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Arabic-L: Mon 12 Oct 2009
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <<a href="mailto:dilworth_parkinson@byu.edu">dilworth_parkinson@byu.edu</a>>
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1) Subject:Number of Al-Kitaab Chapters per term
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1)
Date: 12 Oct 2009
From:<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; white-space: normal; ">David Wilmsen <<a href="mailto:david.wilmsen@gmail.com">david.wilmsen@gmail.com</a>></span>
Subject:Number of Al-Kitaab Chapters per term
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium; white-space: normal; ">To those of you using the <i>al kitaab</i> series in teaching non-native speakers of Arabic, I should like to see some discussion of specific goals for the number of chapters we should be covering per term or semester. This seems to be something of a trade secret at each university whose curriculum I have examined. It should not be; we should all know where we want to take our students.<br><br>For students following a lock-step at a certain university (and for their instructors) this should not pose a significant problem, unless of course the school itself has no set goals. I taught for a year at one such school in the States, and for the whole time I was there, I could not get a firm commitment from any of the other instructors or the administration about where I should begin or end. At that school, my students were the best source of information about navigating the somewhat inflexible routines of the school, and so I petitioned them and started where most of them had left off and got them as far as we could get.<br><br>Of course, goals would have to be flexible, depending upon the aggregate skill in each classroom and the average of where all students had arrived upon beginning the class.<br><br>But for students coming from various schools in the States and elsewhere to study at a study-abroad locale, from whence I write, it becomes a more serious matter. In the Arabic program at AUB, we service non-native speakers of Arabic (and many heritage learners) studying for a three to four-term masters, a few undergrads pursuing four year degrees, and many many students coming for a semester or year abroad. The placement of these last is the most perplexing. <br><br>The two main issues are both matters of articulation. Where do we place students who have studied some Arabic? (Granted, this is a universal problem.) We do have a placement test, but it takes three hours to complete, and so we often revert to the shorthand of placing students based upon where they have arrived in the <i>al-kitaab</i>series (the books we use) or an equivalent. Some of our students come from Europe, and many of them have used Schulz, Krahl, and Reuschel/Dickens and Watkins. Oddly enough, it is easier to articulate them into the <i>al-kitaab</i> curriculum than it is to articulate students coming from different universities in the States. Everyone seems to be getting students to different points in the book. Some programs use different books; often the textbook seems to be chosen at the discretion of the instructor; and sometimes the instructor appears to create his or her own materials as the class proceeds, never relying upon a textbook at all. I won't go in to my pet peeves about the haphazard approach to Arabic teaching in the States. But those three aspects of the construct of the Arabic curriculum in the States complicate our placement of students coming to us from stateside. <br><br>To reiterate, the three perplexities are as follows:<br><br>1. variable chapter attainments in the <i>al kitaab</i> series<br>2. the use of books different from the <i>al kitaab</i> series<br>3. the use of no books whatsoever<br><br>These, then, certainly cause us some anxiety about the second matter.<br><br>That too is a matter of articulation; specifically it is a question of enabling students to meet a language requirement at their home institutions. We feel an obligation to the profession to return to its various members and institutions their students ready to articulate into their home institutions' curricula or to have satisfied their language requirements or to be able to place out of an achievement/proficiency test.<br><br>We are definitely shooting at a moving target.<br><br>I should say that we usually manage and we have many success stories. But that doesn't mean that universities sending their students to us should remain so taciturn about their expectations. (Granted, many stateside university study abroad offices would rather not acknowledge that their students are coming to Beirut at all, much less engage in an open discussion of what they would like their students to achieve. Their fears, I hasten to point, out are ill founded. Beirut is a great environment for a study-abroad experience.)<br><br>As near as I can tell, and based upon what I can extrapolate from universities' somewhat vague curriculum descriptions and from what many students in the lock-step who reach our shores seem to have achieved, then, it seems to me that many programs reach chapter 13 in book i at the end of two terms of teaching. I suppose that makes sense. Figuring ten days (that is two weeks, if classes meet every day) to cover <i>Aliph Baa</i>, and then two weeks per chapter in <i>al kitaab</i> book i, in a fourteen-week term students should be able to reach chapter 5 or 6 in the first term and chapter 13 or 14 in the second.<br><br>In the fall and spring terms at AUB, we usually get as far as chapter 16 or 17 in the first year; sometimes 18. (Our summer intensive program is a different matter, wherein we can meet students at half-way articulation points. We have no intensive program throughout the regular school year.)<br><br>We may get further than most because we do not address the vernacular Egyptian aspects of the lessons. Incorporating a vernacular element into the curriculum would probably add at least one and more likely two full class sessions to the amount of time it takes to complete a chapter. As we are not currently including a vernacular element, we save two to four weeks of class time, which can then be devoted to fusha. (Now that I think of it this way, it becomes clear to me that even that small amount of time devoted to the vernacular is not enough, unless students discuss their material in the vernacular). We are ordering the new Syrian-oriented DVDs and will start addressing the vernacular in class perhaps as early as this term, depending upon when the discs actually arrive. So our chapter attainments could begin to trend toward the presumptive mean.<br><br>We also teach spoken Lebanese Arabic in separate classes and many of our students either begin with that, if they have time, or take the two concurrently (again, if their schedules permit). It is a shame to waste their time in country focusing mainly on fusha, which, after all, they could study anywhere. <br><br>Regardless of where I think we should arrive or where I would like to start the "intermediate" class, we usually end up starting around chapter 15. (I place "intermediate" in scare quotes because after two terms of Arabic, students are not intermediate at all but high beginners-unless they have been studying a vernacular too.) That of course is usually a compromise position and it depends upon where all the students arrived in their various universities. Our term begins on Monday, and it seems to me that this year we will begin the "intermediate" level at chapter 14.<br><br>That means that by the end of the third term of <i>al kitaab</i>, we usually get to chapter 2 or 3 of book ii (assuming three weeks per chapter for book ii), and by the end of the fourth term, chapter 6 or 7. (By that time, our students are more-or-less true intermediates.) <br><br>The fifth level (which we do call advanced) began last year in chapter 8 of book ii, and judging by the level of the students this year, it looks like that is where we will begin again. <br><br>By itself, book three could take several terms to complete. For some reason, students at that level are easier to place too.<br><br>I should add that we also have a full curriculum of Arabic literature and thought conducted in Arabic, many of them service review classes, and occasionally we have non-native speakers who have reached a level of proficiency sufficient to allow them to enroll and participate in those classes (three this term).<br><br>Do these attainments jibe with other programs using <i>al kitaab</i>?<br><br>I am not going to name names, but I would really appreciate some expectations/guidelines from those universities who regularly send their students to Beirut. <br><br clear="all">David Wilmsen, PhD, Arabic language and linguistics<br>Associate Professor of Arabic<br>Department of Arabic and Near Eastern Languages<br>American University of Beirut<br></span><br></span></font></p><p align=""><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">
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End of Arabic-L: 12 Oct 2009
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