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October 1, 2008
So what do we mean when we say we teach Arabic?
Inside Higher Ed has an interesting article on Arabic pedagogy. The problem is deciding what to teach - Arabic is a complicated phenomenon. I blogged about the difficulties of diglossia (multiple languages or dialects inside a single package) a while back and compared a lot of American instruction in Arabic to teaching Latin and then sending our students to Italy and Spain. Really, that's not an unfair comparison.
From today's article:
Teaching conversation skills in an Arabic classroom may seem like an uncontroversial thing. It would be standard, after all, in many introductory courses for other languages. But when Munther Younes started integrating instruction of the formal written language with a spoken dialect in Cornell University classrooms 18 years ago, he was a pioneer."What we're doing that's different ... is that other programs either teach the classical language by itself - they're a small program and they don't have the manpower or support. Other programs that are bigger introduce a spoken dialect, but they do the two in separate tracks. What we do at Cornell is integrate the two into one track, with two sides, so students learn to read what Arabs read and write, and they learn to speak what Arabs speak," says Younes, a senior lecturer and director of Cornell's Arabic program.
"So it's an honest reflection of what really happens in the Arab world."
Arabic is characterized by a so-called "diglossic" situation, in which the formal, uniform written language (Modern Standard Arabic) differs considerably from the various spoken dialects. Traditionally, and still, the former has been privileged in foreign language classrooms -- in some cases to the total exclusion of -- the latter.
The reasons are complicated. Some are pedagogical -- fear of confusing students in constantly switching between varieties. Some are practical -- native Arabic speakers pick up the dialect at home and study Modern Standard Arabic in school, and carry that tradition to the North American classroom. And some are ideological or political. Modern Standard Arabic is the language of literature and Arab culture, while the dialects lack respect. Arab students, Younes says, "would be condemning the dialect in the strongest terms [while speaking] in the dialect."
Among other things, the Cornell program has decided to teach Levantine Arabic (Syria, Lebanon, etc.). That's at least mutually intelligible with Egyptian. But what about other Arabics?
This is a real problem for American higher education. As is the problem of trained instructors - which also comes up in the Inside Higher Ed piece. Here at these Colleges we're supplementing our meager offerings with visiting native speakers. I hope it helps.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at October 1, 2008 7:33 AM
Comments
It's a big problem. If you teach just Modern Standard, the students can't use it for conversation. If you're teaching a dialect, you have to pick out which one. You can pick Egyptian, because of the influence of the Egyptian film industry. Or you can pick Levantine, because it's mutually intelligible with Egyptian. Or you can pick Gulf, because of the influence of al-Jazeera.
And while it makes some sense to do both a dialect and Modern Standard, because Arabs use both, the fact is that Arabs learn the dialect at home first and only learn Modern Standard when they get to school (I think).
So, I would start with a dialect, and one of the instructors mentioned in the article is doing just that.
That still leaves the question of which dialect to choose, of course.
Posted by: John Pepple at October 2, 2008 12:19 AM