how about using exports?
bash-2.03$ exp mag/mag file=emp.dmp tables=(emp,dept) statistics=none
Export: Release 9.2.0.4.0 - Production on Wed May 26 07:28:51 2004
Copyright (c) 1982, 2002, Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved.
Connected to: Oracle9i Enterprise Edition Release 9.2.0.4.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning option
JServer Release 9.2.0.4.0 - Production
Export done in US7ASCII character set and AL16UTF16 NCHAR character set
server uses WE8ISO8859P1 character set (possible charset conversion)
About to export specified tables via Conventional Path ...
. . exporting table EMP 14 rows exported
. . exporting table DEPT 4 rows exported
Export terminated successfully without warnings.