This study examined the question of whether there was a difference in the general school experiences of children who move to a new country with an entirely different culture and language and children who immigrate to a country with a language and culture that is similar to their native culture. It was noted that existing literature had stated that immigrant children's school experiences can be affected by any attitudes about the country of immigration and its people which they pick up from their parents as well as from the degree of parents' willingness to interact with the new culture. Based on these postulates, it was predicted that being in a culture different from one's own makes for far more problems in school than merely language or academic difficulties. Subjects in the study consisted of Arab families whose children were attending school in either the United States of America or the United Arab Emirate and who had one or more children in the fourth or fifth grades. All data were collected using researcher-designed questionnaires given to parents, children, and their teachers. Four research questions were formulated which examined the general school experiences of Arabic school children who immigrated to the United Arab Emirate or to the United States. The findings reveal that U.A.E. parents held more positive views of their children's school experiences than did U.S.A. parents. However, children in both U.A.E. and U.S.A. show positive views in terms of general school experiences. Teachers' perceptions of children's school adjustment and level of school success did not differ in association with cultural differences. Both descriptive (computation of frequencies and percentages) and inferential (t-tests, chi square) analyses were conducted. Findings revealed several differences in association with differences in the similarity/dissimilarity of the country of immigration to the country of birth for parents, children, and teacher groups. The study recommended that objective measures, more social variables, gender differences, time period of immigration, different level of schooling, language proficiency and method of teaching be investigated in the future.

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This study explores the use of source texts in academic writing by postgraduate students from Arab backgrounds in three UK universities. The specific focus of the study is to develop an understanding of how Arab students in the UK use sources, how they adapt to UK academic expectations, as well as how their educational backgrounds may affect their source use and adaptation to UK academic expectations. The participants in this research included a group of 22 Arab postgraduate students from three UK universities. To respond to the research aims, the data generated included 40 (already assessed by their tutors) text-based assignments collected from the participants. The analysis used Pecorari and Shaw's (2012) typology as a starting point to explore the forms of intertextuality evident in the Arab students' writing. A second source of data was interviews with seven students from the same group of participants. The analysis made use of the MAXQDA data analysis software, including facilitating the textual analysis of intertextuality in the student texts and the thematic analysis of the interview transcripts. The findings suggest that unconventional use of sources does occur among this group of students, including over-reliance on sources, patchwriting, frequent use of direct quotation, and forms of paraphrasing that rely on synonym substitution. The study further suggests that unconventional use of sources may be explained by the students' past educational experiences in their Arab home contexts. This includes a lack of written culture, low readership in the region, culture of orality, acceptability of violations of copyright, and 'traditional' teaching practices in the educational systems of the region. The study also shows how the students' educational backgrounds created transition challenges for students when arriving in the academic setting in the UK. Finally, the study presents various strategies used by this group of students to adapt to the UK academic environment. The study contributes by presenting a four level framework of intertextuality, developed from the data in this study and extending on Pecorari and Shaw's typology. This includes intertextuality on the word, sentence, paragraph, and structure levels of the students' academic writing. This expanded view of intertextuality, including a level-based framework, enhances understanding of the forms of intertextuality prevalent in these students' texts, and highlights the specific challenges these Arab students have faced in their transition to become academic writers in the UK context. The thesis also concludes with what are the lessons, as evident from this study, for UK Universities in supporting Arab students.

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Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2002. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iii, 26 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 24-26).

Many research studies have been conducted in Arab countries to examine the difficulties that Arab students encounter in learning English writing. Unfortunately, not much of that scholarship deals with the challenges that these second language learners face when they pursue degrees abroad. Furthermore, the earlier studies failed to include the students' views about their difficulties, the causes, and possible solutions. In an effort to fill the gap in our understanding of the problems Arab students face in learning to write in English, this study explores the experiences and perceptions of a sampling of forty Arab students who chose to study in the United States. The students who participated provide firsthand information about their experiences in distinctly different learning and cultural environments; they provide information about their difficulties in improving their English writing skills and offer suggestions for all who teach writing to second language learners. The difficulties identified and described by these students provide a sketch of experiences and perceptions of Arab students who learn English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in their home countries and English as a Second Language (ESL) in the United States. The information provided as a result of this study will guide future research on second language learners, help develop pedagogies that will better serve the students, and expand our understanding of language acquisition as it pertains to an increasingly multilingual world.

In this dissertation, a collective of eighteen Israeli and Palestinian former and current students and staff of two music education-encounter dialogue programs in Israel-Palestine engaged in participatory action research to reflect upon their former experiences in these shared society programs, while imagining and enacting designing of what they could be (Bashir & Goldberg, 2018; Escobar, 2018; Hess, 2018). At large, this research was a curriculum studies dissertation in retrospect that took a decolonial and music education activism approach to narratively understanding Israeli-Palestinian shared society music education spaces that exist within the greater contextual setting of settler colonialism and power asymmetries, deep within the borderlands (Anzaldúa, 1987; Lavie, 2011). The initiator of research and member of the collective also utilizes a narrative approach through memoir in the writing of this inquiry in which to embody the socio-historical-cultural context of this research. This intergenerational research collective with multiple identities (Maalouf, 2001) across the national binary of Israeli and Palestinian identities co-researched over a ten-month period within small inquiry communities, or dialogue research circles. The dialogue research circles were formed by eliciting research questions from the collective. Upon entering the dialogue research circles, co-researchers revisited experiences within Israeli and Palestinian musical spaces through narrative witnessing and testifying of stories of these spaces. Co-researchers then considered how these stories as curricular artefacts (Sonu, 2020) could offer insights into a multitude of alternative ways of co-constructing Israeli-Palestinian shared society spaces. The content of the stories told included looking at the interaction of multiple narratives and histories to collective memories and everyday realities, in addition to our experiences learning and teaching music in multicultural, multilingual, multireligious, multi-ethno-national-affiliated spaces. The findings presented in this dissertation are organized as three themes embedded with curricular tensions and decision points. Furthermore, these themes are presented through vignettes that attempt to portray on another level the different phases of the dialogue research circle’s group dynamics interconnected with the research process and timeline. The themes include the processes and structures of co-constructing Israeli-Palestinian participatory researching spaces, negotiating the complexities and conceptualizations of safe space within these programs, and finally, exploring the implications of, and decentering of, the national binary dominance of Israeli and Palestinian nationalisms present within the binationalism of shared society programs.

The problem of this study was to determine the personal, social, and academic adjustment problems of Arab students at selected Texas institutions of higher education. The students in this study were 315 undergraduate and graduate Arab students attending four Texas institutions of higher education who were enrolled in the spring semester of 1979. The purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to identify the personal, social, and academic adjustment problems perceived by Arab students; and (2) to analyze and to interpret the data in relation to the adjustment problems of full-time Arab students included in this study. Results indicated that the Arab students were in general agreement concerning the questionnaires; no significant differences were found at the .05 level between male and female Arab students, married and single Arab students, and undergraduate and graduate Arab students. Recommendations were included which suggested that faculty and administrators who interact with Arab students be acquainted with the findings of the study. Orientation programs should be provided for Arab students, and the possibility of developing and enhancing the students' academic and non-academic experiences by identifying those individuals who have the ability and interest necessary for working with Arab students should be examined. Better communication should be developed and programs should be implemented to facilitate better understanding and respect between Arab students and Americans.

In this two-part study, English spelling errors of Arabic speaking students are investigated. Specifically, an empirical study is done to document and investigate exactly what kinds of English spelling errors Arabic-speaking students actually make. Then these data are analyzed. and spelling error patterns are discovered. Next. a study is done to determine if the presence of spelling errors in written work has a significant negative effect on readers' evaluations of this writing.