International undergraduate students at Universiti Sains Malaysia face challenges with oral academic discourse socialization. They struggle with linguistic difficulties expressing complex concepts in presentations. They also lack experience with presentation skills like creating PowerPoint slides and organizing content. Additionally, students have difficulty finding content related to some topics as they rely more on websites than books. The oral academic socialization process is complex, especially for newcomers. Lecturers can help by providing guidelines for presentations and tailoring tasks to students' abilities, as well as encouraging group work and discussion forums.

1. Oral academic discourse socialisation:
Challenges faced by international undergraduate
students in Universiti Sains Malaysia
1
DR. OMER HASSAN ALI MAHFOODH
omer@usm.my
U S M , M A L AY S I A
Full article can be downloaded at
http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ies/article/view/30651
ICLALIS 2013
22-24 October 2013
Promenade Hotel, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia

2. 2
 Countries in the Asia Pacific region have witnessed a
remarkable and significant development through
implementing effective plans for reform and
restructuring in higher education (Kaur & Sidhu, 2009).
 China, Malaysia, and India are developing strategies
to attract students and to export educational programs
and institutions (Altbach & Knight, 2007: 294).

3. 3
 International students in Malaysian higher education
institutions
 It is expected that the international students in
Malaysian institutions of higher education will reach
200,000 in 2020 (Mahmud et al., 2010; Yusoff &
Chelliah, 2010).
 Students entering academic institutions have different
amounts and kinds of prior experience with academic
discourse.

4. 4
 At the undergraduate level, international students in
most Malaysian universities are required to complete
several activities to complete the programmes they
joined.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Final examinations
Tests
Quizzes
Assignments and
Oral academic presentations

5. 5
 Academic discourse
 forms of oral and written language and communication
(genres,
registers,
graphics,
linguistic
structures,
interactional
patterns)
that
are
privileged, expected, cultivated, conventionalized, or
ritualized, and, therefore, usually evaluated by
instructors, institutions, editors, and others in
educational and professional contexts.
 “discourse socialization places more emphasis on social
processes,
(2010:171).
negotiation,
and
interaction”
Duff

6. 6
 The
successful performance in oral activities
carried out by international students should not
only judged based on students’ language
proficiency.
 The students’ understanding of rules and specific
behaviours valued by each discipline and each
institutional context should be taken into account.

7. 7
 Morita (2000)
 Kobayashi (2003)
 Zappa-Hollman (2007)

8. 8
 Taking into account the growing population of
linguistically and culturally diverse students in
Malaysian colleges and universities, understanding
how these students participate in their new
academic communities has become critical.
 “Although the number of international students on
campuses continues to increase; only a limited
number of recently published studies have
examined this topic in Malaysia” (Yusoff, 2012:3).

9. My study
9
students’ perspectives about their
participation in oral activities in university content
courses.
 International
 The challenges faced by a group of international
undergraduate students in the process
socialisation of oral academic discourse.
of

10. 10
 A qualitative approaches
 Their
contribution to a greater understanding of
perceptions, attitudes and processes.
 have been adopted lately by many L2 researchers
because
 place greater emphasis on contexts and interpretations
of social practice (e.g., Davis, 1995; Johnson, 1992).
 can provide in-depth and holistic understanding of the
lived experience of undergraduate students (Duff,
2012).

11. Participants
11
Participants
1 Jane
Age
27
Nationality
Nigeria
2 Izzy
20
Nigeria
3 Rilla
21
Iran
4 Zoe
21
China
5 Berit
22
Korea
6 Akilah
20
Thailand

12. 12
 Data collected employing
1. interviews,
2. observations and
3. documents collection

13. RESULTS
13
content-related
difficulties
linguistic
difficulties
presentation
skills difficulties

14. 1. Linguistic difficulties
14
 Linguistic difficulties constrained the students
1. to express complex concepts and ideas while
engaged in oral academic presentations.
2. Students were not able to provide accurate and
well-structured responses when they were asked.
 Zoe: It is difficult for me ... new words... many
things to do... so I have to check the dictionary
frequently.

15. 15
 Thus, linguistic difficulties played a major role in the
students’ socialisation of oral academic discourse.
 They can be attributed:
1. students’ educational background
2. previous
experience in doing oral academic
presentation

As a result of this, these international students
struggled to be active members in the new
academic discourse community.

16. 2. Presentation skills difficulties
16
 How to prepare PowerPoint slides and
 How to organise the content of the presentation
 Researcher: Before joining this programme, did you
have experience in doing oral presentations?
 Jane: No, ... In Nigeria no. It is just when I came here
I learnt to use PowerPoint. We never use PowerPoint
for presentations in my country ... it may be used
there but very few in all years of one programme.

17. 3. Content-related difficulties
17
 Getting content related to some of the topics
 The students refer to websites more than books.
 Researcher: In the process of preparing for your
presentations, do you refer to books? Is it difficult to
find content?
 Rilla: I try to refer to books but sometime we cannot
find books... So I refer to websites and the notes
lecturers give to us.

18. Conclusions
18
 The
oral academic socialisation is a complex
process which is considered to be internal and
interpersonal struggle for many people, especially for
newcomers or novices.
 This study confirms that oral academic discourse
socialization is socially, cognitively, and discursively
complex.

19. Conclusions (cont.)
19
 Lecturers and tutors in the context of the study can
help the students overcome these difficulties through
 Providing the students with some guidelines on how
to tackle oral academic presentations.
 Tailoring the tasks of oral academic presentations to
suit the needs and the abilities of their students.

20. Conclusions (cont.)
20
 Understanding of the importance of structuring the
tasks of oral academic presentations is essential to
support the students in finding the appropriate content
and materials for oral presentations.
 Providing other forums for discussion such as group
work or group projects.
 Understanding
strategies the students employ to
overcome the challenges. This can help lecturers and
tutors to provide suitable scaffolding and support to the
students.

21. 21
THANK YOU