessional EAP course. More specifically, all the participants were under great stress,
because they wanted to prove to their parents that they were successful at both the academic
and personal levels (i.e. being independent and completing their academic programmes
successfully). Lamb (2012, p. 1001–1002) commented on this point, suggesting that the
 PEDAGOGIES: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL 235

ought-to self-dimension in the target language motivation “might be more relevant in Asian
or Arab cultures where young people have shown themselves to be more susceptible to the
influence of significant others”. Malcolm (2013, p. 111), for example, found that almost all of
her Saudi students studying for a medical degree through the medium of English in one the
largest-established Bahraini Universities were seriously afraid of failing and of being shamed in
front of their family members. Considering this finding, it may be inferred that although the
participants in the UK appeared to enjoy having more freedom in terms of selecting the
strategies that they themselves believed necessary to use, especially after departing from the
extremely exam-oriented nature of the education system, their strategy choices were still
influenced by previously context-mediated motivational discourses. This confirms the core
assumptions of sociocultural learning perspectives, that individuals’ learning strategy use and
future vision are influenced by their “unique history” (i.e. looking not only at the present but at
past causes and expected outcomes) and mediated by artefacts and social interactions
(Palfreyman 2014, p. 181).

Conclusion and implications

The qualitative study reported in the current paper is one of very few empirical studies to
examine the expectations and perceptions of Arab sojourners who have attended a pre-
sessional EAP course before joining their postgraduate programmes at a UK university. In
addition, the participants’ academic socialisation and their strategy use during their endea-
vours to handle the diverse challenges that they confronted on this course have been
explored. The discrepancy between what the participants would have preferred to do and
what they actually did during the first few months of their stay in the UK may be partially
attributable to their lack of prior travel experience. That is, many of them set the unachievable
goal of expecting that their English would improve automatically without the need to use any
specific strategies.
To increase the benefit of attending pre-sessional EAP courses and enrich students’
language and intercultural learning, research-based interventions need to be integrated
into these courses. Through such interventions, international students could be equipped
with some details of student life in the host country and about a prospective institution before
studying abroad. This can be achieved, for example, by organising face-to-face and/or
electronic meetings between international students and important individuals from the
study abroad context, including programme coordinators, academics, tutors, student buddies,
former students or homestay families. These individuals can encourage international students
before or during their stay abroad to have realistic expectations of the experience from the
start and avoid inflated expectations. Students’ inquiries in terms of the goals and assessment
modes of their destination programmes, together with lifestyle issues in the host country
should be properly addressed without misleading information being given. Further, interna-
tional students need to be informed about the importance of developing their computer
literacy before studying abroad, because most of their academic work will be on or near
a computer, using a host of technological tools.
As indicated by the outcomes of this study, almost all participants upheld the view that
“native speakers” are the best models and teachers of English. Nevertheless, the prioritisation
of “native English speaker teachers” has been increasingly undermined by many researchers
to the point that the categories of “native speaker” and “non-native speaker” have been
236 A. HAJAR

regarded as “zombie categories” or “living dead categories” (Rivers, 2018, p. xiii). This contra-
diction between students’ and researchers’ views could be partially ascribed to students’ lack
of knowledge about different English language varieties, together with their belief that
adherence to “native speaker” norms is normative. In order to offset “native-speakerism”,
English language teachers should provide their students with samples of different English
language varieties and assert that these varieties are also Standard English. Therefore,
Matsuda and Friedrich (2011, p. 338) underline the significance of “hiring teachers who
have proficiency and experience in different varieties of English”. In this respect, more efforts
throughout the ELT profession, in teacher education, research and curriculum development,
should be made to move beyond the conventional native-speakerist ELT paradigm.
Despite this research providing significant information on Arab postgraduate students’
strategic learning efforts and their dynamic interactions with different contextual condi-
tions after coming to the UK, it has limitations which should be acknowledged. In
particular, this study’s finding come from a small number of student participants from
an Arab background. Future studies to include international students from other back-
grounds would enrich the data base available.

Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editors for their insightful
comments and editorial support.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Anas Hajar is a graduate of Warwick University holding a PhD in English Language Education. He
worked as a Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Fellow at Warwick, Coventry and Christ Church
Universities in the UK and at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong SAR. He is currently
an Assistant Professor of Multilingual Education at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan. He is
particularly interested in motivational issues in language learning and intercultural engagement.
He also works in the areas of internationalization and education abroad, language learning strate-
gies and shadow education.

ORCID
Anas Hajar http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7513-9689

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Appendices

Appendix 1
Prompts for Initial Essay
Write an essay that covers the following points:

(1) Could you please write general information about your background (e.g. your parents’ job, the
number of your brothers and sisters, your city/village, etc.)?
(2) How long have you been learning English?
(3) Why did you decide to come to study in the UK?
(4) How did you come to the UK (i.e. at your expense or you granted a scholarship)?
(5) What do you think about differences in studying in your country and the UK?
(6) Why did you join the pre-sessional English course?
(7) What about your expectations of this course?
(8) What are your current learning goals? What kind of activities or steps do you intend to use to
achieve your goals?

Appendix 2
Indicative Interview Protocol

(1) What about the role of English in your life after coming to UK?
(2) What do you think about the tutors in this course? Are they using their own materials?
(3) What is your perception towards collaborative group work assigned by your module tutors?
(4) What is the role of technology in your life after coming to UK?
(5) Do you feel that you are doing well on the pre-sessional course? Why?
(6) What kind of help do you currently need most?
(7) Which particular aspects of English do you think you still have problems with? Why? What are
the strategies did you use/do you want to use to improve this aspect/these aspects of your
English?
(8) Can you tell me about the people you know here in the UK?
(8a) How many people? Who are they?
(8b) How do you know them?
(8c) Why do you contact them?
(8d) Do they help/support you? How?
(8e) any outstanding person?