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My experience with academic English

Ali Hajj Ali

American University of Beirut

English 203

Mrs. Rima Iskandarani

May 6 2019
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My experience with academic english

Just like all AUB students, academic English is required course in order for me to obtain

my bachelor degree. However, registering this course wasn’t an easy step for me because of my

French background, and moving on form a language after 15 years of learning. Nonetheless,

things turned out to be a lot different than I expected. But, as all things in life, it had some ups

and some downs.

One of the major challenges in writing academic essays was including an expert’s

opinion, because it meant two things: the first is that I was expected to write an in-text citation,

and the second was that a reference page must be written, and in an APA style. First things first,

including an authoritative speech is crucial in an academic essay, since it boosts up the

credibility and authenticity of the writer, as long as the expert is engaged in the same field as the

topic of the essay. Luckily, and due to university’s libraries, finding this expert was not the

problem, it was using his words properly to back up the arguments presented, in a non-

plagiarized manner. Personally, I used two strategies for in-text citations. The first one is to

quote, word by word, the expert’s arguments and thoughts, and the second is to paraphrase his

words, keeping the same meaning, of course with mentioning the author directly or indirectly.

The other major result of referring to an expert is the necessity to cite all the sources in

the reference page, using the APA style. The step was really stressed throughout the entire

semester, because it directly relates to the university’s policies against plagiarism. The first essay

we were required to include a reference page in was a disaster, it took me 2 hours to write the

essay, and additional 90 minutes to write the reference page, it was a nightmare. However, every

additional assignment made it more and more easy to cite any kind of resources, not to forget
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about the life saving presentation explaining how to cite correctly. Eventually, my last reference

page took me 10 minutes, so that’s a progress, in a way. Although the fact that I am still refusing

the thought of citing each and every idea outside my essay, I have realized that citation is in fact

a very fair step in the process of writing, because it gives credit to the appropriate author.

Enough with the negatives! A very interesting feature about this course is that it’s fair, in

the sense that it includes a combination of skills that allows students having a trouble in writing

to participate and shine, and is through arguing via visuals. Personally, I prefer the traditional

writing due to my humble skills in preparing visuals and presentations. So, whether it’s making a

video or building a physical model, I think visuals demand more effort, time, and skills, than

traditional written essays. For instance, the video presented in our last assignment on the life the

Lebanese prisoners, as well as the painting on how social media was ruining our lives. These two

types of visuals appeal to viewers’ emotions, more than logic, which is something I am not really

good at. However, I think that the video was more effective, because it shows real prisoners and

their actual misery, it also includes a psychologist giving her authoritative opinion about this

topic, while the painting was a model, and not the actual reality. Hence, reaching an expert and

interviewing him/her, going to film certain situations, and, perhaps, dealing with mixed public

reactions. Having established these skills, I believe that the best paragraph I’ve written was the

following: “Another complain we hear is how hard would it be to change the Lebanese

traditional religious mentality, the same mentality that pushed them to even have a civil war. In

fact, the graph shown below, taken form the article “Stumbling Blocks to the Secularization of

Personal Status”, demonstrates the percentage of supporters for secularism in addition to the

level of trust in the current state, in 3 random Lebanese religions, as well as their average
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between 2002 and 2013. As we can see,

in all 3 religions, the citizens’ confidence in state and institutions decreased drastically between

these 11 years; moreover, the support of secularism increased in all 3 religions, but not as fast.

This means that with all the problems and corruptions spreading widely in Lebanon, and the

government not attempting to fix the situation people’s trust in their country is fading, therefore,

some of them, and especially the youth are considering secularism as the solution. So, with the

enhancement of education and the bad experiences Lebanese citizens are suffering from, there is

actually an acceptance of secularism and a tendency to adopt this system, after all the youth are

the most important factor in determining Lebanon’s future.”

And the main reason I chose this paragraph is because it is a “multi-modal” paragraph

that includes 2 genres of representations, combining elements of a visual graph, with the

traditional writing experience (Groenke and Pricket, 2018). As Groenke and Pricket explain, this

type of writings reduces the gap between students and teachers, allowing writing to be more

practical. Including a visual in addition to the typical writing is an extra way of persuasion, and a

more effective, since a picture speaks a 1000 word. Hence, the paragraph shows that people are

accepting secularism instead of telling it. This difference between showing and telling is part of
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the “interactive narration” where readers and not authors choose how to engage in the text

(Groenke and Pricket, 2018).

To conclude, looking back at the course learning outcomes, I believe that I’ve accomplish

most of this course’s goals. For instance, my critical reading and responses, whether orally,

though a debate, or written, through a response essay, have improved. I’ve also learned how to

apply my own voice in my essays and correctly deliver my intended message. Not to forget

about improving my communication and debate skills through oral presentations and in class

debates. But I believe that an outcome I haven’t mastered yet is to ethically incorporate outside

sources, but at least there’s a progress. And now, as writer, my next big goal s to write m very

first scientific research paper.

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Reference page:

Groenke and Pricket, “Continued Absences: Multimodal Texts and the 21st Century

Literacy Instruction?”, H. Hodeib, K. Lincoln, E. Moghabghab, R. Rantisi, Z. Sinno (eds), pages

apart: a reader for academic writing (p20-32). Beirut EDUCART