Arabic-L:PEDA:Georgia Tech Arabic Culture through Song course

[Dilworth Parkinson]

------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arabic-L: Sat 15 Oct 2011 Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu<mailto:dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>> [To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu<mailto:arabic-l at byu.edu>] [To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to listserv at byu.edu<mailto:listserv at byu.edu> with first line reading: unsubscribe arabic-l ] -------------------------Directory------------------------------------ 1) Subject:Georgia Tech Arabic Culture through Song course -------------------------Messages----------------------------------- 1) Date: 15 Oct 2011 From:Rajaa Aquil <rajaa.aquil at modlangs.gatech.edu<mailto:rajaa.aquil at modlangs.gatech.edu>> Subject:Georgia Tech Arabic Culture through Song course Dear Arabist and Arabic Language Instructors,

I would like to introduce to our community the Georgia Tech Critical
Languages Song Project.  Under the auspices of a US Department of
Education International Research and Studies grant we are developing
semester-long web-based courses in advanced Arabic, Mandarin Chinese,
Japanese and Russian culture and language through song. Our website is clsp.gatech.edu<http://clsp.gatech.edu/>.
I am Co-IP of the program and designer of the Arabic materials.  I
write today because we are seeking programs and instructors at other
universities who would be interested in piloting our materials, ideally
during this coming spring semester.

>From here on, I will refer specifically to the Arabic course.  This
is a fourth-year culture course with a serious intellectual component to
be taught in Arabic. It is based around a corpus of 20 songs ranging
from religious, romantic, patriotic and popular songs as early as the advent
of Islam period to the modern times represented by Jan 25 revolution in Egypt.
The songs are mainly of Egyptian dialect and Modern Standard Arabic. The course is
is divided into 15 units that are intended to conform to a university semester.
The songs form compact platforms from which we branch out to explore in depth facets
of Arabic culture and history. Each unit progresses through an introduction, listening
exercises, text-notes-context, questions for understanding, topics for
discussion and writing and suggestions for further listening.
One of the key challenges that these materials are intended to meet is
the great diversity of proficiency levels in the fourth-year classroom
from students who have spent an entire year abroad studying in their
discipline at a university in the Arab world to heritage speakers to students who
have the minimum on-campus preparation. Computer-based delivery of a
rich web of content/context surrounding the carefully annotated main
corpus of songs allows for engagement by less proficient students and
guided exploration of cultural context on the part of more proficient
readers-listeners who have spent significant time abroad. All can then
come together in a single meaningful conversation in class.

If you might be interested in participating in the pilot and would like
to review materials, please contact me off-list at raquil at gatech.edu<mailto:raquil at gatech.edu>.

With best regards,
Rajaa Aquil

--
Rajaa Aquil, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Arabic, &
Director of Arabic LBAT
School of Modern Languages
Georgia Institute of Technology
613 Cherry Street
Swann Building #317
Atlanta, GA 30332
Phone: 4043857252
Fax: 4048940955
Email: rajaa.aquil at modlangs.gatech.edu<mailto:rajaa.aquil at modlangs.gatech.edu>

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