ARABIC-L: PEDA: Classification of Foreign Languages

[Dilworth B. Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Thu 11 Mar 1999
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject: Classification of Foreign Languages

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1)
Date: 11 Mar 1999
From: Gunvor Mejdell <Gunvor.Mejdell at easteur-orient.uio.no>
Subject: Classification of Foreign Languages

Dear colleagues

At our department (of East-European and Oriental studies), University of
Oslo, Norway, we are under strong pressure from the central authorities to
reduce the number of semesters and teaching hours required for obtaining
our university level of "grunnfag" - which is normally 2 semesters (for
English, French, Spanish, Russian, Polish  etc.), but for Chinese,
Japanese, Turkish, Persian, Urdu/Hindi and (my own subject) Arabic is 3
semesters.

I have observed, some time and somewhere, that some US foreign language
teaching institution has made a classification of foreign languages based
on an evaluation of the difficulties/time needed to achieve various levels
of competence in them (from an English speaker background). It might be
most helpful for our argumentation against this proposed reduction, to have
access to such a classification/rating of languages.

I would be most grateful if any of you could assist me in this matter.

Sincerely
Gunvor Mejdell (Ass. Professor of Arabic)


1. aman. Gunvor Mejdell
Institutt for |steuropeiske og orientalske studier
POB 1030, Blindern
0315 Oslo
tel. + 47 22 85 47 76    FAX +47 22 85 41 40

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End of Arabic-L: 11 Mar 1999