Arabic-L:PEDA:Responses to 'teaching colloquial with MSA'

[Dilworth Parkinson]

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arabic-L: Fri 02 Jan 2009
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:Response to 'teaching colloquial with MSA'
2) Subject:Response to 'teaching colloquial with MSA'
3) Subject:Response to 'teaching colloquial with MSA'
4) Subject:Response to 'teaching colloquial with MSA'
5) Subject:Response to 'teaching colloquial with MSA'

-------------------------Messages-----------------------------------
1)
Date: 02 Jan 2009
From:Uri Horesh <uri.horesh at fandm.edu>
Subject:Response to 'teaching colloquial with MSA'

Dear Chris et al.,

I'd like to thank Chris for his thoughtful questions and thoughts and
offer a few remarks:

1. If anyone "cringes at [your] use of 'rules' in reference to
dialect," let them cringe all they want. Dialects - including those of
Arabic - are just as systematic as any language. They have
regularities and irregularities; stable features and variable ones.
And in many cases, especially in phonology but by no means limited to
that domain, "conversion" from MSA to a dialect (or a cluster of
dialects) is quite predictable.

2. On that note, Margaret Nydell once publishes a series of conversion
courses from MSA to XXX dialect(s). It seems to be out of print, but
if you contact Georgetown University's Arabic Department, I'm sure
they can locate copies for you.
http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Margaret%20K.%20Nydell&page=1

3. The notion of teaching "dialectal forms" without teaching a
specific dialect is not a new one. It may seem peculiar to some
people, but I think it is useful. It can be done in the form of
"Formal Spoken Arabic," as in the series of books by Karin Ryding,
David Mehall and others. Or it can be done using any of the existing
materials, which are dialect-specific, as long as the instructor isn't
bound and doesn't bind her/his students to using one particular
dialect in speech. For instance, if a teacher well-versed in Egyptian
Arabic is using the materials in Al-Kitaab (or Mughazy's book for that
matter), but has a number of students of Lebanese heritage, or even
non-heritage students who plan to travel to the Gulf, why not let them
interact as Arabs would interact in the real world: each using the
dialect with which they are comfortable, with adjustments and
accommodations where needed.

4. Finally, a bunch of us have been meeting, mostly informally thus
far, to discuss ways in which Munther Younes's integrated approach to
teaching Arabic dialects alongside MSA can be refined and promoted. If
you respond to me off-list, I can give you more details.

Best wishes,
Uri

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)
Date: 02 Jan 2009
From:Brian Huebner <bhuebner2 at gmail.com>
Subject:Response to 'teaching colloquial with MSA'

Hello from Belgium,

Your suggested approach is used very effectively in a school textbook  
designed for use in the French high school Arabic classes.

Alongside the MSA texts and dialogues, elements of 4 dialects  
(Morrocan, Tunisian, Egyptian and Lebanese) are intertwined into the  
course with explanations of the differences in pronunciation,  
grammatical rules, morphology and syntax.

I only have the second volume which I purchased at the Instistut du  
Monde Arabe in Paris. CD's are also available, but I don't have them.

It's called:
Kullo tamâm (كله تمام)
Arabe Tome 2

http://www.delagrave-edition.fr/Search_Result.cfm?keywords=Kullo+tam%C3%A2m&niveauCategID=&MatiereCategID=&x=0&y=0

Hope this helps,

Brian Huebner
conference interpreter
Brussels
www.langsites.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)
Date: 02 Jan 2009
From:benjamin.geer at GMAIL.COM
Subject:Response to 'teaching colloquial with MSA'


See this article about Munther Younes:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/10/01/arabic

Ben

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
4)
Date: 02 Jan 2009
From:Ola Moshref <omoshref at gmail.com>
Subject:Response to 'teaching colloquial with MSA'

salaam

I follow your same strategy. Given the amount of MSA material that our  
program requires us to cover in each course and the limited number of  
contact hours, we have little space to go beyond MSA. However, I  
always include among the course objectives something like  "to make  
correspondences between standard and spoken varieties of Arabic".

We use Al-kitaab, so I always do part of the colloquial (listening) at  
the end of each chapter. Some students find it very hard, and say it  
is not useful. With interested classes, I give an hour weekly to  
practice speaking in colloquial as well. I do not have structured  
instructional material for this purpose, but I make my own based on  
the students' level. In grammar, whenever applicable I hint to  
differences between MSA and colloquial. But I believe theoretical  
explanations of this sort are of little use.

Apart from the textbook, the only material I can supplement is songs  
or any other listening in colloquial, focusing only on small stretches  
that are very close to the MSA structures or vocabulary they learned.


Happy new year

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
5)
Date: 02 Jan 2009
From:Debra Smith <dlmsmith at sbcglobal.net>
Subject:Response to 'teaching colloquial with MSA'

My observation as an Arabic student (and English language teacher) is  
that what's helpful depends on the student. For me, understanding  
principles and tendencies shared by the colloquials is very helpful.  
So far, it looks to me like it's the most basic and important things  
that change: pronouns, verb conjugations, interrogative particles, and  
key verbs like 'want.' At the same time, I believe that other learners  
are less principle oriented and more sensitive to auditory input from  
the language itself. So ultimately both are helpful. I say this from  
Southern Sudan, where, with a background in MSA and Egyptian  
colloquial and a smidge of Iraqi, I am trying to wrap my mind around  
Juba Arabic, which is completely different.

Debra Smith

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
End of Arabic-L:  02 Jan 2009
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/arabic-l/attachments/20090102/eec5f53a/attachment.htm>