Saudi Students Enculturation into UK Higher Education Three Case Studies

ABSTRACT
This thesis contributes to the field of academic literacies and disciplinary enculturation by examining how advanced English as a Second Language (ESL) learners—specifically Saudi students—navigate graduate study in UK higher education. Situated within debates on international student adjustment, academic writing development, and institutional support, the study offers a focused account of how postgraduate students from Saudi Arabia experience and respond to the demands of academic discourse communities in the humanities and social sciences.
Drawing on data from an eighteen-month qualitative case study, the research follows three Saudi students enrolled in UK master’s programs. It is guided by four core research questions. The first two, adapted from Krase (2003), explore (1) participants’ perspectives on their enculturation into academic discourse communities, and (2) the function of literacy activities in this process. The remaining two—(3) the nature of the difficulties students encounter and (4) how they attempt to overcome them—extend existing research by foregrounding the complexities of understanding academic expectations and developing critical academic literacies. These questions also enable analysis of how individual agency and institutional structures interact in shaping students’ trajectories.
Data sources include semi-structured interviews with students and lecturers, samples of students’ academic writing, written feedback, and student reflections using the talk around text method (Lillis, 2009).