Arabic-L:PEDA:International Conference on Didactics of Arabic (Montreal)

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Thu 05 Jun 2014
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1) Subject: International Conference on Didactics of Arabic (Montreal)

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1)
Date: 05 Jun 2014
From: reposted from LINGUIST
Subject: International Conference on Didactics of Arabic (Montreal)

Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2014 12:17:01
From: Nejmeddine Khalfallah [nejmid at gmail.com]
Subject: International Conference on Didactics of Arabic: Assessment and
Horizons

Full Title: International Conference on Didactics of Arabic: Assessment and
Horizons

Date: 30-Oct-2014 - 31-Oct-2014
Location: Montreal/Quebec, Canada
Contact Person: Nejmeddine Khalfallah
Meeting Email: uqam.colloque at gmail.com
Web Site: http://www.langues.uqam.ca/Arabe/

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; General Linguistics; Language
Acquisition; Pragmatics

Subject Language(s): Arabic, Standard (arb)

Call Deadline: 06-Jul-2014

Meeting Description:

In the West, a number of universities have adopted the Common European
Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) for teaching Arabic. This novel
approach is rooted in a linguistic tradition that advocates experimenting
with didactic methods in the study of languages in Europe. Modern Standard
Arabic (MSA), the language taught in these universities, has gone through
major transformations in media, literary and diplomatic production. Today's
Arabic represents a decisive break with the odes that Blachère and his
eminent colleagues Berque and Pellat used to vocalize in the lecture halls
of la Sorbonne.

This change, witnessed both in written and oral works, and the very nature
of the Arabic language (diglossia) justify questioning the modalities,
advantages and limits of applying the CEFR to modern Arabic knowing that
dialects dominate speech in real-life situations. This coexistence of
diglossia and the CEFR is therefore what renders our approach relevant,
particularly given the recent rise of manuals and textbooks pertaining to
the CEFR framework.

Our conference adopts a pragmatic approach: First, it aims to examine the
difficulties that teachers and students face when teaching and learning
modern Arabic. Second, it attempts to offer solutions by adapting the CEFR
to Arabic. These insights will be made available to English-speaking and
French-speaking teachers working in Europe, the United States and Canada.

This conference also seeks to make an assessment of the didactic approaches
to modern Arabic, which are the result of an unprecedented neological
momentum that has led to questioning theories about semantic fields,
paradigms, lexiculture and any other question pertaining to the teaching of
vocabulary (mufradāt). A pedagogical layer will complete the former
descriptive one, to explore the 'best' approach to tackle neological
processes and the vast panoply of neologisms.

Grammar, often vilified and sidelined (and this is particularly the case
for Arabic grammar), faces a hard time positioning itself not only in the
CEFR but also in the didactic process. While our grammar (qawā'id) is today
associated with communication vices, it is nonetheless worth examining its
role in learning, away from American pragmatism and French intellectualism.

The conference will also strive to question the links between cognition and
the didactics of modern Arabic: performative acts, the choice of vocabulary
as well as syntaxic and stylistic constructions are indeed inextricably
linked to cognitive processes - both in production and perception. Finally,
the thorny question of sociocultural competence deserves to be rethought.
Indeed, it is what allows systems of thought and society to give their
input to the conception of pedagogical content.

Call for Papers:

Thematic axes to deal with:

These are the main focal areas we give on an indicative basis.

1. Didactic Axis:

- Teaching of Arabic in professional contexts: how to meet the new
requirements in business, media and public administration areas
- Review of audio-visual media in learning Arabic: difficulties of their
use in class
- Evaluation of the six-level learning division proposed by the CEFR (and
its adjustment to Canadian universities)
- Review of the existing methods and textbooks available in French and
English ''markets''

2. Linguistic Axis:

- Teaching of Arabic language and linguistic transformations
(morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic) facing the modern Arabic
- The place of grammar between the evolution of syntactical structures in
the media and the rigidity of rules and standards that are taught
- The place of vocabulary, the choice of words, viewing angle, etymology,
recurrence, morphology...
- Description of the non-Arabic-speaking public: children, adults,
dialect-speaking, of Arabic origin or not, professionals, students...

3. Socio-political and Cultural Axis:

- The political issues that underlie the choice of language registers,
diglossia, themes, sociocultural elements...
- The place of performative and communicative acts in the spheres of modern
life
- The content of sociocultural skills, worldview, historical aspects,
features of civilization and ''interculturality''

Communications can be in French, English or Arabic. They will last for 20
minutes each, followed by 10 minutes of questions.

Submissions are due in an electronic format together with an abstract of
approximately 200 words. They should be sent to the following e-mail
address:uqam.colloque at gmail.com

Important Dates:

Deadline of the propositions reception: Sunday, July 6, 2014
Notification of acceptance to the authors after a blind review by the
scientific committee: Saturday, July 19, 2014

Conference Organizers:

Nejmeddine Khalfallah, Université de Lorraine, France
Malika Ech-Chadli et Chirine Chamsine, Uqàm, Canada

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