Arabic-L:PEDA:Shami materials discussion

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Fri 06 Dec 2013
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject: Shami materials discussion

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1)
Date: 06 Dec 2013
From: "Rasha K." <lingrash at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Shami materials discussion

Dear David,

I think I agree with everything you said.  Although I haven't used the new
Al-kitaab in class, here at the university of Manchester, we looked at 4
different textbooks including al-kitaab as an option for the UG Arabic
program and we could not make the decision to use it for the reasons you
have mentioned.  I have to admit that it has the best quality and resources
in comparison with the other available textbooks but it does not seem to
have clear pedagogical aims in teaching the 3 varieties.  The new al-kitaab
mainly provided a translation of the old al-kitaab into shami and Egyptian
and the outcome is the same vocabulary of الأمم المتحدة ومكتب القبول وأشعر
بالوحدة but in the dialects as well.  The same observations were mentioned
by our colleague in Durham university who started using the new al-kitaab
last year.

As we all know that MSA serves different functions from the dialects and
therefore, I believe that a curriculum designed for teaching MSA has to be
different from the one designed to teach a dialect.

David, you mentioned that certain structures are used more frequently in
the dialects than MSA such as the object pronouns and you estimated this
use to be 4-8 times an hour.  I find this very interesting and I wonder if
you know of any references that looked at the frequency of structures use
in MSA or the dialectal varieties?!   I found Buckwalter's and Parkinson's
dictionary "Buckwalter, T., & Parkinson, D. B. (2011). A frequency
dictionary of Arabic : core vocabulary for learners. London: Routledge."
very useful in giving the teachers an insight to which lexis have the
priority to be taught first, and I think if there's similar work on the
frequency of grammar use, it would be very helpful in making decisions
regarding the order of grammar teaching.

I look forward to further discussion on this topic.  It will be nice to
meet you David insha'Allah in the next few days in the Linguistic in Arabic
conference.

Rasha Soliman
University of Manchester

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