Arabic-L:PEDA:Colloquial First

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Sat 23 Jun 2007
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Colloquial First

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1)
Date: 23 Jun 2007
From:"Ola Moshref" <omoshref at gmail.com>
Subject:Colloquial First

The argument that teaching the spoken follows the natural order by
which native children learn their language is logical and attractive.  
It is
necessary to remember, however, the misery Arab children have in  
learning
the Standard variety of their own language. This is because the learning
does not provide a smooth shift between the two varieties. To  
consider this
fact is one key to resolving the conflict of how to teach Arabic as one
entity to foreigners.

If colloquial is taught first, how can we integrate the skills of  
reading,
writing, listening, and speaking necessary for effective language  
learning?
There is of course written material in colloquial ranging from  
advertisments
to poetry. However, there are problems like the absence of conventional
spelling for colloquial. We will train students to write in colloquial,
although when Arab children learn to write, they write Standard.  
Hence, we
will not be following the natural order in this respect. Since early
learining impacts later development, one question will be which  
variety is
more tolerent of interference from the other. The answer might very  
well be
different from one skill to the other.

The problem is that we are still partitioning the language. We have  
not yet
discovered the formula which describes its mutiple facets in simple
associations, and therefore be able to design a programme which  
progresses
not from colloquial to standard or vice vesa, but across both along  
higher
levels of acquisition.

Ola Moshref
TA - Linguisitics
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign


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End of Arabic-L:  23 Jun 2007