Arabic-L:PEDA:More Arabic Course advice

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Thu 28 Aug 2006
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Arabic Course advice

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1)
Date: 28 Aug 2006
From:Mustafa Mughazy <mustafa.mughazy at wmich.edu>
Subject:Arabic Course advice

Ron and Colleagues,

Last year I taught a class with the specific purpose of undertanding  
Al-Jazeera.

It is was an independent study for three undergraduate students who  
studied MSA for two years including a semster in Egypt.
I would choose a news story from the Al-jazeera website and we would  
follow it for a month. Students read news reports on the same topic  
twice a week. By the end of the month, they have developed the vocab  
and idioms often used in relation to that specific topic. This was  
based on my assumption that there is quite a bit of repetition in  
news discourse. at the very end, students would listen to Al-Jazeera  
newscasts on the same topic, and they found it a lot easier to  
follow, since they have the political background knowledge of the  
topic, the vocab and idioms, and basic grammar. The ambitious part  
was to have students listen to talk shows on the same issue after  
reading the script. That was a little too much for them, but it was  
only one semester. Anyway, now they can read any Al-jazeera article  
dealing with hamas, Iraq or the Iranian nukes. BUT they could not  
read the sports section or any other stories.

I have another student who, after two semesters of a similar course,  
can easily understand Classical Arabic texts dealing with Arab Spain.  
however, he cannot read newspapers in MSA or have a basic  
conversation in Colloquial Arabic.

This is the problem with specialized courses; they can meet specific  
needs, but good luck with the rest of the language! That needs years  
which most university students do not have.

That is it for today

Mustafa Mughazy

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End of Arabic-L:  28 Aug 2006