25.2386, Calls: Arabic, Applied Ling, Lang Acquisition, Pragmatics, General Ling/Canada

Mon Jun 2 16:17:18 UTC 2014

LINGUIST List: Vol-25-2386. Mon Jun 02 2014. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 25.2386, Calls: Arabic, Applied Ling, Lang Acquisition, Pragmatics, General Ling/Canada

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Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 12:17:01
From: Nejmeddine Khalfallah [nejmid at gmail.com]
Subject: International Conference on Didactics of Arabic: Assessment and Horizons

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Full Title: International Conference on Didactics of Arabic: Assessment and Horizons 

Date: 30-Oct-2014 - 31-Oct-2014
Location: Montreal/Quebec, Canada 
Contact Person: Nejmeddine Khalfallah
Meeting Email: uqam.colloque at gmail.com
Web Site: http://www.langues.uqam.ca/Arabe/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; General Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Pragmatics 

Subject Language(s): Arabic, Standard (arb)

Call Deadline: 06-Jul-2014 

Meeting Description:

In the West, a number of universities have adopted the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) for teaching Arabic. This novel approach is rooted in a linguistic tradition that advocates experimenting with didactic methods in the study of languages in Europe. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), the language taught in these universities, has gone through major transformations in media, literary and diplomatic production. Today's Arabic represents a decisive break with the odes that Blachère and his eminent colleagues Berque and Pellat used to vocalize in the lecture halls of la Sorbonne. 

This change, witnessed both in written and oral works, and the very nature of the Arabic language (diglossia) justify questioning the modalities, advantages and limits of applying the CEFR to modern Arabic knowing that dialects dominate speech in real-life situations. This coexistence of diglossia and the CEFR is therefore what renders our approach relevant, particularly given the recent rise of manuals and textbooks pertaining to the CEFR framework.

Our conference adopts a pragmatic approach: First, it aims to examine the difficulties that teachers and students face when teaching and learning modern Arabic. Second, it attempts to offer solutions by adapting the CEFR to Arabic. These insights will be made available to English-speaking and French-speaking teachers working in Europe, the United States and Canada. 

This conference also seeks to make an assessment of the didactic approaches to modern Arabic, which are the result of an unprecedented neological momentum that has led to questioning theories about semantic fields, paradigms, lexiculture and any other question pertaining to the teaching of vocabulary (mufradāt). A pedagogical layer will complete the former descriptive one, to explore the 'best' approach to tackle neological processes and the vast panoply of neologisms. 

Grammar, often vilified and sidelined (and this is particularly the case for Arabic grammar), faces a hard time positioning itself not only in the CEFR but also in the didactic process. While our grammar (qawā'id) is today associated with communication vices, it is nonetheless worth examining its role in learning, away from American pragmatism and French intellectualism.

The conference will also strive to question the links between cognition and the didactics of modern Arabic: performative acts, the choice of vocabulary as well as syntaxic and stylistic constructions are indeed inextricably linked to cognitive processes - both in production and perception. Finally, the thorny question of sociocultural competence deserves to be rethought. Indeed, it is what allows systems of thought and society to give their input to the conception of pedagogical content.

Call for Papers:

Thematic axes to deal with:

These are the main focal areas we give on an indicative basis.

1. Didactic Axis:

- Teaching of Arabic in professional contexts: how to meet the new requirements in business, media and public administration areas
- Review of audio-visual media in learning Arabic: difficulties of their use in class
- Evaluation of the six-level learning division proposed by the CEFR (and its adjustment to Canadian universities)
- Review of the existing methods and textbooks available in French and English ''markets''

2. Linguistic Axis:

- Teaching of Arabic language and linguistic transformations (morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic) facing the modern Arabic
- The place of grammar between the evolution of syntactical structures in the media and the rigidity of rules and standards that are taught
- The place of vocabulary, the choice of words, viewing angle, etymology, recurrence, morphology...
- Description of the non-Arabic-speaking public: children, adults, dialect-speaking, of Arabic origin or not, professionals, students...

3. Socio-political and Cultural Axis:

- The political issues that underlie the choice of language registers, diglossia, themes, sociocultural elements...
- The place of performative and communicative acts in the spheres of modern life
- The content of sociocultural skills, worldview, historical aspects, features of civilization and ''interculturality''

Communications can be in French, English or Arabic. They will last for 20 minutes each, followed by 10 minutes of questions.

Submissions are due in an electronic format together with an abstract of approximately 200 words. They should be sent to the following e-mail address: uqam.colloque at gmail.com

Important Dates:

Deadline of the propositions reception: Sunday, July 6, 2014
Notification of acceptance to the authors after a blind review by the scientific committee: Saturday, July 19, 2014

Conference Organizers:

Nejmeddine Khalfallah, Université de Lorraine, France		
Malika Ech-Chadli et Chirine Chamsine, Uqàm, Canada

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