Arabic-L:PEDA:Teacher accent and class size queries

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Fri 26 Jun 2009
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Teacher accent and class size queries

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1)
Date: 26 Jun 2009
From:Chris Holman <chrish at uoregon.edu>
Subject:Teacher accent and class size queries

Hello everyone!  I have written this list a few times before, and I am  
always helped by your responses.  So, here I am yet again with two  
questions:

1)  I am in the process of re-writing a first-year curriculum, and I  
am curious as to what other departments have done when it comes to the  
accents/dialects of the teachers working in the program.  I know that  
there are regional variations (i.e. North Africa vs. Arabian  
Peninsula) with many letters, and that other languages (i.e. French,  
English) can impact the way an Arabic-speaker pronounces certain  
things.  My question is whether or not it makes sense to streamline  
pronunciation in the first term or two of Arabic instruction, so that  
students are all hearing the same things regardless of the teacher and  
his or her personal geography.  What I have personally experienced is  
what I have been calling 'manufactured diglossia', where our students  
sometimes think that a word is different only because of the  
difference in pronunciation.  It is, in fact, the same word...but  
students hear it differently and thus categorize it differently.  This  
is more of a problem in the beginning, in my experience, and I am a  
big proponent of getting students familiar with the regional/dialect  
variations...but only later in the year after students have a strong  
foundation to work from.

2)  This is a common problem, I am sure, but my main issue is that the  
average class size in my program is around 22-23 students.  First-year  
classes have been maxed out at 28 as recently as last year, and this  
summer there is potential for a class of 30 in ARB 103 (third quarter,  
first-year).  My question is what people in similar situations have  
done when it comes to homework.  In our program we are only three  
instructors with minimal help in terms of grading, and this Fall we  
are looking at an enrollment of well over 200 students in 9 classes.   
I have tried multiple approaches over the last three years, but every  
term I end up behind.  So, any ideas or suggestions that you have  
would be greatly appreciated.  It's just that there is only so much  
time in the day and correcting 75 homework assignments/night is pretty  
much an impossibility (unless the homework is extremely light) given  
all of our other responsibilities.

As always, thank you for listening, responding and anything else.  I  
hope that the summer is going well for all of you!


--
Chris Holman
Instructor & Arabic Program Coordinator
1236 University of Oregon (WLA-YLC)
Eugene, OR 97403-1236
(541) 346-1538  Fax: 346-3917

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