Contents and Methods for Teaching Spoken Arabic

275 Pages·2020·6.691 MB·English

by  Letizia Lombezzi

Letizia Lombezzi
El objetivo de la colección Estudios
15
de Dialectología Árabe consiste en
publicar estudios científicos que
• Manual de dialectología neoárabe /
Federico Corriente, Ángeles Vicente permitan ampliar el conocimien-
9 788413 400402 to de la realidad lingüística del
• Refranero y fraseología h.assa¯n¯ı. Reco-
pilación, explicación, estudio grama- mundo arabófono a lo largo de la
tical y glosario / Ahmad-Salem Ould historia. De esta manera, incluirá
Mohamed-Baba tanto descripciones gramaticales
• Parlers arabes des Juifs du Maroc. His- de cualquiera de las variedades
toire, sociolinguistique et géographie
vernáculas del árabe, como otro
dialectale / Simon Lévy
tipo de trabajos de corte lingüísti-
• Le parler arabe de Tripoli (Libye) /
co y sociolingüístico (colecciones
Christophe Pereira
Contents and Methods de textos, estudios comparativos
• La política lingüística contemporá-
y diacrónicos, de contacto de len-
nea de Marruecos: de la arabización
a la aceptación del multilingüismo / for Teaching Spoken Arabic guas, etc.), en forma de monogra-
Montserrat Benítez Fernández fía o bien de libro colectivo.
• De los manuscritos medievales a inter-
La publicación de los volúmenes
net: la presencia del árabe vernáculo
en las fuentes escritas / Mohamed de esta colección no tendrá una
Meouak, Pablo Sánchez, Ángeles Vi- periodicidad regular.
cente (eds.)
• Dynamiques langagières en Arabopho-
nies : Variations, contacts, migrations
et créations artistiques. Hommage offert
à Dominique Caubet par ses élèves et
collègues / Alexandrine Barontini,
Christophe Pereira, Ángeles Vicente, c
i
Karima Ziamari (éds.) b
a
• El árabe vernáculo de Marrakech: r
A
análisis lingüístico de un corpus re- n
presentativo / Pablo Sánchez e
k
• Trabajo y palabra: dos formas de ex- o
presión de las mujeres de Marruecos / p
S
Montserrat Benítez Fernández (ed.) g
• El dialecto árabe hablado en la ciudad n
i
marroquí de Larache / Jairo Guerrero h
c
• El dialecto árabe de Damasco (Siria): a
e
estudio gramatical y textos / Carmen T
Berlinches r
o
• La région du Nord-Ouest marocain : f
s
Parlers et pratiques sociales et cultu- d
relles / Ángeles Vicente, Dominique o
h
Caubet, Amina Naciri-Azzouz (éds.) t
e
• Tunisian and Libyan Arabic Dialects: M
Common Trends – Recent Develop- zi d
ments – Diachronic Aspects / Veronika ezn
Ritt-Benmimoun (ed.) ba
ms
• Aproximación a la situación sociolin- ot
Ln
güística de Tánger-Arcila: variación lé- a e
xica y grafematica / Laura Gago Gómez zint
tio
• Contents and Methods for Teaching Prensas de la Universidad LeC
Spoken Arabic / Letizia Lombezzi UniversidadZaragoza
Cbta Dialectología árabe 15.indd 1 31/1/20 11:18
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© Letizia Lombezzi
© De la presente edición, Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza
(Vicerrectorado de Cultura y Proyección Social)
1.ª edición, 2019
Diseño gráfico: Victor M. Lahuerta
Colección Estudios de Dialectología Árabe, n.º 15
Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza. Edificio de Ciencias Geológicas, c/ Pedro
Cerbuna, 12, 50009 Zaragoza, España. Tel.: [phone]. Fax: [phone]
[email protected] http://puz.unizar.es
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sus publicaciones a nivel nacional e internacional.
ISBN 978-84-1340-041-9
Letizia Lombezzi
Contents and Methods
for Teaching Spoken Arabic
PRENSAS DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DE ZARAGOZA
ESTUDIOS DE DIALECTOLOGÍA ÁRABE, 15

Directores de la colección

FEDERICO CORRIENTE
Universidad de Zaragoza

ÁNGELES VICENTE
Universidad de Zaragoza

Consejo editorial

JORDI AGUADÉ
Universidad de Cádiz

PETER BEHNSTEDT
Doctor habilitado por la Universidad de Hamburgo

DOMINIQUE CAUBET
INALCO, París
Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Cádiz and Zaragoza in Spain, where I found a welcoming
university research environment. In particular, I thank these professors: Jorge
Aguadé, Ignacio Ferrando, Ángeles Vicente, and Federico Corriente for their
extremely precious advices and observations, both in theory and in practice.
Olivier Durand first introduced me to the studies of Arabic Dialectology,
in the early 2000s, thing that triggered my interest in spoken varieties.
Kristen Brustad and Mahmoud Al-Batal decisively contributed to the
shaping of my professional profile, and provided me with adequate tools for
defending my teaching orientation.
Eckehard Schulz shared with me his insights about the difficulties of
implementing a communicative approach for teaching of Arabic in Europe.
Finally, thanks to all the colleagues and younger professionals I met,
without their knowledge I wouldn’t have been able to write this book:
Charlotte Schmidt, from Universität Leipzig; Thomas Leddy-Cecere,
Estefanía Valenzuela Mocho, Ghada Housen, and Olla Al-Shalchi, from The
University of Texas at Austin; Rawad Wehbe, Carla El-Khoury, and Fatme
Chehouri from The American University of Beirut.
Transcription System

Consonants

/p/ voiceless bilabial occlusive
/b/ voiced bilabial occlusive
/ḅ/ voiced velarized bilabial occlusive
/w/ bilabial semi-consonant
/m/ bilabial nasal
/ṃ/ velarized bilabial nasal
/f/ voiceless labiodental fricative
/v/ voiced labiodental fricative
/t/ voiceless dental occlusive
/ṭ/ voiceless velarized dental occlusive
/d/ voiced dental occlusive
/ḍ/ voiced velarized dental occlusive
/s/ voiceless alveolar sibilant
/ṣ/ voiceless velarized alveolar sibilant
/z/ voiced alveolar sibilant
/ẓ/ voiced velarized alveolar sibilant
/l/ lateral
/ḷ/ velarized lateral
/r/ vibrant
/ṛ/ velarized vibrant
/n/ dental nasal
/ṇ/velarized dental nasal
/ṯ/ voiceless interdental fricative
/ḏ/ voiced interdental fricative
/ḏ/̣ voiced velarized dental fricative
/š/ voiceless prepalatal (alveopalatal) fricative
/ž/ voiced prepalatal fricative
/č/ voiceless prepalatal affricate
/ǧ/ voiced prepalatal affricate
/y/ prepalatal semi-consonant
/k/ voiceless palato-alveolar occlusive
/g/ voiced palato-alveolar occlusive
/q/ voiceless uvular-velar occlusive
/x/ voiceless postvelar fricative
/ġ/ voiced postvelar fricative
/ḥ/ voiceless pharyngeal fricative
/ʕ/ voiced pharyngeal fricative
/ʔ/ voiceless glottal occlusive
/h/ voiceless glottal fricative

Vowels

/ā/ open front unrounded long
/a/ open front unrounded short
/ē/ mid front unrounded long
/e/ mid front unrounded short
/ō/ mid back rounded long
/o/ mid back rounded short
/ə/ mid central short
/ī/ close front unrounded long
/i/ close front unrounded short
/ū/ close back long
/u/ close back rounded short

10 Transcription System
Introduction

This book primarily addresses the teaching of Arabic to non-natives with
specific focus on the development of comprehension and communicative
skills. It focuses on the development of content and teaching strategies that
encourage the acquisition of Spoken Arabic. Because of the focus on a
speech-oriented approach, interaction, listening, and comprehension are iden-
tified as key skills, as well as basics for building a command of Arabic in
non-native speakers. Listening and comprehension constitute the first steps in
replicating speech, and interacting with other speakers becomes the basis on
which we build communication. The idea that listening and comprehension
inevitably require pragmatic competence is intuitive. The mastery of the
colloquial register, the knowledge of high frequency lexemes, strong aural
discrimination skills, and sufficient linguistic memory: all of these
ingredients are required for the “recipe for linguistic competence.”
Of course, these components are mixed together through interaction, not
merely by reading, translation, or grammar exercises. A language should no
longer be considered a field for developing passive skills, nor can the
learning process remain centered on the recognition of meanings (reading,
translation). On the contrary, it must be intended as an effective tool for
everyday life; the classroom and the learning environment must be
representative of reality.
Neglecting all the above considerations, the majority of Arabic teachers
introduce early on the study of the classical variety (or standard or formal),
starting from elementary levels. They likely without notice commit a proce-
dural and pragmatic mistake.
Ryding (Ryding in Wahba 2006: 16) claimed that Arabic studies have
been giving preference to a ‘reverse privileging’ in the variety of Arabic to
teach. Priority has been given to the standard variety, which is used for the
secondary functions of the language. We rather need to accord a privileged
place to Spoken Arabic, for it is useful in familiar primary functions. Many
scholar like Wahba (Wahba 2006: 150), Younes (2015: 56), Palmer (Palmer
2007: 111), Chouairi (Chouairi 2009: 40), and recently Al-Batal (Al-Batal
2018: 9) have stated that teaching MSA does a disservice to students, in the
sense it that does not equip them with basic tools for a minimal commu-
nicative competence. As a consequence, the instructors who refuse to adapt
their practice to this new orientation explicitly reject the achievement of
pragmatic competence goals and do not abide by the requirements posed by
the European Council, for example, in term of “performance” and “know
how”.
Alosh (Alosh 1997: 137) invited to help students in achieving “minimum
performance standards”. This “minimum” can be reached through precise
planning, setting in advance a specific sequence to cover all the required
aspects for skill development. In fact, developing communicative skills in
learners deserves a precise and detailed instructional schedule. The second
part of this book offers a precise sequence for the teaching practice, register
per register: Levantine of Beirut, Omani of Ibri, Moroccan of Rabat,
Egyptian of Cairo. Phonology, morphology, and syntax are addressed accor-
ding to a different approach, which requires commitment and creativity from
instructors. Grammar is not addressed directly, but constitutes organizational
criteria for the linguistic elements to be learned.

In the past, reading and writing were assumed to be the bare minimum,
assuming that listening and comprehension would be a natural consequence
of it, its automatic evolution, or just a deferrable stage. A questionnaire I
submitted to a sample of 133 students (2016)1 revealed that the previously
mentioned beliefs are totally groundless. Students who declare to be stronger
in writing and reading consider their interaction, or their listening and
comprehension skills, to be very poor and also perceive those as the hardest
tasks to perform. On the basis of the collected data, the spoken language is
the field in which the surveyed sample feels less able. The same students
perceive the previously mentioned skills as the hardest and/or out of their
reach. Therefore, these aspects of the language competence deserve to be
trained and strengthened.
Preliminary to this, the Concept of “minimum or threshold level” itself
needs an adjustment and a new description with a different set of parameters.
It is necessary to increase the value and add more details to the definition of

1 The sample is made of students belonging to four different public Universities in three
different countries: Italy, Germany and Spain.
12 Introduction
the linguistic competence, as provided by The European Council for Langua-
ges.2 This definition includes problems to solve, obligations to be met, and
aims to be achieved, indicating that competence it is not merely a matter of
linguistic and grammatical tasks. My investigation is aligned with these
requirements from a methodological point of view. It wants to suggest a
coherent strategy together with appropriate content, for developing the
linguistic functional competence in non-native students of Arabic.
We read of many Arabic courses that promise to be based on
‘communication and interaction’, and to adopt ‘communicative and direct’
methods (cfr. Al-Batal in Rouchdy in 1992: 295), yet the contents are based
on Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) only. Simply, the pairing “commu-
nication+MSA” cannot work, and it is contradictory because real interaction
does not take place in MSA, but rather in colloquial Arabic. The learning
environment of the classroom, so far, has adopted the standard as an
authentic language for conversation. Such a ‘presumption of authenticity’
cannot be fed, but should be interrupted and criticized, while favoring the
spread of spoken Arabic in the class.
Instructional development and design (IDD) in general must give priority
to training and exposure to the language at stake, which is constituted by a
number of informal Arabics. Like native speakers, non-natives too should be
trained in one (at least one) daily register then avoiding to rely on the
standard register (MSA) only. Then, with conversation and interaction beco-
ming less concrete, they may experiment with the formal language, at a later
stage.
This work takes into account the data collected in 2016 from a survey of
students’ opinion, as already mentioned. It emerged that instruction in Arabic
begs a total renovation in the field. The profile of a student of Arabic
corresponds to a person that in the near future will be employed in linguistic
mediation with migrants, interpretation at city hospitals, or in tourism and
leisure related sectors. Not one of the cited environments suggests that
standard Arabic would be the more suitable variety used in interaction. In
practice, the Arabic we come in contact with is the language found in
informal specific micro-settings, and I am referring to the chances of
practicing it in Europe or Western countries. Moreover, technology and me-
dia outlets assist us greatly in understanding why micro-varieties of Arabic
deserve priority: Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter testify that the space
dominated by the macro-variety, MSA, is drastically decreasing.
For all these reasons, and for guiding students toward the acquisition of
an appropriate competence, new methodologies and new contents are

2 The European Council for Languages in Europe plays the same role of The American
Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages-ACTFL in the United States.

Introduction 13