Arabic-L:PEDA:Dialect Materials in Script Discussion

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Wed 31 May 2006
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Dialect Materials in Script Discussion

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1)
Date: 31 May 2006
From:marthas at email.arizona.edu
Subject:Dialect Materials in Script Discussion

'ahlan ya zumalaa'

Thanks to Jan Hogland for his input on the question of using  
materials written in Arabic script to teach colloquial. As with any  
pedagogical decision, the best course always requires consideration  
of the specific learning/teaching situation. In our case, at the  
University of Arizona, most of our students have already learned the  
Arabic script and have at least some level of ability in reading it.  
Most have had at least 1 year of MSA study before beginning to study  
the dialect.

For many years, like Jan, I thought that it was preferable to use  
transliteration when teaching dialect. However, this last year I  
taught Egyptian Arabic using materials written in Arabic script and  
the experience has really convinced me of it's value. Students who  
learn the dialect through the script are able to make connections  
between what they are learning in the dialect and what they know in  
MSA in a positive way. There is "positive transfer" in terms of  
vocabulary learning and decoding skills. With the use of tashkiil, it  
is possible to get a pretty good representation of the pronunciation  
of the dialect, using certain conventions that can be taught. It is  
not perfect, but then what writing system for any language has a  
perfect one to one correspondence of sound to symbol? And in the  
final analysis I don't believe that my students who learned Egyptian  
(in past years) using transliteration ended up with better  
pronunciation because of it. Nor did they learn "more" because they  
didn't have to read the Arabic script. Many students used to complain  
to me that they found it hard to read the transliteration with all  
it's strange symbol conventions.

Arabic works quite adequately in representing colloquial Arabic and  
using Arabic is more "authentic". In the case of Egyptian, there is a  
fair amount of written colloquial out there. Egyptian Arabic is all  
over the internet, written in Arabic script. There is something very  
odd about teaching a language in a script other than the one native  
speakers read the language in.

Of course my arguments are based entirely on my "beliefs" and  
impressions. I don't believe that it is feasible to "prove" one way  
or the other which is better, but I can report that most of my  
students really enjoyed learning with materials written in script. Of  
course, the fact that I was so enthusiastically embracing those  
materials undoubtedly had an influence. :-)

In sum then, I think that for students whose ultimate objective is to  
gain proficiency in both dialect and MSA  learning the dialect  
throught the Arabic script strengthens their familiarity with the  
script and also faciliates their making connections between the two  
varieties of the language in a way that reinforces the learning of both.

I hope that we will see more materials on the market for teaching the  
dialects written in Arabic script.


Peace, Martha

Martha Schulte-Nafeh Assistant Professor and Middle Eastern Language  
Coordinator Department of Near Eastern Studies/Center for Middle  
Eastern Studies Louise Marshall Foucar Bldg. Room 454/845 N Park Ave
University of Arizona Tucson Arizona 85721 520 730-7605

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End of Arabic-L:  31 May 2006