To understand our Arab Muslim students’ performance, it is important that we remember that their educational background and ways of learning are not necessarily the same as those of the dominant culture, particularly for Arab Muslim women. This article is about the cultural sensitivity and awareness we as educators need to display to avoid creating a religious identity gender division in the academic experiences of international students.

A young Arab Muslim woman wearing a niqab, a veil that leaves only the eyes uncovered, is in front of the class doing a presentation. She is expressing her opinion on a topic when, suddenly, her teacher stops her and says, “Please speak up. We cannot hear you.” So the student raises her voice and continues on. She is stopped again by her teacher, who now says, “Are you talking to yourself? We cannot hear you. And if I can’t hear you, I cannot give you a grade.” At this point, the student feels embarrassed, ashamed, and nervous; she doesn’t know how to raise her voice sufficiently to please her teacher. She struggles on and finishes. At the end of the class, the teacher approaches her and gives her feedback and a grade. It wasn’t a high grade. Why? She did not have good voice projection and she had poor eye contact.

Teachers, like any other human, develop prejudices and stereotypes of other cultures and people. Because we are not always conscious of these feelings, we may make a comment in class that is inappropriate and that will stay in a student’s memory.

Teachers need to consider how their own stereotypes may influence their teaching and affect their students. This article is about the cultural sensitivity and awareness we as educators need to have, and use, in a multicultural setting to avoid creating a religious and gender division in the Canadian academic experiences of international students.

As a teacher of EAP in Canada for the past 12 years, I am aware of the pressure my students are under when it comes to being assessed. One low mark could affect their final grade, a stepping stone to passing a level, which may, in turn, gain them entrance to a Canadian university. A young female Muslim student approached me recently about her negative experience during a graded presentation in a class. It was not the first time I had heard of something like this happening, but this time, I felt compelled to write about it.

ARAB CULTURE, THE ARABIC LANGUAGE, AND NONVERBAL CUES

The term Arab refers to people who speak Arabic and who live in or originate from a wide geographical area, covering parts of the Middle East and northern Africa. Arabs include Muslims as well as Christians living in predominantly Muslim countries such as Egypt and Lebanon. Arabs are heterogeneous in behavior, lifestyle, customs, and often religion.

For Arabic speakers, an effective communicator is someone who is eloquent, well educated, able to use language to connect with others at an emotional level, knowledgeable of dialect differences of spoken Arabic, and able to use vocabulary familiar to audience. In contrast, for non-Arabic speakers, it is often the nonverbal cues that signal communication competence.

In comparison with Westerners, in general, Arab people are high-context communicators, and to Western ears they tend to be more expressive, to exaggerate to emphasize meaning, and to repeat pronouns to increase assertiveness. For Arab men, loudness in social situations implies strength and sincerity; a soft voice could suggest weakness or even secrecy (Gudykunst & Kim, 1984, p.161). This could create ambiguity for Westerners decoding the message.

In addition, a Muslim Arabic speaker communicates by following the rules of the Quran, which teaches through the use of parables, metaphors, analogies, and similes. When an Arabic speaker reflects this style in her or his English, it may seem strange to Westerners, who tend to be much more direct in their speech.

For Muslim Arab women, the Quran prescribes lowering one’s voice and one’s gaze in order to conform to religious laws about appropriateness. In Arab countries, modesty, humility, and soft-spokenness are important; the concealment of desired wants, needs, or goals during discourse is a sign of obedience and politeness (Gudykunst & Ting-Toomey, 1988). These aspects of communication may also be misinterpreted in cross-cultural settings.

APPLICATION TO THE CLASSROOM

To a young Arab Muslim woman in a Canadian academic setting, there is much pressure to maintain an Islamic lifestyle and at the same time conform to the dominant culture. How does this play out in an EAP environment? Consider the situation above that was described to me by my student.

The teacher was judging the student’s performance by Western standards of communication, which in a presentation setting stress voice projection, eye contact, and speaking clearly and loudly. To understand our Arab students’ performance, it is important that we remember that their religious, cultural, and educational background and ways of learning are not necessarily the same as those of the dominant culture, particularly for Arab women.

• Due to cultural, economic, or family (for example, childcare) responsibilities, some women have not been allowed to or able to attend EAP classes.
• In their home country education system, students may not have been in mixed-gender classrooms, and they may never have experienced a teacher of the opposite gender.
• Encouraging women to be active participants in the classrooms may be seen as wrong by men, and sometimes women also, from cultures in which women are not encouraged to have an active role in mixed-sex settings.

As EAP teachers, our role is not simply to facilitate language learning, but also to engage our students in the learning process. Do we punish Muslim women for wearing the niqab and wanting to follow their religious and cultural traditions in a Canadian academic setting? Is the power imbalance so great that as teachers we enforce the rules to the point of humiliation? What does that do to the academic progress and self-esteem of the student?

CONCLUSION

I feel that for EAP teachers it is crucial to understand how religion and culture are a significant part of Arab Muslim students’ everyday life. It can be beneficial for teachers to take advantage of the cultural diversity found in our Canadian classrooms, but at the same time, we must be culturally sensitive to the issues of self-identity, homesickness, and a desire to succeed in a very pressure-driven setting

Seven Lessons Toward Cross-Cultural Understanding

Don't assume everyone is the same.

• Familiar behaviors may have different meanings. The same behavior—saying yes, for example, can exist in different cultures and not mean the same thing. Just because you've recognized a given behavior, don't assume you've understood it.
• What you think of as normal behavior may only be cultural. A lot of behavior is universal, but certainly not all. Before you project your norms on the human race, consider that you might be wrong.
• Don't assume that what you meant is what was understood. You can be sure of what you meant when you say something, but you can't be sure how this is understood by someone else. Check for signs that the other person did indeed understand you.
• Don't assume that what you understood is what was meant. You are obliged to hear what others say through the medium of your own culture and experience. You know what those words mean to you, but what do they mean to the person speaking them? Always double check!
• You don't have to like "different" behavior, but understanding where it comes from may help you respond with more sensitivity.
• Most people do behave rationally; you just have to discover the rationale! (Storti, 1994, p. 129-131)

REFERENCES

Gudykunst, W. B., & Kim, Y. Y. (1984). Communicating with strangers: An approach to intercultural communication. NewYork, NY: McGraw Hill.

Gudykunst, W. B., & Ting-Toomey, S. (Eds.) (1988). Culture and interpersonal communication. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Storti, C. (1994). Cross-cultural dialogues: 74 brief encounters with cultural difference. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press.

FURTHER READING

Almaney, A. J., & Alwan, A. J. (1982). Communicating with the Arabs: A handbook for the business executive. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

Anonymous. (2000). The Koran (N. J. Dawood, Trans., 7th rev. ed.). London, England: Penguin.

Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Bristol, England: Multilingual Matters.

Kimball, J. C. (1984). The Arabs 1984/85. Washington, DC: American Educational Trust.

Ana Enriquez-Johnson holds degrees in anthropology and adult education and is currently pursuing postgraduate work in intercultural communication at Royal Roads University. She teaches EAP at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario, and her research interests include acculturation of Latin American immigrants, autoethnographies, and teacher-training development in intercultural communication competency.