<div dir="ltr"><br clear="all"><div><h1 itemprop="name" style="margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-size:30px;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:'Roboto Condensed','Sans Serif';color:rgb(45,45,45);line-height:1.2em;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">Algerian Students Are Victims of the Country’s Language Confusion</h1><span class="" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-size:1.1em;vertical-align:baseline;display:block;color:rgb(182,182,182);font-family:'Open Sans';line-height:20.8px;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial">Rim Hayat Chaif / 24 Sep 2015</span><div class="" style="margin:8px 2px 15px 0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-size:13px;vertical-align:baseline;float:left;color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';line-height:20.8px;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"></div><div class="" style="margin:8px 2px 15px 0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-size:13px;vertical-align:baseline;float:left;display:inline-block;color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';line-height:20.8px;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:bottom;display:inline-block;text-align:justify;width:121px;height:20px;background:transparent"></span></div><a class="" style="margin:7px 8px 0px 30px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-size:13px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(32,34,34);display:block;float:left;width:57px;height:21px;font-family:'Open Sans';line-height:20.8px;background-image:url(http://www.al-fanarmedia.org/wp-content/themes/alfanar/images/print_icon.png);background-repeat:no-repeat"></a><br style="color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';font-size:13px;line-height:20.8px;clear:both"><div class="" style="margin:0px 0px 10px 10px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-size:13px;vertical-align:baseline;float:right;width:320px;color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';line-height:20.8px;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><a href="http://www.al-fanarmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Tlemcen-Un..jpg" title="University of Tlemcen via Commons Wikimedia" rel="prettyPhoto" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(32,34,34);text-decoration:none;display:block;background:transparent"><img width="1024" height="768" src="http://www.al-fanarmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Tlemcen-Un..jpg" class="" alt="University of Tlemcen via Commons Wikimedia" style="margin: 0px 0px 4px; padding: 0px; border: none; outline: 0px; vertical-align: bottom; max-height: 460px; max-width: 100%; width: auto !important; height: auto !important; background: transparent;"><img src="http://www.al-fanarmedia.org/wp-content/themes/alfanar/images/enlarge.png" style="margin: 0px 0px 4px; padding: 5px; border: none; outline: 0px; vertical-align: bottom; max-height: 460px; max-width: 100%; width: 30px !important; height: auto !important; background: black;"></a><p class="" style="margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-size:10px;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(153,153,153);float:right;clear:right;max-width:420px;line-height:16px;background:transparent">University of Tlemcen via Commons Wikimedia</p></div><div class="" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;zoom:1;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><span itemprop="reviewBody" class="" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial"><p style="color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';font-size:13px;line-height:20.8px;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial">TLEMCEN, Algeria—Asma Medjaoui, a sixth-year medical student at the University of Tlemcen has always struggled with French. Unfortunately for her and other students, French is the language of higher education in Algeria.</p><p style="color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';font-size:13px;line-height:20.8px;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial">Medjaoui said adjusting to reading, writing and speaking in French since high school has been difficult for her. As a result, the first months of medical school were a struggle.</p><p style="color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';font-size:13px;line-height:20.8px;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial">“The first few months of university were not easy for me,” she said. “I was ashamed to speak in Arabic in class, to ask the professor questions in Arabic.”</p><p style="color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';font-size:13px;line-height:20.8px;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial">Medjaoui and a large number of her fellow university students in Algeria struggle to pursue their scientific studies because after studying in Arabic in primary and secondary school, all scientific specialties in university are taught in French. As a result many repeat the year or drop out of school.</p><p style="color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';font-size:13px;line-height:20.8px;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial">“Courses are all in French, the teachers do not even say a word in Arabic,” said Mimouna El Hadj Mimoun, a first-year medical student, who took French lessons at a private school during her last year of high school, to help her get by.</p><p style="color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';font-size:13px;line-height:20.8px;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial">She like many students studied before graduating or in the summer before the new academic year at one of the many language schools created to help these students.</p><p style="color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';font-size:13px;line-height:20.8px;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial">“I am preparing now. I have to acquire a strong enough level to pass my medical studies,” said Marwan Hadji, a student who just graduated from Lycee Daoud Mohamed from high school, and will be studying medicine at the University of Tlemcen.</p><p style="color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';font-size:13px;line-height:20.8px;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial">In spite of the additional work and expense, students say they realize they are stuck in a self-perpetuating system. “This is an important language for an Algerian doctor because everything is written in French: orders, patient records, etc.,” said Asma Medjaoui, a sixth-year medical student at the University of Tlemcen.</p><p style="color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';font-size:13px;line-height:20.8px;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial">But the number of people mastering French in Algeria is declining.</p><p style="color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';font-size:13px;line-height:20.8px;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial">Since the country’s independence from the French in 1962, the language’s status changed from the first to second official language, being replaced by Arabic. As a result, many professors were recruited from Egypt and Syria, where French speakers are not common.</p><p style="color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';font-size:13px;line-height:20.8px;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial">“In the early 1980s, the country’s language policy was to replace French with Arabic,” said Dr. Tewfik Benghabrite who teaches in the foreign language faculty at the University of Tlemcen. “Which was normal except that, instead of valuing it, they proceeded a little awkwardly.”</p><p style="color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';font-size:13px;line-height:20.8px;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial">Since primary and secondary education was switched to Arabic in the 1980’s, some subjects such as geography, history and science were all taught in French and therefore students achieved relatively good levels in that language.</p><p style="color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';font-size:13px;line-height:20.8px;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial">“We<em style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background:transparent"> Arabized</em> all science disciplines such as math, physics, etc. but higher education did not follow this approach: 80 percent of university courses are taught in French and as a result, training and documentation remain in French,” said Benghabrite.</p><p style="color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';font-size:13px;line-height:20.8px;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial">Kalkali Elhadi, who teaches journalism at the University of Algiers, says the level of French language skills has declined among students because they are not taught well.</p><p style="color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';font-size:13px;line-height:20.8px;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial">“Today’s French teachers are victims of a university education that was not good enough,” he said. “They were trained by unqualified teachers because of nepotism and corruption.”</p><p style="color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';font-size:13px;line-height:20.8px;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial">Algeria has gone through many years of soul searching in terms of its identity and what languages to teach in, use, and in one context. Still, the overall prevalent ideology in Algeria today of Arabism makes it almost impossible to impose more French curriculum in primary and secondary schools addressing the gap in science teaching to solve this problem.</p><p style="color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';font-size:13px;line-height:20.8px;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial">“For our young students to better master French, it would take a very committed political decision,” said Benghabrite. “It should be that professors and students are given an enriching curriculum and serious textbooks.”</p><p style="margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial"><font color="#393939" face="Open Sans"><span style="line-height:20.8px"><a href="http://www.al-fanarmedia.org/2015/09/algerian-students-are-victims-of-the-countrys-language-confusion/">http://www.al-fanarmedia.org/2015/09/algerian-students-are-victims-of-the-countrys-language-confusion/</a></span></font><br></p><p style="color:rgb(57,57,57);font-family:'Open Sans';font-size:13px;line-height:20.8px;margin:0px 0px 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial"><br></p></span></div></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message.  A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well.  (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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