The Barometer Online

Issue date: 4/11/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Andrew Burton Al Motair Muhanna, Ahmed Noori Alyousif and Alotaibi Mohammed, all English Learning Institute students from Saudi Arabia, are students at Oregon State University. OSU has the sixth largest Saudi Arabian student population in America.

Editor's note: This story is the first in a four-part series. The stories to follow will be printed in Wednesday editions of the Barometer.

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The country of Saudi Arabia is becoming more familiar to American university students through interactions with Saudi students made possible by a newly developed scholarship program.

OSU is home to the sixth largest Saudi student population in America because of this program.

With an onrush of English Language Institute students, an increase in the ELI staff has been necessary to keep classes functioning at the levels they have in the past.

"The increase wasn't gradual," ELI teacher Donna Shaw said. "It was quite sudden. We have many more teachers teaching the same class and more collaboration between teachers. That's been a good thing."

The influx of Saudi students has offered American students at OSU a chance to get a glimpse of a different culture and enjoy firsthand the personalities of Saudi Arabian students.

A United States-Saudi Arabian summit was held in 2005 to encourage positive relations between the two countries. President Bush and Crown Prince Abdullah determined that there should be an increase in the number of Saudi students studying in the United States.

A scholarship program was quickly set up to allow more Saudi students to study in the United States and other countries around the world to foster more positive relations.

Most Saudi students first attend the English Language Institute, connected with OSU to increase English language proficiency before students enroll at OSU.

"In the past, [ELI] students have been primarily Asian. With the Saudi scholarship students, we are now heavily middle-eastern," said Deborah Healey, director of the ELI. "There are quite a few differences in the educational experience."

Before attending OSU, ELI students have to reach level-six proficiency with teacher recommendations or pass the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language).

The ELI encourages proficiency through reading, writing and speaking English. Each country's students struggle with different aspects of proficiency.

"Our Saudi students in general really like to talk. They are not fearful about how good their grammar is," Healey said. "It's made a great change in class, as you might anticipate, to go from one where you are trying to urge people to speak to one where you're trying to urge people to take turns speaking. It's a nice reminder in the great differences in how people approach learning."

"I'm enjoying watching them interact with Americans. They're eager to fit in, and Americans have been accepting," said Rachel Powell, project director of the Office of English Language Acquisition. "They're just taking it all in."

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