Arabic-L:PEDA:Third Year Book and Experience

[Dilworth Parkinson]

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arabic-L: Fri 18 Apr 2008
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
[To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu]
[To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to
listserv at byu.edu with first line reading:
            unsubscribe arabic-l                                      ]

-------------------------Directory------------------------------------

1) Subject:Third Year Book and Experience

-------------------------Messages-----------------------------------
1)
Date: 18 Apr 2008
From:"Muhammad Eissa" <eissa at comcast.net>
Subject:Third Year Book and Experience

Any reply to a request for material or a text(book) that has the word  
"year"
in it is bound to be misleading. Also, we better use a level of  
students'
proficiency and clarify the objectives of teaching the course. That  
would
make answers more specific and relevant.

Having said that, here is a personal experience to share. Last year I  
was
asked to teach a class of mainly graduate students that was titled "High
Intermediate Classical Arabic". Students were supposed to be at an
intermediate mid or high in the proficiency scale. Some of them could be
rated at the advanced low but they all are trained as learner of what  
is so
called "Modern Standard Arabic". Those were the typical students that  
you
may label as 'third year' level.

In an attempt to be true to the title of the course (classical) and the
expectations of specific objectives to be met, I assigned a book that is
identified as an anthology of Arabic texts. The book contained a great  
and
wide selection of texts from Pre-Islamic to modern times in multitude of
themes. It was not surprising to discover that students with such  
training
and proficiency level felt at loss in the first meeting of the class.  
They
have not been trained to handle a text and read it independently, let  
alone
be ready to discuss its content in a class conducted totally in  
Arabic. On
the other hand, the anthology was not pedagogically prepared to  
introduce a
reading strategy for comprehension and analysis. It provided a  
vocabulary
list and some questions all placed at the end of the text. Soon I  
discovered
that the students' level of proficiency has to be treated differently  
and
the teaching should continue in a manner that is closer to the previous
courses, yet with considerable progression and careful preparation. They
need to build a solid ground in reading and comprehension strategies and
ought to be challenged with more independent assignments. However, we
continued with the same anthology but we started to create more  
vocabulary
lists, drills, sentences and assign more chapters from grammar reference
works for the whole year.

This year I choose to use Al-Kitaab, Part III for the same-level  
course. The
purpose was to train students pedagogically on how to study Arabic  
rather
than what to study. In the process, any vocabulary, content and  
grammatical
features they would acquire will surely come handy, regardless of the  
nature
of the text. Due to the nature and title of this course, I paid more
attention and spent more time on reading and analyzing the "classical"
selections of readings in "Al-Kitaab, P. III". I supplied short  
selections
from classical works that kept students practice and gain language
proficiency compatible with the objectives of the course.

Now, as we usher the third part of a year long course of six hours a  
week,
we are done with al-Kitaab. Students feel more comfortable speaking,
dialoging, and analyzing texts in Arabic in varieties of topics and
linguistic complexity. This week we are starting to deal with authentic
longer selected texts featuring the content and style of what they  
initially
needed to learn, e. g. "classical". They feel that they are more  
prepared
pedagogically to work on their own with confidence and much less  
anxiety.
They are applying the learning strategies that were acquired through the
past two thirds of the course.

The merit of the story is .. If your students are somehow similar to  
those
described above, with the exception of "classical" adjective, Al- 
Kitaab, P.
III is a good choice. Those who may not be familiar with the approach  
and
philosophy behind Al-Kitaab and other similar textbooks may need to  
spend
sometime configuring the purpose of the lesson organization, drill
objectives and the choice of reading selections. Teachers will  
definitely
need to provide supplementary materials and use them as learning and/or
assessment tools. Needless to say that any teachers' selected material  
will
be informed by the objectives set for the course with regard to both  
content
and form.

            Sorry for the long message and thanks for reading up to  
here.

            Salaam

Muhammad S. Eissa, Ph. D.
University of Chicago,
Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations,
1155 E. 58th. Street,
Chicago, IL 60637
Ph. (773) 834-0123
Fax (773) 702-2587

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
End of Arabic-L:  18 Apr 2008
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/arabic-l/attachments/20080418/b563b26d/attachment.htm>