THE IMPACT OF DIGLOSSIA ON ARABIC LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION IN HIGHER EDUCATION: ATTITUDES AND EXPERIENCES OF STUDENTS AND

INSTRUCTORS IN THE U.S.

Eva Hashem-Aramouni

B.A., Lebanese University, Beirut, 1984 M.A., California State University, Sacramento, 1997

DISSERTATION

Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

in

EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP

at

CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO

SPRING 2011

ii

Copyright © 2011 Eva Hashem-Aramouni

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

iii

THE IMPACT OF DIGLOSSIA ON ARABIC LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION IN HIGHER EDUCATION: ATTITUDES AND EXPERIENCES OF STUDENTS AND

INSTRUCTORS IN THE U.S.

A Dissertation

by

Eva Hashem-Aramouni

Approved by Dissertation Committee:

Virginia L. Dixon, Ed.D., Committee Chair

Nadeen T. Ruiz, Ph.D.

Lewis S. Robinson, Ph.D.

SPRING 2011

iv

THE IMPACT OF DIGLOSSIA ON ARABIC LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION IN HIGHER EDUCATION: ATTITUDES AND EXPERIENCES OF STUDENTS AND

INSTRUCTORS IN THE U.S.

Student: Eva Hashem-Aramouni

I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University

format manual, and that this dissertation is suitable for shelving in the library and credit is

to be awarded for the dissertation.

, Graduate Coordinator Carlos Nevarez, Ph.D. Date

v

DEDICATION

To my guardian angel, my inspiration

vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express appreciation to my family and friends who have been

supportive during my entire educational journey. Thank you for continually encouraging

me during the hardest times, helping me keep a smile on my face, and challenging me to

reach my full potential. It has made me a stronger person to have my loved ones cheering

with for me throughout this process. I love and cherish you all and thank you for all the

love and support you have shown me over the years.

I have been blessed by having the most knowledgeable and dedicated professors

and field instructors to educate and support me on my journey in the field of educational

leadership, teaching me lessons that will help me throughout my lifetime. I am so grateful

for their commitment to their students and their passion for the profession. First, I would

like to express my appreciation to Dr. Carlos Nevarez for his amazing leadership qualities

as the director of the Ed. D program.

I would also like to express my gratitude to Dr. Virginia Dixon, my committee

Chair. Dr. Dixon, you have been so supportive during the entire process of writing this

dissertation. Your expertise in educational leadership and the area of curriculum

instruction were instrumental in guiding this work. You have also suggested having Dr.

Nadeen Ruiz as a committee member because of her expertise in linguistics and bilingual

instruction and I have been very blessed since then. In fact, every time that I came in for a

consultation with any one of you, I left feeling energized with renewed excitement

vii

because of your vast knowledge and passion in the fields of: educational leadership,

curriculum and linguistics.

In the area of foreign language acquisition, I would like to express my gratitude to

Dr. Lewis Robison for his endless knowledge and his determination for me to write a

dissertation with the highest standards. Dr. Robinson has been the biggest supporter of

the Arabic language program at CSUS since 2002 when he was Chair of the foreign

language department, and wrote the initial course proposal for Arabic.

Last, but not least, I would like to thank Dr. JoLynn Britt for her valuable input

related to the qualitative study section of my dissertation. Thank you to my professors for

providing me with a solid foundation in which I know I will continue to grow and utilize

the skills you have taught me.

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CURRICULUM VITAE

Arabic and French Eva Hashem-Aramouni C (916) 343-3262

EDUCATION

Ed.D., Education Leadership, 2011, California State University, Sacramento

Major: Topics in diversity, equity, transformational leadership, law in education, public policy, qualitative and quantitative studies, curriculum design, data analysis, human resources, colleges and universities organization, leadership for equity and excellence. Research Interests: curriculum design, study abroad programs, total immersion programs, Arabic diglossia,

DISSERTATION: The Impact of Diglossia on Arabic Language Instruction in Higher Education: Attitudes and Experiences of Students and Instructors in the U.S.

M.A., French, Minor in Theater, California State University, Sacramento, 1997 THESIS: Visages de Femmes chez Amin Maalouf B.A., Arabic Journalism. Major: Arabic. Minor: Journalism, Lebanese University, Beirut,

1984

HONORS AND AWARDS

Phi Beta Delta Honor Society for international scholars. Omicron Chapter. Honorary member since 2009.

EXPERIENCE CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY SACRAMENTO 2002 to present Arabic Lecturer, Department of Foreign Languages

Established the Arabic program at Sacramento State, the first Arabic higher education course in the Sacramento region. Raised the program from level 1 to level 3. Taught Beginning and intermediate language and culture courses.

ix

2002 French Lecturer, Department of Foreign Languages Taught French 1B Language and francophone literature class.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS 2007 Arabic Lecturer, Arabic Summer Intensive Program.

Established the 1st Arabic summer intensive program at UC Davis and taught 12 weeks of intensive Arabic, the equivalent of 1st year Arabic.

MONTEREY INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES 2009 Arabic Lecturer, SILP Summer Language Intensive Program.

Taught year one Arabic in an 8 week partial immersion program of Arabic language and culture.

SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY 2010 Arabic Lecturer, College of Humanities and World Languages and Literature.

Taught second year Arabic to students during the SLI strategic language Initiative of the CSU. A six week intensive summer course of Arabic language and culture.

SACRAMENTO CITY COLLEGE 2006 – 2007 Arabic Instructor, College of Humanities and Fine Arts.

Established the Arabic program on campus and taught level one and level two Arabic language and culture courses.

SIERRA COLLEGE 2005 French Instructor, College of Humanities

Taught French 1 and French 3 courses, and literature francophone.

SISTERS OF BESANCON- LEBANON 1986-1988 French Teacher, Full time French teaching position for 7th, 8th, and 9th grade

Duties included: language, vocabulary, grammar, and literature.

SKILLS

Languages: Arabic: Fluent (speak, read, write, translate, interpret) French: Fluent (speak, read, write. translate, interpret) Spanish: Conversationally fluent Italian: Conversationally fluent Computer: Word Processing: Word Perfect 5.1 Microsoft Word 2007

x

Programming languages: Tell me More Arabic, an Auralog software.

COMMUNITY SERVICE Scorer for the Commission on Teacher Credentialing of the National Evaluation System in Arabic and French. Serve on Study Abroad Selection Committee at Sacramento State University to choose students who will get scholarships to study abroad in Egypt, Jordan, or Turkey.

PRESENTATIONS

Presentation on francophone countries in Placerville high school. Guest of the French program, 1999. Teacher-to-teacher workshop at San Diego State University, Summer 2007. Presentation on francophone literature at Sacramento State University. Guest of Professor Nicole Buffard fall of 2008 and 2009. “La maison sans racines” – Andree Chedid.

AFFILIATIONS Vice President of the Maronite Catholic Church of Sacramento

Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development American Council for Teachers of Foreign Languages

Modern Languages Association of America Arabic Special Interest Group SIG

xi

Abstract

of

THE IMPACT OF DIGLOSSIA ON ARABIC LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION IN HIGHER EDUCATION: ATTITUDES AND EXPERIENCES OF STUDENTS AND

INSTRUCTORS IN THE U.S.

by

Eva Hashem-Aramouni

The purpose of this study was to review the core Arabic curriculum in higher

education at four-year colleges and language institutions in the United States to find the

extent to which these institutions are preparing their students to communicate effectively

in the Arabic-speaking world after completing the equivalent of six semesters of Arabic

or achieving high-intermediate proficiency. This study investigated students’ perceptions

and learning preferences for spoken Arabic. It also examined instructors’ perceptions on

teaching preferences of spoken Arabic. The students interviewed for this research had all

traveled to the Arabic-speaking world for language immersion study, and were

considered to have acquired high-intermediate proficiency. The primary countries of

destination were Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

This study was undertaken in direct response to the paucity of literature pertaining

to English-speaking learners of Arabic on study abroad. In actual fact, the Modern

Language Association’s most recent language report states that Arabic enrollment

increased more than any other language from 2002 to 2006 (Furman, Goldberg, & Lusin,

2007). With the increase in Arabic enrollment, it is probable that more and more

xii

American students will desire to study Arabic in the Arabic-speaking world, and that

more research is needed to guide Arabic language instruction and immersion study.

Four research questions guided this study. The overall question aimed at finding

the impact that diglossia has on the quality of Arabic language instruction of

undergraduates students in the United States. To answer this, the second question

investigated the students’ learning preferences and the third question investigated the

instructors’ teaching preferences. The last one attempted to find the differences between

students who study spoken Arabic before immersion and those who do not. Based on

four research questions, the findings of the study indicated that diglossic situations,

availability of classes, and usefulness of MSA top the list of the students’ and instructors’

themes that emerged from data analysis. The study revealed that some Arabic programs

are not preparing the students sufficiently in the Arabic spoken language acquisition.

However, it also documented that both student and instructor participants think Modern

Standard Arabic should continue to hold a prominent place in the Arabic curriculum.

The study concludes by providing some recommendations peculiar to the field of

teaching Arabic as a foreign language in United States. It also includes a set of areas in

which further research is needed as well as the limitations of the study. It is

recommended that faculty review the study and use the data to guide curriculum

development efforts. This should ultimately result in improved curriculum alignment

with the (ACTFL) American Council for Teachers of Foreign Languages standards and

improve graduates’ performance in speaking competency and fluency in Arabic. It is

xiii

hoped that this research will provide empirical insights pertaining to the linguistic

experiences of the learners of Arabic in the study abroad programs in the Arabic-

speaking world.

xiv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Dedication ............................................................................................................................v

Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. vi

Curriculum Vitae ............................................................................................................. viii

List of Tables .................................................................................................................. xvii

List of Figures ................................................................................................................ xviii

Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................1

Statement of the Problem.........................................................................................3

Nature of the Study ..................................................................................................4

Theoretical Framework............................................................................................6

List of Acronyms and Synonyms.............................................................................9

Assumptions and Limitations ................................................................................10

Significance of the Study .......................................................................................11

The Event of Sputnik 1957 ....................................................................................12

Purpose of the Study ..............................................................................................13

Conclusion .............................................................................................................14

2. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE ....................................................................16

Introduction............................................................................................................16

Research Questions and Related Categories of the Literature Review..................16

xv

The Arab Nation and Arabic Language Usage ......................................................18

Arabic’s Place among World Languages...............................................................30

Definition of Diglossia...........................................................................................32

The Development of Modern Standard Arabic......................................................37

Groups of Dialects in the Arab World ...................................................................40

Marginalia on Arabic Diglossia .............................................................................41

Arabic in the United States ....................................................................................42

The Impact of Diglossia on the Quality of Education in the Arab Region............43

The Impact of Diglossia on the Quality of Education in the U.S. .........................44

History of Arabic Teaching in the United States ...................................................44

Research on Arabic Language Instruction.............................................................47

Scholars Who Favor Teaching Only MSA to the U.S. Students ...........................48

Scholars in Favor of Teaching Colloquial Arabic to U.S. Students ......................49

Scholars in Favor of Teaching an Integrated Approach of Both MSA and Spoken Arabic.................................................................................................51 Conclusion .............................................................................................................53

3. METHODOLOGY........................................................................................................56

Research Design.....................................................................................................58

Measures Taken for Ethical Protection of Participants and Participant Rights and Ethical Protection.................................................................................73 Conclusion .............................................................................................................74

4. RESULTS OF DATA ANALYSIS...............................................................................76

xvi

Results....................................................................................................................78

Summary ..............................................................................................................103

5. SUMMARY, DISCUSSION, IMPLICATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS ............................................................................................105

Summary of Findings...........................................................................................105

Discussion of Results...........................................................................................108

Educational Implications and Recommendations................................................115

Research Implications and Recommendations ....................................................122

Limitations and Future Directions .......................................................................123

Recent Trends ......................................................................................................127

Conclusion ...........................................................................................................131

REFERENCES ................................................................................................................133

6. APPENDICES.............................................................................................................140

Appendix A. Consent to Participate Forms ............................................................141

Appendix B. Student and Instructor Questionnaires...............................................145

xvii

LIST OF TABLES

Page

1. Table 1 The Arabic Alphabet ....................................................................................... 22

2. Table 2 Arabic Nation Information .............................................................................. 29

3. Table 3 Most Widely Spoken Languages in the World ............................................... 31

4. Table 4 Differences Between High and Low Varieties of Arabic ............................... 35

5. Table 5 ACTFL Arabic Guidelines: Speaking – Intermediate..................................... 65

6. Table 6 Learning Outcomes for Sixth-Semester Arabic .............................................. 67

7. Table 7 Dialect Preferences.......................................................................................... 96

xviii

LIST OF FIGURES

Page

1. Figure 1 Arab Nation Map ........................................................................................... 18

2. Figure 2 The ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview Ratings........................................... 46

3. Figure 3 Cedar University Undergraduate Student Profile .......................................... 62

4. Figure 4 Cedar University Faculty Profile ................................................................... 63

1

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

My academic friends were displeased by this apparent betrayal of academic loyalties, but it was a wonderful opportunity for me and I never regretted the decision... For the next twenty years I was constantly operating with a professional tension between solving practical language problems and doing academic linguistics. (Ferguson, 1995, spoken) The purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes and experiences of Arabic

language students and instructors in the U.S. This research is unique in that it presents

data from a questionnaire designed by the author to elicit feedback exclusively from

students who studied Arabic for three years before traveling to the Arabic-speaking

world. These students also had no, or very minimal, contact with Arabic before taking

their first Arabic course. Heritage speakers did not fit the criteria to qualify for this

study. The study sought to understand how students who have studied Arabic and lived

in the Arabic-speaking world relate to and perceive the role of spoken Arabic in relation

to their formal instruction of Arabic. In addition, the research design for the study

included interviews with Arabic language instructors. This component of the study

provided insight into the current thinking and approaches to teaching Arabic, with the

focus on the use of formal and informal language varieties. The overall goal of the study

was to use the data provided by students and instructors to help improve Arabic

curriculum and instruction.

Literature pertaining to English-speaking learners of Arabic on study abroad is

almost nonexistent. This lack of research may be due to the fact that not even 1 out of

2

100 American students chooses to study abroad in the Arabic-speaking world each year

(Gutierrez et al., 2009). The small number of American students studying in the Arabic-

speaking world is at odds with the Modern Language Association’s (MLA’s) most recent

language report in which Arabic enrollment increased more than that for any other

language from 2002 to 2006 (Furman, Goldberg, & Lusin, 2007). With the increase in

Arabic enrollment, it is probable that more and more American students will desire to

study Arabic in the Arabic-speaking world.

With Arabic representing the most remarkable increase in enrollment in the 2002-

2006 MLA language report, an impressive 126%, the issue of Arabic language

development is certainly of timely and significant importance (Furman et al., 2007). The

recent increase in Arabic enrollment may largely be attributed to national and individual

reaction to the terrorist attacks on the United States (U.S.) in September 2001. The

attacks revealed a dearth of Arabic language expertise and regional knowledge in the

United States government and general populace. “When it comes to foreign language

teaching and learning, the U.S. government, and perhaps its citizens, is historically a

reactionary establishment that often seems rigid rather than forward-looking. The new

era of interest in Arabic has been compared to the situation following the Soviet launch

of the Sputnik satellite in 1957 “(Al-Batal, 2006). Such events often spur spontaneity in

policy planning and execution. In the case of Arabic language teaching and learning,

some funding has been allocated to develop and improve Arabic language programs

throughout the U.S. There remain, however, many challenges facing the field of Arabic

3

language teaching and learning as it seeks to balance enrollment increase with qualified

teachers.

Recent data (Palmer, 2008) show students want to learn spoken Arabic before

traveling to the Arabic-speaking world and do so while learning Modern Standard Arabic

(MSA). There is, however, some disagreement concerning how the teaching of spoken

Arabic and MSA should take place. “Perhaps spoken Arabic should be taught at the

same time as MSA but in separate courses; perhaps they should be taught in an integrated

fashion. Unfortunately, spoken Arabic is not always included in the curriculum for

beginning Arabic students” (Palmer, 2008, p. 88). The present research sought to

contribute to the small number of studies on Arabic language instruction.

Statement of the Problem

According to the American Council for Teachers of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)

guidelines, too few students are proficient in spoken Arabic after achieving the high-

intermediate proficiency level. The goal of higher education foreign language is to

provide students with four skills – reading, writing, listening, and speaking – of the target

language upon graduation. This study focuses on the extent to which higher education

institutions are meeting the speaking goal. While one or two studies (Palmer, 2007)

examined students who traveled to the Arabic-speaking world after completing only two

semesters of Arabic in the U.S., this study expands on that data and also includes

qualitative original data that fills the gap in research regarding Arabic students. College

4

exiting programs and foreign language departments must ensure students receive the right

preparation to function in the Arabic-speaking world.

There have been some calls in favor of teaching spoken Arabic. For example,

Wahba (2006) wrote, “In light of current theories of foreign language acquisition,

selecting only one variety of Arabic for instruction such as classical or colloquial, will

seriously prejudice the ability of the non-native learner to communicate effectively in an

Arabic-speaking community” (p. 139). He continued, “Both varieties of the language

should be taught together, as occurs in natural speech context” (p. 139). Wahba (2006),

describing MSA and spoken Arabic as one entity with different sides, wrote,

Each side of this system is used in situations and for functions for which it is uniquely suited, and both sides are necessary for functioning in the full range of situations where an educated native speaker is expected to function. (p. 159) In the same context Gass (2006) wrote, “Many would point out that SLA

research is quite skewed in the direction of a few languages, but not Arabic. Arabic is not

one of them, but the acquisition of Arabic is a field awaiting exploration” (p. 32).

Nature of the Study

The data collected through this study was analyzed to inform the researcher,

Arabic program coordinators, and teachers of Arabic at the higher education level in the

U.S. about the perceived effectiveness of the adopted curricula in providing college

graduates with readiness for the Arabic-speaking world after acquiring high-intermediate

proficiency in Arabic according to the ACTFL guidelines. Both the objective and open-

5

ended questions of the survey were designed to gather data related to the following

research questions:

Research Question #1: What is the impact of Arabic diglossia on the quality of

Arabic language instruction of undergraduate students in the United States?

Research Question #2: Among students who have high-intermediate proficiency

in Arabic, what are their language learning preferences after studying abroad in an

Arabic-speaking country?

Research Question #3: What is the difference between a student who studies a

spoken form of Arabic before traveling abroad and one who does not?

Research Question #4: Why and how do instructors in higher education in the

United States choose to teach Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and/or colloquial?

The questionnaire data were collected through interviews and open-ended

questions asked of non-active students of Arabic who had completed their high-

intermediate proficiency level in Arabic, had traveled to the Arabic-speaking world, and

had returned to the U.S. Other questionnaire data were collected through interviews and

open-ended questions of actual teachers of Arabic in higher education in the United

States and from the Mediterranean Institute of International Studies. A more detailed

description of the research design, including methodology, participants, qualitative parts

of the interview instrument, data collection, and analysis is provided in Chapter 3.

6

Theoretical Framework

How Arabic has been taught to date has been the subject of debate. It is time for

research to help instructors and program coordinators examine how this language is being

taught and explore possibilities for improvement and innovation. The research needs to

be framed by theories related to the question of language acquisition in the unique case of

Arabic. Hence, in this section, the researcher reviews Ferguson’s theory of diglossia

(1959), developed through this renowned linguist’s study of Arabic. The researcher also

discusses the construct of communicative competence theory because of this study’s

focus on the acquisition and use of a second language.

Ferguson’s Theory: Diglossia

Charles Ferguson, the father of diglossia, noted in his 1959 article that it is

sufficient that Arabic is often considered a “diglossic” language, denoting the existence

of a higher and lower register used in semi-exclusive contexts. The higher register is

sometimes referred to as Fusha, classical Arabic, standard Arabic, or Modern Standard

Arabic. This study adopts the term Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) to represent a more

modern version of the Arabic found in the Qur’an, which is used in formal contexts and

writing. The lower register is referred to simply as colloquial (SCA), spoken variety(ies)

of Arabic, vernacular, or Aamiya. Ferguson distinguishes, however, between diglossic

languages and languages that have standard and dialectal varieties of speech. Ferguson

(1959) claimed diglossic languages embody a higher register not regularly used “as a

medium of ordinary conversation, and any attempt to do so is felt to be…pedantic and

artificial” (p. 35). Thus, in a diglossic language, the use of the more prestigious higher

7

register is reserved for restricted contexts. In addition to the existence of separate speech

registers, Ferguson (1959) also emphasized the role of a sizeable body of literature and

restricted literacy “to a small elite” in diglossic speech communities (p. 36). Ferguson’s

theory relates to this study in that MSA is a prestigious approach in terms of instruction,

but the reality is that it is not practical to use because MSA is not a living language.

Arabic Continuum

Ferguson and numerous other authors have re-examined the original definition of

diglossia to develop a more nuanced picture of Arabic in use. Harry (1996) introduced

the metaphor of the continuum of analysis of Arabic. Rather than two distinct and

separate language varieties, he views Arabic as a continuum with Classical Arabic (or

Qur’anic Arabic) or Modern Standard Arabic at one end and vernacular Arabic at the

other. Holes (2004) expands on the metaphor: “The behavior of most Arabic speakers,

educated or not, is rather one constant style shifting along a cline at opposite ends of

which are “pure” MSA and the “pure” regional dialect, more accurately conceived of as

idealized constructs than real entities” (p.49). The metaphor of the continuum helps

teachers and researchers conceptualize Arabic language use. “It also makes it clear that,

to function effectively in Arabic-speaking societies, one must know both MSA and an

Arabic dialect” (Bergman, 2010, p.85).

Communicative Competence Theory

Communicative competence is a term in linguistics referring to a language user’s

grammatical knowledge of syntax, morphology, phonology, etc., as well as to social

knowledge about how and when to use the utterances appropriately. In 1966, Dell

8

Hymes coined the term communicative competence, reacting against the perceived

inadequacy of Noam Chomsky’s (1965) distinction between competence and

performance. To address Chomsky’s abstract notion of competence, Hymes undertook

ethnographic exploration of communicative competence that included “communicative

form and function in integral relation to each other” (Leung, 2005, p. 120). The approach

pioneered by Hymes is now known as the ethnography of communication (Leung, 2005,

p. 122). The theory has also had an impact on how languages are instructed.

While there has been much debate about linguistic competence and

communicative competence in the second and foreign language teaching literature, the

outcome has always been the consideration of communicative competence as a superior

model of language knowledge following Hymes’s opposition to Chomsky’s linguistic

competence. This opposition has been adopted by those who seek new directions toward

a communicative era, that is, one in which students of a second or foreign language are

able to functionally communicate across a range of situations.

Through the influence of communicative language teaching, it has become widely

accepted that communicative competence should be the goal of foreign language

education, central to good classroom practice (Savignon, 1997). This theory relates to the

study in that it measures to what extent our institutions, four-year colleges, or language

institutes are preparing our students of Arabic to be communicatively efficient in the

Arabic-speaking world in real-life situations.

9

List of Acronyms and Synonyms

ACTFL

American Council for Teacher of Foreign Languages

AFL

Arabic as a Foreign Language

AH

At Home

Aamiya

Arabic transliteration for spoken Arabic

ASL

Arabic as a Second Language

Colloquial

Spoken

ESCA

Educated Spoken Colloquial Arabic

Fusha

Arabic transliteration of classical Arabic

MESA

Middle East Studies Association

MSA

Modern Standard Arabic – Formal – High Variety – Fusha. Classic Arabic is the

language of Qur’an. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the formal version of the

10

tongue used in schools, newscasts, and in documents, but throughout the Arabic

world, a range of colloquial dialects dominates everyday speech. This spoken

form of Arabic is often referred to as Spoken Colloquial Arabic (SCA).

OPI

Oral Proficiency Interview, or ACTFL-OPI as it is often called, is a standardized

procedure for the global assessment of functional speaking ability.

SA

Study Abroad

SCA

Spoken Colloquial Arabic – Informal – Low Variety – Vernacular – Aamiya.

SLA

Second Language Acquisition

Vernacular

Spoken

Assumptions and Limitations

Since this study is based on former Cedar State University and Mediterranean

Institute for International Studies (MIIS) students’ perceptions of the extent to which

their preparation in Arabic impacted their readiness for the Arabic-speaking world,

several limitations must be addressed.

The use of an e-mail interview assumes participants have computer knowledge,

understand the survey questions, and will be the people participating in the interview. To

11

provide minimal risk to the participants, only those who responded to an initial e-mail

query were included in the interview. The potential participants and the questionnaire

responses are, thus, limited to those who replied to the e-mail.

Additionally, since only those who responded that they would like to participate

were provided with the questionnaire, the participants may not have been representative

of the larger population. Since participants were selected from only two institutions,

Cedars State University and MIIS, the data has limited generalizability. However, based

on the demographics of Cedars State University, other higher education institutions might

be able to apply the results of the study’s findings to their own curriculum improvement

efforts.

Significance of the Study

According to Furman, Goldberg, and Lusin (2007),

Due to the incessant media coverage of upheaval in the Arabic-speaking world combined with the highly publicized intelligence fallout and other events related to 9/11, the next Modern Language Association (MLA) report will most assuredly reveal an even greater increase in the number of Arabic programs and students interested in learning Arabic.

It is important to create curricula to meet the current needs as well as the demands of the

upcoming generations.

The rationale for this study is based upon the need to understand how students

who have lived in the Arabic-speaking world perceive the function of spoken Arabic.

Did the students feel that knowing spoken Arabic provided any benefit in the Arabic-

speaking world? Did they feel that not knowing spoken Arabic was a problem? Did the

12

students wish they had studied spoken Arabic before traveling to the Arabic-speaking

world? Qualitative data was elicited in the questionnaire.

The one-sided teaching of MSA in the U.S. does not reflect the linguistic realities

in the Arab world and may cause students to feel discouraged in learning. As for the

teaching of Arabic to foreigners, Abdallah (2006), describing the debates as “classical”

wrote, “[this debate] about what form of Arabic and which dialects should be taught is

still in question” (p. 317). This is the fundamental question concerning potential

implementation of spoken varieties in the field of Arabic teaching and learning.

Unfortunately, there is no empirical research supporting the efficiency – or lack thereof –

of teaching spoken varieties of Arabic. There is, however, motivational research

demonstrating positive student feedback in relation to the learning of spoken Arabic

(Donitsa-Schmidt, Inbar, & Shaohamy as cited in Palmer, 2007) and research indicating

that many Arabic learners in the U.S. want to learn spoken Arabic. In her review of

Arabic sociolinguistics and anthropology, Haeri (2000) discovered that, on the whole,

debates on language education continue in the Arab world. As such, a series of basic and

important questions remain unposed.

The Event of Sputnik 1957

Sometimes in the history of nations there is a huge desire to learn a language, but

the desire is not necessarily related to language itself. In 1957, when the Russians sent

the Sputnik rocket into space, there was a big surge of interest in science. Fifty years

after Sputnik, there is another political and academic effort geared toward learning

13

Arabic. At times, events in the world become galvanizing points for certain keen

interests. Today, other things in the environment such as the issue of the September 11

attack and the ongoing threats of possible future attacks have increased the need for

learning the Arabic language. Today, there is an upswing in learning Arabic, and, as a

result, there are pragmatic ways for learning Arabic. The demand is high, but this

demand needs to be supplied with the right teaching methods that meet today’s standards

(Al-Batal, 1997).

Purpose of the Study

This paper presents data collection from students who studied Arabic for two to

three years before traveling to the Arabic-speaking world. The researcher also examined

teachers’ perspectives, especially those who had experience in teaching total and semi-

immersion courses to those students. The research considers that students need to be

exposed to a spoken variety of Arabic before traveling abroad. Implications of this study

may support inclusion of spoken varieties of Arabic in curricula, thus changing the

foundation of Arabic instruction.

Research that tracks students from the start of their first year studying Arabic at a

higher education institution to their third year, and on to their return from experiencing

total immersion in an Arabic country has yet to be conducted. Such research would

assess their levels and ability to communicate in the target language with native speakers.

This study investigated the issue of students’ desires to learn spoken Arabic in the U.S.

The purpose of this work was to examine how students who have studied Arabic and

14

lived in the Arabic-speaking world relate to and perceive the role of spoken Arabic. It is

expected that some of the students had studied spoken Arabic before traveling to the

Arabic-speaking world, while others had not.

Conclusion

The ideological values and barriers of the Arabic language often confuse students

of Arabic. Students who learn some spoken Arabic may find they are scorned for using

sub-standard language, whereas students who can produce only MSA may also be

subjected to ridicule. Describing this possibility, Al Kahtany (1997) wrote, “Using MSA

in a situation where the dialectal form is appropriate may expose the speaker to ridicule

from his/her listeners” (p. 3). These possibilities testify to the need for a more accurate

representation and integration in Arabic Linguistics programs in the U.S. regarding

realities in the Arab world. Students taught only one variety are not prepared to

acculturate into a diglossic/bilingual society. The field of Arabic language teaching and

learning seems to be frozen in Ferguson’s (1959) idealized characterization of diglossia;

the higher register is emphasized and the lower register is disrespected and ignored, even

though it is widely used in many situations and circumstances.

Alternative approaches to teaching Arabic need to be tried and researched.

Commenting on the need for research in Arabic, Gass (2006) wrote, “Many would point

out that SLA research is quite skewed in the direction of a few languages. Unfortunately,

Arabic is not one of them, but the acquisition of Arabic is a field awaiting exploration”

(p. 32). Such exploration is of the utmost importance in this era of proliferated

15

enrollment in Arabic. It is hoped that the field of Arabic language teaching and learning

in the U.S. will respond to these statements and this research by implementing spoken

varieties into Arabic program curricula. A description of the organization of the

remainder of this dissertation follows.

Chapter 2 provides a detailed literature review that analyzes the approach in

higher education to formal Arabic instruction in the U.S. and abroad, teachers’

viewpoints regarding various approaches to the instruction of Arabic, diglossia as a

theme in relation to Arabic. Chapter 3 describes the research methodologies used in this

qualitative study, including the qualitative protocol. Chapter 4 discusses data collected

via questionnaire and interviews. They pertain to graduate students of Arabic language

and instructors of these students. Throughout the chapter, the research questions are used

as a guide to interpreting the findings. Chapter 5 continues the examination of the data

by expanding on the findings through a discussion of common themes that surfaced from

the data. The chapter concludes with recommendations for curriculum improvements and

suggestions for future research.

16

Chapter 2

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Introduction

This study examines the need for institutions of higher education to re-examine

Arabic teaching strategies. It does so by evaluating students who have completed three

years of Arabic at the University level and/or who have acquired high-intermediate

proficiency in formal Arabic but find themselves challenged to communicate with natives

when immersed in an Arabic-speaking country. As revealed in this chapter, research has

emphasized the teachers’ opinions over the students’ perspectives. This literature review

introduces the current teaching trends and the reluctance instructors have shown to move

away from the traditional teaching methods. Ultimately, there is a lack of research

focused on the effects of teaching strictly formal Arabic to students. Institutions of

higher education need to consider ways to better prepare students for total immersion

programs in the Arab world where only SCA is spoken.

Research Questions and Related Categories of the Literature Review

This literature review focuses on examining published research related to the

following research questions to identify and examine the current trends in teaching

Arabic in higher education:

Research Question #1: What is the impact of Arabic diglossia on the quality of

Arabic language instruction of undergraduate students in the United States?

17

Research Question #2: Among students who have high-intermediate proficiency

in Arabic, what are their language learning preferences after studying abroad in an

Arabic-speaking country?

Research Question #3: What is the difference between a student who studies a

spoken form of Arabic before traveling abroad and one who does not?

Research Question #4: Why and how do instructors in higher education in the

United States choose to teach Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and/or colloquial Arabic?

In this chapter, the researcher first provides a general overview of an important

macro context of this study, which is the Arab world. Following that section, the Arabic

language, its roots, and the religions that influence the language’s evolution is examined.

The researcher then discusses diglossia in general and diglossia in light of Arabic along

with the different Arabic registers and five major dialects. Because part of this study

focuses on study abroad participants, I also include a section on language learning related

to immersion experiences in foreign study. I conclude this review with studies and

scholars’ opinions regarding the inclusion of dialect in Arabic language curriculum and

instruction.

18

The Arab Nation and Arabic Language Usage

Figure 1 Arab Nation Map

The Arab world is a place where individuals play different roles through language

choice and code switching. It is a place where intellectuals have at least two varieties of

languages available to them and a place where people can add a different language

altogether to the two varieties. It is a place where the struggle for independence and

social justice has been going on hand-in-hand with a linguistic struggle for independence,

and the social justice struggle has been going on along with a linguistic struggle to

maintain and develop standard Arabic. The struggle for democracy and civil rights has

been going on hand-in-hand with the struggle to acknowledge other languages and not

just standard Arabic. Language has been used as a political tool to the utmost

(Huntington, 2002).

The Arabic word ?umma is equivalent to “nation,” while watan, on the other

hand, refers to a “country” as opposed to a nation. A common usage of ?umma is to refer

19

to al-umm al arabiyya al-‘isla;miyya “the Islamic nation.” The latter is a universal term

rather than particular to a specific community with a shared culture and history. In the

Arab world, as is the case in the west, a nation can also be defined in terms of different

factors including, but not limited to, language, religion, geographical environment,

historical background, colonial history, and values. For example, the Syrian nationalist

Antoun Saadeh (d. 1949) held the view that the environment plays the most essential role

in shaping the national character (Suleiman 2003, p. 219). However, in the 20th century,

the relationship between the Arab nation and Saudi Arabia has been in the forefront in

government constitutions, in language academies, among Arab intellectuals, and more

broadly in the media.

National unity was assumed to be achieved through linguistic unity and, thus,

multilingualism was perceived as a threat to national unity (Mellor, 2003). What

differentiates the Arab world or the Arab nation from all other nations and states in the

world is language. Statistics show that Arabic is the fourth biggest language, not in terms

of its speakers, but in terms of the countries that adopt it as its official language. Arabic

comes after English and French. However, countries that use French or English as their

official language are scattered all over the world, while countries that adopt Arabic as

their official language comprise one geographical entity that stretches from the ocean to

the gulf (Mellor, 2003).

Roots of the Arabic Language

The relationship of Arabic to Islam and the Qur'an involves more than just the use

of a language to communicate a divine message. There are a number of factors that set

20

this relationship apart from that which exists between other holy books and the languages

in which they are written; for, Arabic has come to be closely associated with Islam. In

this way, Arabic is descended from a language known in the literature as Proto-Semitic.

Arabic is part of the Semitic subgroup of Afro-Asiatic languages. Modern Arabic is

considered to be part of the Arabo-Canaanite sub-branch, the central group of the

Western Semitic languages. So while Arabic is not the oldest of the Semitic languages,

its roots are clearly founded in a Semitic predecessor. As mentioned previously, Arabic

is a member of the Semitic subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic group of languages. The

common ancestor for all Semitic languages (i.e., Hebrew or Aramaic) in the Afro-Asiatic

group of languages is called Proto-Semitic. Based upon reconstruction efforts, linguists

have determined many of the phonological, morphological, and syntactic features of

Proto-Semitic. As might be expected, not all Semitic languages have equally preserved

the features of their common ancestor language. In this respect, Arabic is unique; it has

preserved a large majority of the original Proto-Semitic features. In fact, many linguists

consider Arabic the most ëSemitici of any modern Semitic languages in terms of how

completely they preserve features of Proto-Semitic (Bishop, 1999).

History of the Arabic Writing System

Descended from the North Arabic script, the modern Arabic language writing

system runs from right to left and is a cursive script. There are 28 letters in the alphabet,

but because the script of the alphabet is cursive, 22 of the letters take different shapes

when they are in initial, medial, final, or isolated positions (see Table 1) (Bishop, 1999).

There are six letters in the alphabet that have only two possible forms because something

21

can only connect to them; nothing can connect from them. The three long letters are

represented within the alphabet; however, the three short vowels are not. Short vowels

are indicated by optional diacritical markings, but these are often not written. Those texts

in which they are written are usually of a religious nature, and they are included to ensure

proper pronunciation for all the words (Bishop, 1999).

Historically, the North Arabic script, the earliest extant copies of which date to

the fourth century BC, is descended from Nabatean Aramaic script. However, because

the Aramaic script represented less than the required number of consonants for Arabic,

the use of some shapes was extended by the means of dots placed on the letters. Thus,

there are several letters in Arabic whose only distinguishing feature from another Arabic

letter is the placement of a dot above or below the letter (Bishop, 1999).

The result of short vowel diacritic utilization in Arabic is that written Arabic is

highly lexicalized; one has to know the words to be able to read the language correctly.

Many Arab intellectuals criticize this situation and have proposed changes to make the

Arabic writing system have a more strict correspondence between letter and sound.

However, resistance to the change is so high it is very unlikely such a change will ever

take place. Many explain that Arabic is the language of God (Allah), and as such has no

need to be changed (Bishop, 1999).

22

Table 1

The Arabic Alphabet

(Bishop, 1999, Appendix I)

23

Islam and Arabic: A Unique Relationship

The revelation of the Qur'an in Arabic set the scene for a unique and lasting

relationship between the language and Islam. On the one hand, Arabic provided a very

effective medium for communicating the message of the religion. On the other hand,

Islam helped Arabic to acquire the universal status it has continued to enjoy since the

Middle Ages, emerging as one of the principal world languages. It has been argued that

Arabic has not simply remained “ancillary to Islam,” but that it has also been significant

as a means of “cultural and national revival in the Arabic-speaking countries” (Bishop,

1999). Arabic is a rich and expressive language and has played an important role in the

cultural preservation of the Arabic-speaking people. However, without the bond it has

had with Islam, Arabic would probably not have undergone the internal revolution it did,

nor expanded beyond the borders of the Arabian Peninsula with such speed and

magnitude.

Arabic acquired a semi-official status. It is implicit that anyone professing Islam

cannot ignore the role Arabic plays in his/her faith. Embracing Islam, therefore, entails

exposure to, and familiarity with, the Arabic language. Such familiarity is necessitated

by the fact that memorization and recitation of Qur'anic verses in their original language

is necessary for the performance of the daily rituals. Other holy books may have had an

impact on the languages in which they were originally written, but the impact Islam and

the Qur'an have had on Arabic appears to be unique in its extent and durability. It has

often been the case that a holy book appears in a given language and is then translated

into other languages, by which it continues to be read and recited during the performance

24

of rituals. But, in the case of the Qur'an, although it has been translated into many

languages, these translations cannot replace the original language as a language of

worship, which continues to be Arabic for all Muslims, native speakers, and others.

Other holy books also came to be associated with specific languages, such as the Torah

with Hebrew, and, perhaps less intimately, the New Testament with Greek and Latin.

However, the nature of the relationship between the Qur'an and Arabic is still unique.

In many ways, the idea that Arabic is the language of Allah has defined how the

Arabic language has behaved over the centuries. Of course, in the early years, before the

advent of Muhammad, Arabic developed and grew, though it was largely localized

among the tribes of Arabia. As the Islamic conquest took place, however, Arabic became

the language of the conquered peoples both because it was the language of their

conquerors and because it was the language of their newly adopted religion.

In subsequent years, the desire to preserve the proper pronunciation and reading

of the Holy Qur’an has been the driving force behind the maintenance of Classical

Arabic as the standard par excellence for the Arabic language. Even today, when you ask

an Arab about the colloquial dialect they speak, they are most likely to respond that what

they speak is “slang.” For them, correct Arabic is Classical Arabic, a language no one

speaks natively, but which has been preserved from the Qur’an. Linguistically, the Arab

world exists in a complex struggle between the progressiveness of colloquial Arabic and

the conservative action of Standard Arabic fostered by religion. The interaction of the

religious and the linguistic is part of what has made Arabic the interesting and vital

language it is today (Wikipedia).

25

Arabic and Christianity

Language is bound to remain the mainspring of cultural identity, and linguistic diversity the mainspring of all other diversities. – (Maalouf, 2000, p. 132) One aspect often neglected in a literature review is the relationship between the

Arabic language and Christianity. According to Webster’s Dictionary, the Middle East or

Mideast is “the area from Libya east to Afghanistan, usually including Egypt, Sudan,

Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the other countries

of the Arabian peninsula” (as cited in Shehadeh, 2007, p. 1).

What does the ethnic term Arab mean today? First, Arabs are not a race in the

modern anthropological sense. However, it is known that the inhabitants of the Middle

East (with the exception of Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Kurdish and Berber

minorities, and the Jews in Israel) and North Africa are Arabs, ca. 200 million. Secondly,

Arabs do not belong to one religion because, in addition to the overwhelming Muslim

Arab majority, there are Arab Christians and Druzes. Thirdly, Arabs are not as yet a

nationality in the legal sense of the word. Although there is an Arab League, “Jameat al

dual al arabiya,” one Arab state does not exist, but more than 23 Arab countries do. The

unique fact is the appearance of the Arab as a nationality “hala arabiyya” in contrast to

the Arab peoples “al shuub al arabiyya.” Nearly four decades ago, the following

definition of an Arab was announced by a group of Arab leaders, “Whoever lives in our

country, speaks our language, is brought up in our culture is one of us.”

The first encounter between Eastern and Western civilizations was to a great

extent caused by the strong impact of Christian Hellenization on Islam. It is sufficient to

26

remind people of the famous Christian centers in Edessa, Nisibin, and Qinassrin, in which

varied fields of knowledge such as medicine, science, history, and theology were studied.

The Christian calligraphers of al-Hyra invented the Kufy script as well as the Qur script

(Shehadeh, 2007).

Nearly 1,000 years later, the second meeting of East and West took place through

Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt and, some decades later, through various Western

missionaries working mainly in Greater Syria. Though the period of the crusaders is

irrelevant in this connection, the seed of Eastern Catholicism, as will be seen shortly, was

sown at that time. Western missionary organizations established schools, universities,

hospitals, and charitable institutions. The Madrasat al Hikma (School of Wisdom, later

Université Saint Joseph), for example, was founded by Bishop Yusef al Dibs in Beirut in

1875. Famous names such as Khalil Gibran are among its graduates. A wide variety of

subjects was taught in these institutions, such as foreign languages, Western science,

literature, philosophy, politics, and religious concepts (Shehadeh, 2007). It should be

emphasized that in the above educational institutions, Arab youth were introduced to

Western thought as well as to their past and cultural heritage. This education, as a matter

of fact, played a central role in the emergence of Arab movements for independence as

well as in the rise of Arab nationalism (Bishop, 1999).

Since Christian Arabs, mainly Syrian and Lebanese, were ready to accept and

absorb ideas from Christian Europe, they were in a position to make disproportionately

significant contributions to various aspects in the Nahda (Awakening). Dictionaries and

encyclopedias were compiled, and books on Arabic grammar and textbooks composed.

27

Arabic translations of the Bible, as well as of ancient and modern works, appeared, and

various works on literary criticism were published. The Bible was translated to Arabic by

the Lebanese scholar Boutros Al-Boustany. Christian Arabs have in fact made a

considerable contribution to the creation of a modern, literary, and scientific Arabic. This

stage in the history of the Arabic language may be compared with the first Christian

Arabic writings in the Umayyad era (660-750 AD) during which the church consisted of

four groups – Melkites, Maronites, Jacobites, and Nestorians (Shehadeh, 2007).

It should be stressed that the Arab Christian contribution to the revival of modern

Arabic language and literature clearly reflects their Arabism and Arabness. Beginning

with the 17th century, several Lebanese Maronites, such as Ibrahim Al Aaqlany (1687-

1786), Yusef al Semaani (1687-1786) and Mikhael Al Ghaziri (1710-1791) compiled

catalogues of Arabic manuscripts housed in some 80 cities in the world (Shehadeh,

2007). In 1610, the first printing press came to Dayr Quzhayya in Lebanon, and in 1834,

the well known American Press was transferred to Beirut. One of the main achievements

of the Protestant Press was the translation of the Bible into Arabic. The following are

samples of scholars who contributed to the revival of modern Arabic language and

literature: Said Al Shartouny, Suleiman Al-Boustany, Najib Al Haddad, Mikhail

Nuaimeh, May Ziadeh, Gergy Zeidan, Habib Al Zayiat, Al muallim Boutros Al Bustany

(1819-1883), and al sheikh Nasif Al Yazigi (1800-1871). They founded, with the help of

American missionaries, the Arab Society of Arts and Sciences (ASAS). Ten years later

(1875), the first joint Christian-Muslim organization, namely the Syrian Scientific

Society (SSS) came into being (Shehadeh, 2007).

28

It is well known that Arabic (one of the three main languages of Islam) was the

language of the Qur. What is less known, however, is the fact that Arabic is the language

of Middle Eastern Christian liturgy and thought. Generally speaking, the process of

Arabicization in the wake of Muslim Arab conquests included the lion’s share of Oriental

Christianity by the end of the 10th century. Christianity, which was once the major

religion in vast areas of the Muslim Arab Empire, has only partially survived (Shehadeh,

2007).

Zoroastrianism in Persia, on the other hand, surrendered to the new religion,

Islam, but the Persian language was not replaced by Arabic. During its history, the

Arabic language exercised and influence many languages to various degrees, such as

Persian, Turkish, Kurdish, Urdu, Swahili, and Medieval Hebrew; but it remained the

vernacular and the national tongue for Arabs only, Muslims and Christians alike

(Shehadeh, 2007).

29

Table 2

Arabic Nation Information

Country Area (km²) Population (2008) Official languages

Algeria 2,381,741 34,895,000 Arabic

Bahrain 750 791,000 Arabic

Comoros 2,235 798,000 Comorian, Arabic,

French

Djibouti 23,200 864,000 Arabic, French

Egypt 2,450 77,420,000 Arabic

Iraq 438,317 31,234,000 Arabic, Kurdish Jordan 92,300 6,316,000 Arabic Kuwait Arabic

Lebanon 10,452 4,224,000 Arabic Libya 1,759,541 6,420,000 Arabic

Mauritania 1,030,700 3,291,000 Arabic

Morocco 446,550 31,993,000 Arabic Oman 309,550 2,845,000 Arabic

Palestinian Authority 6,040 4,136,540 Arabic

Qatar 11,437 1,409,000 Arabic

Saudi Arabia 2,149,690 28,686,633 Arabic

Somalia 637,661 9,133,000 Somali, Arabic Sudan 2,505,813 42,272,000 Arabic, English

Syria 185,180 21,906,000 Arabic

Tunisia 163,610 10,432,500 Arabic United Arab

Emirates 83,600 6,000,000 Arabic

Yemen 527,968 23,580,000 Arabic (Arab League, n.d.)

30

The Arabic’s Place among World Languages

The central elements of any culture or civilization are language and religion. If a

universal civilization is emerging, there should be tendencies toward the emergence of a

universal language and a universal religion. This claim is often made with respect to

language. “The world’s language is English,” as the editor of the Wall Street Journal put

it (as cited in Huntington, 2002, p. 58). This can mean two things, only one of which

would support the case for a universal civilization. It could mean an increasing

proportion of the world’s population speaks English. No evidence exists to support this

proposition, and the most reliable evidence that does exist, which admittedly cannot be

very precise, shows just the opposite. The available data covering more than three

decades (1958-1992) suggest that the overall pattern of language use in the world did not

change dramatically, significant declines occurred in the proportion of people speaking

English, French, German, Russian, and Japanese, a smaller decline occurred in the

proportion of people speaking Mandarin, and increases occurred in the proportion of

people speaking Hindi, Malay-Indonesian, Arabic, Bengali, Spanish, Portuguese, and

other languages. English speakers in the world dropped from 9.8% of the people in 1958

to 7.6% in 1992 (Huntington, 2002). In one sense, a language foreign to 92% of the

people in the world cannot be the world’s language. In another sense, however, it could

be so described that if it is the language people from different language groups and

cultures use to communicate with each other, they have to find a means of doing so

(Huntington, 2002).

31

Table 3

Most Widely Spoken Languages in the World

Language Approx. number of speakers

1. Chinese (Mandarin) 1,213,000,000

2. Spanish 329,000,000

3. English 328,000,000

4. Arabic 221,000,000

5. Hindi 182,000,000

6. Bengali 181,000,000

7. Portuguese 178,000,000

8. Russian 144,000,000

9. Japanese 122,000,000

10. German 90,000,000

(Information Please, 2009)

Table 3 shows that Arabic is the fourth most frequently used language in the

world, ranked immediately below English. As such, research on the acquisition of this

important world language is needed. This study focuses precisely on the acquisition of

Arabic by heritage and non-heritage speakers. It also discusses the need to learn both

MSA and dialects of Arabic before going abroad. The abundance of Arabic in the world

32

requires an inquiry into what students going abroad would need to study before leaving

the U.S.

Definition of Diglossia

No discussion of Arabic is complete without at least a cursory discussion of

diglossia. Charles Ferguson is credited with first using diglossia in an article he wrote in

1959 called “Diglossia.” Ferguson identified four languages, Arabic, Greek, Haitian

Creole, and Swiss German as being prime examples of languages fitting into his

definition of diglossia. Very simply stated, he argued that diglossic speech communities

have a “High” variety that is very prestigious and a “Low” variety with no official status;

they are in complementary distribution with each other. For instance, the “High” variety

might be used for literary discourse while the “Low” variety is used for ordinary

conversation.

His original definition of diglossia was that the two varieties are in a diglossic

relationship with each other and are closely related. Therefore, diglossia is not

bilingualism. In his defining examples, he points out that the “High” variety is always an

acquired form, and that some educated native speakers might even deny that they use the

“Low” variety. An important component of diglossia is that the speakers have the

personal perception that the “High” variety is the “real” language and the “Low” variety

is “incorrect usage.” In Arabic, people talk about the “High” variety as being “pure”

Arabic and the dialects as being corrupt forms.

33

Diglossia in Arabic

Arabic is the sole or joint official or national language of 23 countries ranging

from Morocco in the north to Sudan in the south and from Mauritania to Yemen. Native

speakers of Arabic total about 300 million. Arabic has always been important to western

linguists. However, Arabic variationist sociolinguistics flourished after Ferguson’s

article about diglossia in 1959. In this article, he drew the distinction between the

standard language and the different vernaculars of each Arab country. In subsequent

years, Arabic variationist sociolinguistic research tended to concentrate on relating

variation in language use to demographic factors like education, age, and sex/gender, and,

more recently, on issues related to language and identity and ethnic and nationalistic

manifestations. In addition, Holes (as cited in Bassiouney, 2009) stated,

the earliest definite textual evidence we have for the existence of a distinct language identifiable as Arabic is an inscription on a tombstone found at Nemara in the Syrian desert. This has been dated to AD 328 – recent by the standards of Semitic languages. (p. 8) A brief discussion of terminology is necessary for those unfamiliar with the

language of Arabic. This paper refers to different varieties, or registers, of Arabic using

certain specialized terminology. It is sufficient to note that Arabic is often considered a

“diglossic” language, denoting the existence of a higher and lower register used in semi-

exclusive contexts (Ferguson, 1959). The higher register is sometimes referred to as

Fusha, classical Arabic, standard Arabic, or Modern Standard Arabic. This study adopts

the term Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) to represent a more modern version of Arabic

related to the language found in the Qur’an and used in formal context and writing. The

34

lower register is referred to simply as colloquial Arabic or spoken variety(ies) of Arabic.

Spoken varieties of Arabic are used for day-to-day communication and are seldom

codified.

This section offers a coherent explanation for how diglossia works in Arabic.

“The written language was first systematically codified in the eighth century CE. The

Qur’an and pre-Islamic poetry were the primary sources of the standard for the written

language, which has since that time been held in the highest regard by the entire Muslim

community as the language of the Qur’an and the language of angels in heaven. It is now

referred to as MSA in the U.S. There is evidence that diglossia existed in the eighth

century since the codification of the language was motivated by a desire to have recent

converts to Islam learn the correct language rather than the ‘corrupted’ urban varieties of

Baghdad and Damascus. MSA has not changed in terms of syntax and morphology since

then” (Palmer, 2008, p. 83).

The 23 countries of which Arabic is an official language have been described as

diglossic speech communities, i.e., communities in which two varieties of a single

language exist side by side. The official language is typically MSA, but there is usually

at least one prestigious vernacular spoken in each country. According to Ferguson

(1959), diglossia is a different situation from one in which there are merely different

dialects within a speech community. In diglossic communities, a highly valued H (high)

variety is learned in schools and is not used for ordinary conversations. That is to say, no

one speaks the H variety natively. The L (low) variety is the one used in conversations.

Most importantly, Ferguson (1959) claims that the crucial test for diglossia is that the

35

language varieties in question must be functionally allocated within the community

concerned. Table 4 illustrates the differences between the High and Low varieties.

Table 4

Differences Between High and Low Varieties of Arabic

High Variety Low Variety

Function Elegant, formal Informal; everyday

communication

Prestige Prestigious variety Stigmatized variety

Literary Heritage Highly esteemed and long literary

tradition

Used in less esteemed

literature- i.e. cartoons; speech

of characters in novels

Acquisition Learned in a formal, educational

setting

Acquire

Standardization Established norm for grammar,

vocabulary; abundance of

dictionaries/materials

No established rules; fewer

materials available

Stability Long-lived phenomenon – very

stable

Less stable; susceptible to

change

Grammar More complex grammar Simpler morphology

Lexicon Technical terms Popular expressions

Phonology Preserved underlying

phonological systems

Divergent and evolving

(Ferguson, 1959)

36

Ferguson (1959) proceeds by exemplifying situations in which only H is appropriate.

According to him, the following are situations for which H is appropriate:

1. Sermon in church or mosque

2. Speech in parliament, political speech

3. Personal letters

4. University lectures

5. News broadcast

6. Newspaper editorial, news story, caption on picture

7. Poetry

He also gives situations in which L is the only variety used:

1. Instruction to servants, waiters, workmen, and clerks

2. Conversation with family, friends, and colleagues

3. Radio soap opera

4. Caption on political cartoon

5. Folk literature

The actual date of the split between the dialects and literary Arabic is subject to

debate. The prevailing view was put forth by Ferguson in 1959 in an article entitled The

Arabic KoinZ. He posits that all the dialects existing outside the Arabian peninsula had

as their common source a variety spoken in the military camps at the time of the Islamic

expansion in the middle of the seventh century. This variety was already very distinct

from the language of the Qur’an. In other words, the dialects are not corrupt forms, but

37

instead have had a separate existence from the Classical language for as long as they have

existed outside the Arabian peninsula.

The Development of Modern Standard Arabic

From the 15th century on, most of the Arabic-speaking world was under foreign

domination, either Ottoman or European. The Ottomans produced all their official

documents in Turkish, while their religious documents were in Arabic. The French in

Algeria, between 1830 and 1962, tried to actively suppress Arabic. At one point, the

British in Egypt tried to make the Egyptian dialect the official language. Literary Arabic

stagnated during the Ottoman and colonial period (i.e., not many changes were made to

it) (Palmer, 2008).

During the peak of the Islamic empire, classical Arabic, the language of the

Qur’an, was regarded as the only channel for disseminating the Islamic culture (Haeri,

1991). It was only the language of prestige at that time, which eventually led to the

disappearance of other local languages, such as Coptic and Greek (Versteegh, 1997).

However, the rulers then felt the urgent need to standardize the language for several

reasons, summarized by Versteegh (1997) as follows:

1. The discrepancy between the Bedouin language and other vernaculars in the

empire;

2. The desire of the rulers to unite all subjects politically, religiously, and culturally;

and

38

3. The urgent need to standardize the lexicon to ensure uniformity throughout the

empire.

Besides being the language of the Qur’an, classical Arabic was also used as

formal prose, such as for the sayings of the prophet (Hadith). This secured classical

Arabic an exalted position in the minds of Arabs, who saw in it the language of God and

spirituality. Nevertheless, this exalted position also meant that the language was, like

God, “unattainable” (Fellman, 1973, p. 29).

Although vernacular Arabic is the daily communication tool for all Arabs,

classical Arabic has survived due to its presence in three realms: religion, media, and

bureaucracy, of which the first domain plays the greatest role (Haeri, 2003). Classical

Arabic is, thus, preserved by daily prayers, whether performed individually at homes or

in the mosques, while all other daily activities are performed in the vernacular. Even

among Christian Arabs, the Bible and the church services are in classical Arabic.

However, Muslims have always considered classical Arabic to be the language of the

word of God. Therefore, Muslims do not expect non-Muslims to master this language,

even to the extent of teaching it (Haeri, 2003).

Efforts to standardize the classical language resulted in the emergence of MSA as

the official language of the Arab countries. The emergence of the Arabic-language

newspapers during the 19th century was an important contribution to MSA, as the

intellectuals who ran those newspapers sought to introduce new terms and syntactic

structures to the language (Abdulaziz, 1986). Due to their bilingualism, and sometimes,

even, multilingualism, those western-oriented intellectuals transferred a great number of

39

words and phrases into Arabic (Abdulaziz, 1986). MSA is the language of the press,

books, and formal correspondence, while classical Arabic is restricted to the religious

domain and is performed traditionally by religious men.

The modernization process in 19th-century Egypt, led by the Turkish ruler

Mohamed Ali, called for further modernization of the language. In his efforts to improve

military education, Mohamed Ali, ordered the translation of teaching materials into

Arabic, including foreign language books, which could be used for teaching his soldiers

(Haeri, 1997). Hence, he simultaneously caused the decline of the role of religious

schools, based on teaching the Qur’an in classical Arabic.

Although MSA is taught in schools, it is treated as a foreign language whose

grammar rules are taught in schools without the practicing of the language in real social

situations (Fellman, 1973). The students are expected to read literary and religious texts

in MSA and to memorize these texts and their grammatical rules without necessarily

understanding them (Fellman as cited in Mellor, 2005). However, they are not offered

classes in conversational MSA, which makes students mark it for formal and academic

purposes (Abdelfattah as cited in Mellor, 2005). For daily communication, the

vernacular plays the chief role. This is the language handed from one generation to

another and is confined to the community in which it is used. Thus, the Egyptian dialect

is distinct in pronunciation and grammar from the Jordanian dialect or the Moroccan

dialect. This paradoxical situation of having two languages, one for formal purposes and

another for informal use, is termed by linguists as diglossia (Mellor, 2005).

40

Groups of Dialects in the Arab World

Every country in the world has more than one dialect spoken in it. There is also

more than one approach to classifying dialects. One can use a synchronic approach to

classification, which is done by measuring and selecting salient linguistic variables for

each dialect or group of dialects (Palva, 2006). On the other hand, one can also use a

sociological, anthropological, and historical approach, which takes into consideration the

division between Bedouin and sedentary dialects in the Arab world (Palva, 2006). Cities

in the Arab world do not necessarily speak an urban dialect. In fact, in a number of cities

in the Arab world, speakers speak a Bedouin dialect, and in other cities, the Bedouin

dialect is more prestigious than the sedentary one. Versteegh (2001) distinguishes

between five groups of regional dialects in the Arab world:

1. Dialects of the Arabian peninsula, spoken in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf area

2. Mesopotamian dialects, spoken in Iraq

3. Levantine dialects, spoken in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine

4. Egyptian dialects, spoken in Egypt

5. Maghreb dialects, spoken in North Africa

The Arabic dialects are sometimes mutually intelligible, and while educated

speakers have developed sets of strategies for communicating across dialect boundaries

that include using resources from MSA, someone who knows only one dialect of spoken

Arabic will likely not understand an educated speaker of another dialect or be able to

make herself or himself understood, especially if one of the speakers comes from North

Africa and the other does not.

41

Dialect, meaning the colloquial Arabic of Arab countries, is considered a

corrupted version of SCA. SCA is the Arabic tongue, the real language; dialects are not

Arabic. The postulation ignores the fact that dialects are in fact the spoken languages in

all Arab countries while SCA is not the spoken dialect of any of the Arab countries

(Bassiouney, 2009).

Marginalia on Arabic Diglossia

There has been wide disagreement among scholars as to when, where, and how

Arabic diglossia originated. Traditionally, the downfall of Old Arabic as a vernacular is

attributed to the post-Islamic melting pot (Corriente, 1975). The substitution of Old

Arabic by Middle and Low Arabic in everyday speech and its standardization as Classical

Arabic for formal purposes can hardly explain the early pervasive appearance of Middle

Arabic features and the surprising structural uniformity of Middle and Low Arabic

dialects. On the other hand, Vooler’s (as cited in Corriente, 1975) theory shows that

Arabic was already current in Arabia before Islam and that the classical features of, for

instance, the Qur’an, would merely have been a fabrication of the Abbasid grammarians

who turned the poets’ jargon into the formal language of the Arabs. It is to be considered

as a hypercritical analysis of certain features in Old Arabic texts and a certain

misunderstanding of the linguistic and cultural situation of Arabia before Islam and

immediately thereafter (Corriente, 1975).

42

Arabic in the United States

The teaching and learning of Arabic in the U.S. has long followed the model of

language use and observation of the Arab world. This model consists of what some

might consider gratuitous reverence for the written language “Modern Standard Arabic”

(MSA) and outward contempt for spoken varieties of Arabic (Maamouri, 1998). The

academic community in the U.S. calls the modern form of Literary/Classical Arabic

Modern Standard Arabic or MSA for short. An American who has only studied MSA

will be well received but will not understand much of the spoken discourse going on

around him/her in an Arabic-speaking country.

In situations in which a person has a prepared text in front of him/her, and keeps

remarks within the framework of the prepared text, there is very little regional difference

between what a reasonably educated speaker would produce as MSA. As the remarks

stray from the prepared text, so will remarks stray from MSA. It is important to

emphasize that “Aamiya,” or colloquial Arabic, is not uniform as one moves from one

location to another. On the other hand, MSA, nearly uniform throughout the Arabic-

speaking world, and intimately linked with Classical Arabic, is highly similar over a span

of 1400 years. It is almost impossible to overstate the status of Classical Arabic in the

culture of Arabic speakers. As previously mentioned, many Arabs state that Classical

Arabic is “the real language” and that dialects are “corrupted” or “impure” forms

(Maamouri, 1998).

43

The Impact of Diglossia on the Quality of Education in the Arab Region

There is a growing awareness among some educational specialists of Arabic that

the levels of educational achievement and literacy rates in most Arab countries are

directly related to the complexities of the standard Arabic language used in formal

schooling. The complexities mostly relate to the diglossic situation of the language,

which makes reading in Arabic an overly arduous process. There are serious negative

educational and social consequences related to these reading difficulties, including

feelings of linguistic insecurity by large numbers of youth and young adults when it

comes to common acts of social communication and personal expression. If Arabic-

speaking societies want to face the challenges of the 21st century, there needs to be a

concerted effort to bring about higher levels of linguistic self-confidence and a desirable

social change. The Arabic language, according to Maamouri and Mohammad (1988),

needs urgent language planning strategies to standardize it and make it more accessible to

its many speakers.

The Impact of Diglossia on the Quality of Education in the U.S.

Ferguson’s (1959) binary and idealized definition of diglossia is reflected in the

teaching of Arabic in the U.S. Prominence and prestige are assigned to the higher

register, and the lower register is thought to be ungrammatical and not worthy of

academic attention. Thus, students who wish to learn spoken varieties of Arabic are often

left to their own devices. Commenting on this biased approach, Ryding (1995) wrote that

it leads to “undermining of learner confidence in spoken interaction…[and] the net result

44

of this has been the early discouragement of many potential Arabic students” (p. 22).

“The one sided teaching of MSA in the U.S. does not reflect the linguistic facts on the

ground in the Arab world and may cause students to feel discouraged in learning” (p. 22).

Students of Arabic are not being taught ordinary conversation. How are students

expected to communicate on this level when they study abroad?

History of Arabic Teaching in the United States

The teaching of Arabic was first introduced at U.S. universities in the 17th and

18th centuries. According to McCarus’s 1992 article on the history of Arabic programs in

the U.S., there existed various reasons stirring development of Arabic programs over the

past decades and centuries. He wrote, “Arabic was being taught in the United States over

a century before the Declaration of Independence, introduced to complement the study of

Hebrew and the Old Testament” (p. 207). After philological interest, attention to Arabic

came from the field of archeology in the 1900s. Thereafter, Arabic came to be seen as an

important language on a national level. World War II was somewhat of a watershed

moment for Arabic (Palmer, 2008).

The status of Arabic in America during World War II resembles the lack of

Arabic linguists and area specialists on hand in the U.S. after the terrorist attacks of

September 2001. Arabic has become a topic of national interest in a very short time.

According to Allen (2007), the huge sums of money being spent confirm the reactionary

nature of the U.S. government. It is hoped that these funds will trickle down to Arabic

45

language departments in universities throughout the U.S. to address the current

enrollment and lack of qualified teachers.

The field of Arabic language teaching and learning has transformed from the

obscure to a front-page item in the U.S. Illustrating this point, Ryding (2006) wrote,

“Traditional questions asked of Arabic students have shifted from ‘Why study Arabic?’

to ‘How long does it take to become fluent?’” (p. 13). This quote describes how students

are now approaching learning Arabic. Students are motivated to reach high levels of

proficiency. Figure 2, however, captures the difficulty in becoming proficient in this

language. Arabic is grouped in level 4 with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. With more

and more students interested in taking Arabic, it is important to rethink how teachers are

training students for interaction in the real world. The different registers of the Arabic

language, and whether or not to teach them, must come to the forefront in researching a

sound pedagogy for the 21st century.

46

Figure 2 The ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview Ratings

47

Study abroad has long been understood as a major source of foreign language

competence for American students. Based on a large-scale, national assessment project,

Carroll (1967) named time spent abroad as one of the most potent variables predicting

language proficiency. Based on this solid proof claim, researchers have since

investigated language learning in study abroad using diverse methods and adopting a

wide variety of theoretical approaches (e.g., Du Fon & Churchill, 2006; Freed, 1995).

Over time, concern with general proficiency has given way to studies in which particular

aspects of language competence (e.g., fluency, vocabulary growth, pragmatics) are

scrutinized in separate studies. The results of these investigations generally show that

while study abroad is certainly a productive context for language learning, the outcomes

are neither as dramatic nor as equally distributed among students as one might hope they

would be (Kiginger, 2008).

Research on Arabic Language Instruction

The research on the instruction of Arabic in the U.S. suggests two distinct groups

of Arabic professional instructors exist in the U.S., those in favor of teaching spoken

dialects to students at the same time as MSA, and those against it. Further research

points to a third group of scholars who suggest a half-way approach in which spoken

Arabic is taught to the students while MSA keeps its prestigious stature. It thereby

promotes a two-track approach to learning Arabic, both MSA and dialect concurrently.

As we have seen in this section, the research reveals that the community of Arabic-

48

teaching teachers has not reached a consensus, and many teachers have opted to teach the

discipline based on their views and philosophies.

Scholars Who Favor Teaching Only MSA to the U.S. Students

To question the validity of current teaching methods, it is necessary to understand

the advantages of teaching MSA over spoken varieties. Mahdi Alosh (2002), whom the

researcher interviewed for this study, focused on MSA as a bedrock of learning the

Arabic language. He stated,

The Arabic you will be learning is the variety used in the Arab world for formal instruction, in the media, and in formal situations. It is more or less invariable all over the Arab world, thus giving the advantage of learning the language that is readily understood everywhere in the Arab Middle East. Learning this form of Arabic lets the learner identify with the educated population and have access to the literature and the written and spoken media. This variety, however, is not used for everyday oral interaction on the street or at home. (p. 6)

It is clear that Alosh favors teaching language through MSA, the common denominator

among all educated Arabs, thus enabling communication based exclusively on an

educated class. The problem with this instructional approach to Arabic is that it offers

the student little opportunity for typical everyday oral interaction.

Younes (2006) explained that Arabs from different parts of the world speak

different dialects, but MSA is the same everywhere. According to him, this is why the

majority of Arabic programs prefer to teach MSA. Belnap (2006) wrote that Arabic is a

truly foreign language (TFL), a language whose margin of difference from the familiar

world of Western languages is greater than the difference of those languages among each

other. Belnap (2006) suggested that after the students have overcome their normal

49

apprehension toward the “foreign-ness” of the language, their expectation is to learn to

speak. However, because of the instructor’s need to teach the basics (such as, new

phonemes and orthography), the aim is likely to teach to read. Perhaps the tendency to

aim for reading the foreign language is another reason why MSA is set as a goal of

instruction.

The position of MSA in Arabic language teaching is strong and it is difficult for

any vernacular to replace it (Versteegh as cited in Palmer, 2007). MSA is, in most

Arabic-speaking countries, the only official and national language in the constitution.

This situation may be different from other communities in which there is no language or

variety with a special status, and there is not a need to rapidly adjust among different

registers for effective communication. Versteegh (as cited in Palmer, 2007) contended

that, as a result of this special status of MSA, inter-Arabic conversation in dialect will not

converge in the direction of a regional dialectal variety but tend to exhibit an increasing

use of MSA features against inter-dialectal conversations. That is to say, leveling will

not eventually lead to the disappearance of MSA in favor of any vernacular (Palmer,

2007).

Scholars in Favor of Teaching Colloquial Arabic to U.S. Students

In contrast to the Arabic scholars whose work was reviewed in the previous

section, others believe that early exposure to spoken varieties of Arabic should become

the norm in Arabic learning programs in the U.S. In examining this point of view, one

finds that over the past few decades many voices have called for change in Arabic

50

program curricula to include the teaching of spoken Arabic. Using this approach,

programs would be able to train future professionals to communicate effectively with the

Arabic-speaking world of the 21st century. This section discusses the positions and

research of those scholars in favor of teaching colloquial Arabic to students in the U.S.

Younes wrote, “If the goal of an Arabic as-a-foreign language program is to

prepare students to function successfully in Arabic, then they should be introduced to

both a spoken Arabic dialect and [formal Arabic] from the beginning of an Arabic

course” (as cited in Palmer, 2007, p. 111). Currently, this approach is not standard

practice in the field (Palmer, 2007). Nonetheless, the lack of interest in Arabic dialect

instruction and the reluctance to consider training in spoken Arabic makes it difficult for

foreigners to integrate linguistically and culturally into Arab society. Versteegh (as cited

in Palmer, 2007) wrote,

It remains difficult in the Arab world to arouse interest in the dialects as a serious object of study. Many speakers of Arabic still feel the dialect is a variety of language without a grammar…and even in the universities, there is a certain reluctance to accept dialect studies as a dissertation subject. (p. 112)

Versteegh (as cited in Palmer, 2007) continued in this vein, “Students who have only

studied this ‘high variety’ of formal Arabic are kept outside the in-groups and often

experience frustration and embarrassment when trying to communicate with Arabic

speakers” (p. 112).

As for the teaching of Arabic to foreigners, Abdallah (2006), describing the

debate as classical, wrote, “[this debate] about what form of Arabic and which dialects

should be taught is still in question” (p. 137). This is the fundamental question

51

concerning potential implementation of spoken varieties in the field of Arabic teaching

and learning. Unfortunately, there is no empirical research supporting the efficiency, or

lack thereof, of spoken varieties of Arabic. There is, however, motivational research

demonstrating positive student feedback in relation to the learning of spoken Arabic

(Donitsa-Schmidt, Inbar, & Shohamy as cited in Palmer, 2007) and research indicating

that many Arabic learners in the U.S. want to learn spoken Arabic (Palmer, 2008).

Maamouri (1998) wrote, “[MSA] is nobody’s mother tongue and is rarely or almost never

used at home in the Arab world” (p. 33). It is vital to research alternative methods to

provide students with the tools to communicate in both formal and informal settings.

Scholars in Favor of Teaching an Integrated Approach of Both MSA and Spoken Arabic

Despite the overarching bias in the direction of teaching only MSA in the U.S.,

there are some alternatives being proposed. For example, Al-Batal (1992), describing

what he termed “an alternative approach” to teaching Arabic, wrote that colloquial and

MSA should be taught in the classroom to reflect the linguistic reality in the Arab world

today. Al-Batal’s approach calls for students with lower levels of proficiency to be

exposed to a more colloquial component with higher levels focusing more on MSA. Not

until the superior level would students “be expected to handle such a discussion using

MSA exclusively, as is done by educated native speakers” (p. 299).

In a similar model, Wahba (2006) proposed the teaching of Arabic in light of its

diglossic nature. His model proposed presenting MSA and a spoken variety of Arabic as

52

separate entities at the early stages of learning, followed by mixed text at the intermediate

levels and integration at advanced levels (p. 151).

Younas Tarbouni presented a paper on Arabic dialect teaching at the Middle

Eastern Studies Association (MESA) conference in San Diego in November 2010. He

said,

In the past decade, the question of Arabic dialect(s) teaching in the classroom has intensified and split Arabic instructors and experts in the American universities and let to a civil crisis a la Sunni and Shia. Indeed, while there is clear and valid disagreement between those who champion introducing dialect teaching in the classroom and those who don’t, we tend to forget a third group that makes the point for both. There is also the growing controversy around the legitimacy of some dialects over five others. (personal communication, November 18, 2010) Tarbouni believes the ideal situation in which to learn dialects is through a study

abroad experience. However, the researcher seeks to show that study abroad should be

preceeded by introducing the learner to more than one dialect in the classroom in the

American college. In his study, Tarbouni explored topical and communicative

approaches and how it was possible to introduce six dialects (Moroccan, Algerian,

Tunisian, Egyptian, Yemeni, and Syrian) over one semester as a cultural activity

involving second-year students. He used the Internet, songs, scenes from movies, and

classroom visits by native guest speakers of each dialect. Tarbouni also gave ideas on

how to expand such an experiment beyond the classroom and put it into a film format that

represents the six dialects. He hoped to make the case that more than one dialect should

be introduced in the Arabic class at a lesser level in comparison with MSA to give due

credit to MSA but really to somewhat reflect the cultural Arab world (Tarbouni, personal

communication, November 18, 2010).

53

Conclusion

If one tries to add every national variety of Arabic to the five main ones – Arabian

Peninsula, Iraqi, Levantine, Egyptian, Maghrebi – it would be something similar to a

woven rope that holds together all the different Arabic dialects. The question still

remains, how long can this structure remain in place before individual national strands

fray from the rope completely and become their own language with their own literature?

The answer to this question still seems to be that it is not likely to happen soon due to the

high status of Classical Arabic. The only variety of Arabic to date to break off and form

its own language is Maltese. Inherent in the telling distinctions between Modern

Standard Arabic and diglossia, the many varieties of its spoken form, there is ample

opportunity for ambitious linguists to study code-switching and language contact

phenomena for years to come.

A lack of research on the study of Arabic for students who have completed three

years of Arabic in the U.S. is evident. The students in this research achieved a high-

intermediate level and still did not know any spoken form that would allow them to

communicate with the natives in the target language. The only research found included a

student who had studied only two semesters of Arabic or one academic year before

traveling abroad (Palmer, 2007). Palmer’s study presents data from a questionnaire

designed by the author to elicit feedback exclusively from students who had studied

Arabic for at least one year before traveling to the Arabic-speaking world. This study

focused on students who had studied the equivalent of three years or six semesters of

Arabic before studying abroad, and it also investigated the perceptions of Arabic

54

instructors on the matter. Therefore, based on the gaps in the only research found, this

investigation seeks to answer the research questions and document for Arabic instructors

that it is vital to include colloquial Arabic in the curricula.

Wahba (2006) wrote, “In light of current theories of foreign language acquisition,

selecting only one ‘variety’ of Arabic for instruction, such as classical or colloquial, will

seriously prejudice the ability of the non-native learner to communicate effectively in an

Arabic speaking community” (p. 139). He continued, “both varieties of the language

should be taught together, as occurs in natural speech contexts” (p. 139). Wahba (2006),

describing MSA and spoken Arabic as one entity with different sides, wrote, “Each side

of this system is used in situations and functions for which it is uniquely suited, and both

sides are necessary for functioning in the full range of situations where an educated

native speaker is expected to function” (p. 159). These calls should be heeded to better

prepare students for the linguistic realities in the Arab world.

Alternative approaches to teaching Arabic need to be tried and researched.

Commenting on the need for research in the teaching of Arabic in higher education, Gass

(2006) wrote, “Many would point out that SLA research is quite skewed in the direction

of a few languages, but not Arabic. Arabic is not one of them, but the acquisition of

Arabic is a field awaiting exploration” (p. 32). Such exploration will add to the capacity

and utility of Arabic language study. In this era of proliferated enrollment in Arabic, one

can also provide for continuous improvement in the language acquisition and its use. The

field of Arabic language teaching and learning in the U.S. can expand its capacities by

55

implementing spoken varieties into Arabic program curricula. Hence, this study will fill

a void in the literature Gass mentioned in his statement above.

If one tries to add every national variety of Arabic to the five main ones – Arabian

Peninsula, Iraqi, Levantine, Egyptian, Maghrebi – it would be something similar to a

woven rope that holds together all the different Arabic dialects. The question still

remains, how long can this structure remain in place before individual national strands

fray from the rope completely and become their own language with their own literature?

The answer to this question still seems to be that it is not likely to happen soon due to the

high status of Classical Arabic. The only variety of Arabic to date to break off and form

its own language is Maltese. Inherent in the telling distinctions between Modern

Standard Arabic and diglossia, the many varieties of its spoken form, there is ample

opportunity for ambitious linguists to study code-switching and language contact

phenomena for years to come.

56

Chapter 3

METHODOLOGY

This research presents data collected from students who studied Arabic for the

equivalent of three years or six semesters in the U.S. and acquired the equivalent of high-

intermediate proficiency level. They then traveled abroad to do a total immersion in an

Arabic-speaking country. Results from Palmer’s (2007) study show that if the majority

of the students he interviewed could restart their study of Arabic, they would want to

learn a spoken variety of Arabic before traveling to the Arabic-speaking world. It would

allow for an easier integration into the culture. This new research provides considerable

support for inclusion of spoken varieties of Arabic in curricula – even for beginning

students.

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which Arabic programs

in higher education in the U.S. prepare students to be proficient in the Arabic-speaking

world. Additionally, what is the extent to which these programs are accomplishing the

projected student learning outcomes? More specifically, the methodology described in

this chapter was utilized to collect data, which answer the following research questions:

Research Question # 1: What is the impact of Arabic diglossia on the quality of

Arabic language instruction of undergraduate students in the United States?

Research Question # 2: Among students who have high intermediate proficiency

in Arabic, what are their language learning preferences after studying abroad in an

Arabic-speaking country?

57

Research Question # 3: Why and how do instructors in higher education in the

United States choose to teach Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and/or colloquial?

Research Question # 4: What is the difference between a student who studies a

spoken form of Arabic before traveling abroad and one who does not?

The questions were explored through phenomenology. This qualitative inquiry

method is most effective because the author wished to uncover the beliefs and

experiences of 10 students and ten instructors on how they perceived learning and

teaching of spoken Arabic (Moustakas, 1994; Stone, 1979).

While the participants in this study are limited to graduates from two institutions:

Cedar State University and Mediterranean Institute for International Studies, the outcome

provides similar institutes and Arabic language departments with conclusive data

regarding their Arabic programs’ success. Additionally, state policymakers could use

this data for assessing the effectiveness of various Arabic language programs in the hopes

of continued and potentially increased funding. Finally, the data provide this researcher

with information for improvement and ongoing curriculum development at the selected

sites.

This chapter describes the research design, including the role of the researcher,

followed by a detailed description of the context, setting, and sample. Lastly, this chapter

describes the qualitative protocol, process, and data analysis strategies used to analyze

both types of data.

58

Research Design

The history of qualitative research in education in the U.S. is rich and complex.

Anthropologists and sociologists have always collected data in the field, attempting to

understand how the particular peoples they studied made sense of their worlds.

Bronislaw Malinowski was the first cultural anthropologist to really spend long periods

of time in a non-western village to observe what was going on (Wax, 1971). Malinowski

insisted that a theory of culture had to be grounded in particular human experiences,

based on observations, and inductively sought. Perhaps the anthropologist Margaret

Mead made the earliest substantive application of anthropology to U.S. education.

Particularly concerned with the school as an organization and the role of the teacher, she

employed her fieldwork experiences in less technological societies to dramatize the fast-

changing educational scene in the U.S. She argued that teachers needed to study, through

observations and first-hand experiences, the changing contexts of their students (Luttrell,

2010).

The 1960s brought national focus to educational problems, revived interest in

qualitative research methods, and opened up educational research to this approach.

People wanted to know what the schools were like for the children who were not

“making it,” and many educators wanted to talk about it. Federal programs, recognizing

how little was really known about the schooling of different groups of children, funded

some research on these issues. The research used what is now generically labeled

ethnographic methods. Qualitative research methods began to catch people’s attention.

Qualitative methods gained their popularity because of their recognition of the views of

59

the powerless and the excluded – those on the “outside.” The qualitative emphasis on

understanding perspectives of all participants at a site challenges what has been called

“the hierarchy of credibility” (Becker, 1970).

There are five research traditions in qualitative research studies, Biography,

Phenomenology, Grounded Theory, Ethnography, and case study. A phenomenological

approach was chosen because it was the desire of the researcher to understand, describe,

and analyze the phenomenon of teaching formal Arabic and/or spoken Arabic. As noted

in Chapter 2 of this dissertation, very few phenomenological studies have been conducted

in education, and none, as could be found, have focused on study abroad and Arabic

diglossia. As noted by Creswell (2007), phenomenologies are best suited when the

researcher is trying to understand several individuals’ experiences within a phenomenon.

This method allowed the author to gain a deeper understanding about the possibility of

teaching different Arabic dialects. The sample of participants in this study was small and

purposeful; therefore, the qualitative approach was the most appropriate. The aim of this

study was to uncover the experiences and beliefs of 10 students and 10 instructors so

their perceptions of including learning/teaching Arabic dialects in the curriculum could

be identified and interpreted.

Philosophical Perspectives of Phenomenology

Creswell (2007) also noted it is important for researchers conducting a

phenomenology to give some attention to the philosophical roots of the method in order

to fully understand the essence of phenomenological research. Phenomenology was born

out of the writings of several German philosophers. Edmund Husserl (1859-1939) was

60

one well-known philosopher who contributed to the creation of phenomenology. Husserl

was known for calling any research project a phenomenology (Creswell, 2007). Other

writers from the health and social sciences contributed to the development of

phenomenology as well. One modern writer, Moustakas, builds upon past philosophers

and believes phenomenology is really about the study of lived experiences and the

conscious experiences, and the development of the descriptions of the experiences is the

important piece to research, not just the explanations or analyses of data (Moustakas,

1994).

Role of the Researcher

The role of the researcher in this study was that of investigator. According to

Moustakas (1994), it was imperative the researcher do the best possible to capture the

essence of what is being studied from the participants’ perspectives. Moustakas and

Creswell both noted that, to accomplish this, the researcher should write about her own

experiences and thoughts with the studied phenomenon. Because the researcher was a

former colleague or instructor of the participants, neutrality could be a challenge.

However, the goal of this research was to uncover the participants’ beliefs about

integrating colloquial arabic courses in the curriculum and neutrality was important. The

author used a researcher journal to record personal feelings, thoughts, and biases, thus,

the data of this study were better protected than if the researcher did not use this

“bracketing” technique.

At the time of the study, the researcher was an Arabic instructor at Cedar State

University and a former Arabic instructor at Mediterranean Institute for International

61

Studies. Her role was to contact the people by phone or by e-mail, ask them if they

would like to participate in this study, and give out the questionnaires to those who

agreed to participate.

Context and Setting

Setting number one was the department of foreign languages at Cedar State

University. Established in 1948, the Department of Foreign Languages has grown into a

program that now offers the following: a Master’s degree in Spanish and Bachelor’s

degrees in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Chinese, Japanese, Latin, and Russian. It

offers instruction in a total of 12 languages – those above plus Arabic, Punjabi, Modern

Greek, Ancient Greek, and linguistics. It also has classroom supervision for single-

subject teaching credentials in Spanish, French, and German.

Three guiding principles shape the Department of Foreign Languages’

instructional program: retaining the traditional Humanities core of the program (e.g.,

European languages, Russian, Classics); being responsive to global developments (e.g.,

Middle Eastern, Asian, and African languages); and addressing community needs (e.g.,

Arabic, Punjabi, Modern Greek, and other languages spoken by the Sacramento region’s

diverse local communities). Twenty-one full-time and 15 part-time instructors hold

advanced degrees from universities all over the world, from every state to universities in

Peru, Spain, Italy, Portugal, France, Burundi, Hong Kong, and Japan, to name a few. The

department has a state-of-the-art language laboratory and several “smart” classrooms

wired for all manner of technology. The foreign language department hosts a huge

festival – World Language Day – at the end of spring semester and an International Night

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Party at the beginning of spring semester. Some of the department students have

received prestigious fellowships to study abroad, such as Fulbright Grants or the German

Chancellor Scholarship.

Figure 3 Cedar State University Undergraduate Student Profile

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Figure 4 Cedar University Faculty Profile

Setting number two, Mediterranean Institute for International Studies, a mid-sized

campus located in a suburban area, is a private not-for-profit organization that offers

professional graduate degrees with an international focus. It offers a less-than-one-year

certificate, Bachelor’s, postbaccalaureate certificate, and Master’s. It also offers a

summer intensive program of eight weeks equivalent to one year or two semesters in a

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regular academic setting. Some of the languages that are part of the Self-Instructional

Language Progarm (SILP) program are Arabic, French, Spanish, and Chinese.

Participants

The participants were all non-active graduate students (year 2007-2010) from two

settings: Cedar State University and Mediterranean Institute for International Studies

State University. They had all completed the equivalent of six semesters of Arabic

language and were supposed to have acquired high-intermediate proficiency in Arabic.

Student participants’ speaking proficiency levels were not evaluated prior to or after

departure for study abroad. Also, time had elapsed since those students returned to the

U.S. The researcher assumed that since the criterion to be able to participate in this study

was to have acquired high-intermediate proficiency through the equivalent of six

semesters of Arabic, all participants fit the profile. This was one of the limitations of the

study mentioned again in Chapter 5. Future studies could assess the participants through

an ACTFL-OPI scale to determine their actual speaking level before and after travel. A

student who has studied Arabic for three years in college and achieved high-intermediate

competency should be able to communicate effectively in the target language with the

natives. The guidelines for assessing Arabic-speaking proficiency are in Table 5.

The Intermediate level is characterized by the speaker's ability to:

• create with the language by combining and recombining learned elements, though

primarily in a reactive mode

• initiate, minimally sustain, and close in a simple way basic communicative tasks

• ask and answer questions.

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Table 5

ACTFL Arabic Guidelines: Speaking – Intermediate

Intermediate-Low Intermediate-Mid Intermediate-High Able to handle successfully Can

a limited number of interactive, task-oriented, and social situations ask and answer questions, initiate and respond to simple statements, and maintain face-to-face conversation, although in a highly restricted manner and with much linguistic inaccuracy

a variety of uncomplicated, basic, and communicative tasks and social situations talk simply about self and family members.

most uncomplicated communicative tasks and social situations initiate, sustain, and close a general conversation with a number of strategies appropriate to a range of circumstances and topics, but errors are evident

Tasks performed introducing self, ordering a meal, asking directions, and making purchases

ask and answer questions and participate in simple conversations on topics beyond the most immediate needs; e.g., personal history and leisure time activities

Utterance length increases slightly, but speech may continue to be characterized by frequent long pauses.

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Table 5 continued

Intermediate-Low Intermediate-Mid Intermediate-High Vocabulary is adequate to

express only the most elementary needs. Strong interference from native language may occur.

The speaker struggles to create appropriate language forms. Pronunciation may continue to be strongly influenced by first language and fluency may still be strained.

Limited vocabulary still necessitates hesitation and may bring about slightly unexpected circumlocution. There is emerging evidence of connected discourse, particularly for simple narration and/or description.

Misunderstandings frequently arise, but with repetition, the Intermediate-Low speaker can generally be understood by sympathetic interlocutors.

still arise, the Intermediate-Mid speaker can generally be understood by sympathetic interlocutors.

The Intermediate-High speaker can generally be understood even by interlocutors not accustomed to dealing with speakers at this level, but repetition may still be required.

The researcher attended the MESA conference in San Diego in November 2010.

She obtained the six-semester learning outcomes for Arabic from an Arabic panel made

up of Steve Robertson, Kevin Burnham, and Summer Loomis. The outcomes are

delineated in Table 6.

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Table 6

Learning Outcomes for Sixth-Semester Arabic

Speaking

Global tasks/functions, context/content, text type

Students can speak with confidence and ease at the paragraph level using long, complex sentences and connectors.

Students exhibit greater ease in using a mixed speech register appropriate to the context in which they are speaking.

Students can speak with ease and in detail about personal interests, people places, things, experiences, events, or topics that are familiar to them.

Students are increasingly able to discuss impersonal topics in greater detail, such as issues relating to society, politics, education, history, journalism, and culture with more specialized vocabulary.

Students show increasing ability to discuss opinions and positions, supporting or disagreeing with them by offering supporting arguments or evidence to the contrary.

Students show increased ability to discuss abstract concepts, albeit using generic vocabulary and uncomplicated grammatical structure.

Students can give presentations of up to 15 minutes. Prepared presentations will show some evidence of advanced grammar.

Skills/Strategies Students show evidence of self-correction while speaking.

Students can generally work around things they do not know the exact vocabulary for through circumlocution and without resorting to English.

Students recognize the appropriate contexts for use of different Arabic speech registers.

Accuracy/Limitations Students are able to be understood by native speakers other than their instructors.

Students continue to incorrectly produce low frequency verb conjugations.

Students’ word choice is occasionally awkward due to interference from L1 or incomplete understanding of some vocabulary.

Students still make errors in conjugation, agreement, and grammatical constructions.

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Table 6 continued

Speaking

Accuracy/Limitations Students employ a wider range of connectors in their speech.

Vocabulary Students have acquired approximately 1900 vocabulary words (approximately ¼ are specifically colloquial) and have begun to personalize their vocabulary learning according to their own interests and needs, particularly through their individual reading projects.

(Robertson, Burnham, & Loomis, 2010)

While this study’s participants were a sample of this population, not all students

selected participated. The four-year college is considered to be located in a large urban

city. The Department of Foreign Languages (population 131 in the 2008-2009 school

year) is home to a diverse group of students, with the largest percentage being Latino

(51.9%), White (29.8%), Other (10.7%), Foreign (3.8%), African American (2.3%),

American Indian (0.8%), and Asian/Pacific Islander (0.8%); additionally, 97.7% were

State Residents, 1.5% were Foreigners, and 0.8% were from out of state. Female

students made up 76.3% of those students, and 23.7% were male.

All 14 instructors initially targeted were native speakers of Arabic, born and

raised in the Arab world. Out of the 10 who accepted to participate in the study, five

were males and five were females. All 10 were active teachers of the Arabic language in

higher education whether at a four-year state college or institute of foreign languages.

Creswell (2007) noted it is extremely important in phenomenology that criterion

sampling, as done in this study, is conducted to ensure all participants being studied have

experienced the phenomenon. Although the number of participants was small, the

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researcher hoped to gain an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon of Arabic

teaching excellence.

Participation in this research study was voluntary and each participant signed a

written consent form prior to any involvement in the project (see Appendix A). The

researcher emailed a request to participate to each of the 14 targeted participants in early

November, 2010. Ten participants responded to the researcher by sending their written

consent. At that time, the researcher contacted the participants to set up the interviews

and observations. Prior to the interviews, the researcher again reviewed the consent form

to make sure the participants were fully aware of their involvement in the study and how

the data collection, analysis, and storage would be conducted.

While this qualitative study may not be widely generalizable, it should have high

utility. By providing the reader with these demographics, the researcher hopes to provide

information that would allow one to use the findings to improve his/her own educational

setting.

Data Collection and Analysis

The data analysis for this research study was consistent with the analysis

procedures as noted in Creswell (2007) and Moustakas (1994). Customary for

phenomonelogical research, the data was analyzed through the discovery of language and

themes that emerged from the interviews and researcher’s journal. The data was then

organized into major themes that arose from the coding. The four major categories of

data were analyzed during coding (a) epoch (personal bracketing), (b) significant

statements, (c) meaningful units, and (d) textural and structural descriptions (Creswell,

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2007; Moustakas, 1994). After grouping the data, the researcher uncovered the

participants’ views on diglossia and discovered which experiences helped them achieve

competency. The data was then used to write a description of what the participants had

experienced with regard to study abroad as shared in the following chapters. In addition,

a description of how different settings and contexts influenced the improvement of

Arabic curriculum is explained. Finally, a section on the researcher’s experience with the

phenomenon is also included.

The process of analyzing this data led to the summary of findings discussed in

Chapter 4 of this study. Implications and outcomes of this study as they relate to

expanding the lens of Arabic teaching in higher education for instructors to incorporate

dialect teaching within their curriculum are also discussed in Chapter 4. In conclusion,

Chapter 5 of this study offers a dicsussion about how the findings of this research could

be used in both educational policy settings and further research studies.

The questionnaire was designed to examine the extent to which the student

proficiency was affected by academic preparation, early exposure to spoken varieties, and

broad exposure to different varieties. To gather data on their communication, Arabic

speech success, and their ability to communicate with natives in the target language, the

definition of competency is based on an individual student’s perceptions or feelings of

competency. Furthermore, questions from the interview asked participants for their

perceptions of their peers’ or students’ readiness to function in the Arabic-speaking world

depending on whether these questions were addressed to the students or to the instructors.

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The researcher chose to include this comparative piece to be able to understand

the degree to which Arabic graduate students perceived themselves as more or less

college-ready compared to their peers and who may or may not have been taught a

spoken variety during their Arabic language academic preparation. To determine the

extent to which the Arabic programs in higher education in the U.S. provided readiness to

communicate effectively in the Arabic-speaking world and with the adequate required

proficiency, the researcher contacted all 14 students and 14 instructors by phone or via e-

mail asking them if they would agree to participate in the survey. A deadline was

provided for the former students and active instructors to respond and a reminder e-mail

was sent out two days prior to that deadline.

From these 14 instructors and 14 students, 10 students and 10 instructors replied

that they would participate in this study. Although initially indicating their involvement

in the study, some students were unable to participate for various reasons. Of the 10

student participants, five were non-active students of Cedar University, and five were

from MIIS. Of the 10 instructors, six were from state universities and four were from

language institutes. Coding was used to match the tapes, notes, and transcripts, but the

consent form was not coded.

The researcher is a current Cedar State University Arabic Instructor. The

researcher also teaches the summer intensive Arabic course at the MIIS. The researcher

was aware that her placement could present a conflict of interest, and that the student

participants may want to respond in a way that would positively highlight their language

learning experience when their true feelings might differ. To alleviate this potential

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conflict of interest, the researcher clearly explained to the participants that their honest

responses would not only aid in the research, but would be appreciated by the researcher.

In addition, there was no incentive or positive outcome for any response and no response

was considered “correct.” Participants were non-active students of both examined

institutions and, thus, no grade or compensation was given upon completion of the

questionnaire. This information was provided in the questionnaire consent form.

Furthermore, the researcher selected an interview by e-mail option to ascertain

confidential responses and to provide a way for the participants to express their honest

reactions without their responses being shared with others.

Qualitative Procedures

This phenomenological qualitative study presents the results of a recent

questionnaire designed by the author, which consisted of 10 open-ended questions (see

Appendix B). The questionnaires were sent to students who met the criteria of having

studied Arabic for six semesters before spending time in the Arabic-speaking world.

Another questionnaire with 10 open-ended questions was sent to Arabic language

instructors of higher education who taught similar students (see Appendix B). This study

uses the term “student(s)” to refer to the respondents to this questionnaire, even though

they were non-active students who had graduated and traveled abroad. At some point, in

the past, they were students of Arabic who had studied Arabic before traveling abroad.

The qualitative items in the questionnaire provided students and teachers the

opportunity to explain their views regarding the teaching and learning of spoken Arabic.

For example, the first qualitative question was “Why should, or shouldn’t, spoken

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varieties of Arabic be taught concurrently with MSA in the first two years (four

semesters) of Arabic instruction?” The other questions elicited student experience and

recommendations with regard to the issue of diglossia. The questionnaire was sent to

students and instructors using two list servers. A total of 10 former students and 10

actual instructors returned completed questionnaires to the researcher. One of the list

servers was Arabic-L, an international listing that reaches students, teachers, and anyone

else interested in Arabic language, culture, scholarly articles, conferences, books, etc.

throughout the world. All student respondents had studied Arabic for six semesters

before traveling to the Arabic-speaking world and remaining there for at least six months.

Only non-heritage speaker students with no or very minimal exposure to Arabic before

their first Arabic language course were sought for participation in this research.

Measures Taken for Ethical Protection of Participants and Participant Rights and Ethical Protection

This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Cedar State

University and Mediterranean Institute for International Studies in the fall of 2010 and

offered No Risk to the participants. Therefore, the researcher established specific

procedures to provide the participants with the least amount of risk possible, which will

maintain their comfort throughout their interview. The following are the protection

measures taken: (1) the questionnaire does not ask the participant to provide his or her

name, maintains confidentiality of all responses by making the database unavailable to

others (entry to the interview database requires a pass code and biometric recognition),

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and guarantees that the data gathered will be held in the strictest confidence of the

interview system; (2) pseudonyms were used for all participants in any documents made

public, for example transcripts, research papers, or research presentations; and (3)

interview participants had to electronically indicate that they read and consented to

participate. This form specifies the purpose of this study and how their contributing

information will be used and will indicate that participants will have the option to

withdraw from the study at any time or if they feel any discomfort. (4) A consent form

was handed to the participants to read and sign prior to the interview. The consent forms

for both instructors and students can be found in Appendix A. (5) As the consent form

mentions, transcribed interviews will be destroyed after completion of the study.

Conclusion

A qualitative study was determined to be the best way to gather both depth and

breadth of students and instructors responses. A phenomenological approach was chosen

because of the researcher’s desire to understand the overall spoken language learning

experiences of students and their instructors. Based on the data gathered from this

qualitative method study, the researcher will be able to determine the extent to which

these students perceive themselves as ready to communicate in the Arab speaking world

after achieving high-intermediate competency in the Arabic language. The researcher

will also be able to determine the extent to which the instructors perceive they are

preparing their students to effectively communicate in the Arabic-speaking world. Due

to the small sample size, this study should be considered a stepping-stone to future

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research on a larger scale. Future research should investigate the success of alternative

approaches. Should these approaches turn out to be successful, such research may

encourage more Arabic programs to introduce spoken Arabic into their curricula. By

challenging and discussing different approaches to Arabic, and perhaps Arabic diglossia

in general, I have aspired to add freshness and vitality to the field. Both Arabic and

Arabs will remain a fertile ground for investigation in linguistics. There is still more that

needs to be discovered and examined.

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Chapter 4

RESULTS OF DATA ANALYSIS

This study was based upon the qualitative method of inquiry using a

phenomenological approach. Essentially, the phenomenological approach is the study of

phenomena which for this research is about real-life experience of students of Arabic

during their study abroad. This approach was chosen by the researcher because it was her

desire to gain an insider perspective from 10 students on how they perceived the Arabic

oral comprehension and speaking skills developed after participating in a program aimed

at helping students acquire high-intermediate proficiency. The researcher also wanted to

get an insider perspective of 10 Arabic instructors and how they developed their teaching

approaches within their classroom. Thus, the purpose of this study was to reveal themes

emerging from teachers’ perceptions regarding speaking instruction within the classroom

and from students’ experiences with Arabic-speaking proficiency and study abroad

experience, which has not been widely researched.

The data for this chapter were gathered through interviews with 20 participants

(10 students and 10 instructors). Eighteen interviews were audio recorded and then

transcribed immediately upon completion, and two were done via Skype and then coded

immediately upon reception. Two of the interviews that were conducted at the MESA

conference in San Diego on November 20, 2010 were in Arabic. The questions were

presented in English to the participants, but two instructors interviewed chose to answer

in Arabic. The author wrote the answers down in Arabic and translated them right then

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and there before coding them. In addition, the author kept a personal journal recording

her thoughts and beliefs throughout the study. The author’s personal journal was kept in

a notebook using pen and paper to record the data.

All data were analyzed using the following method. In the spirit of

phenomenological research, the participant data were analyzed prior to the researcher’s

journal. Participant data were analyzed one by one, starting with the first person

interviewed and ending with the last person interviewed. For the purposes of this

research study, themes are defined as patterns of emerging thoughts and beliefs while

categories are themes that could be grouped together. Both open- and closed-coding

were used. During the open-coding process, the researcher read and re-read data to find

emerging themes that came from the participants’ perspectives. During the closed-coding

process, the themes that emerged were categorized and then grouped according to which

research question they best addressed. In addition, two other people with expertise in the

field of qualitative studies analyzed the researcher’s coding and analysis process of the

data for reliability. Each participant’s data was analyzed using the following steps:

1. Interview transcripts were open-coded whereby emerging patterns in the participants’ responses were highlighted.

2. Interview patterns were noted and major themes were recorded on a data grid. 3. Major themes were closed-coded and grouped according to the four research

questions of the project. 4. Participant data was all grouped into similar categories and then organized by

themes. 5. After themes for the participants as a whole were analyzed, the researcher

followed the same process as steps one through five and analyzed her personal journal.

6. Major themes from the participants were placed onto 3x5 index cards and organized into three overall categories.

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7. The categories were analyzed and placed according to which research question they addressed.

The remainder of this chapter presents the results and the themes that emerged

from the data analysis. The results section is divided into three parts: 1) Results and

themes emerging from student data only, 2) results and themes emerging from instructor

data only, and 3) results and themes common to both students and instructors. The

themes are presented in each section according to their frequency. Finally, a summary of

the findings will be presented at the end of the chapter.

Results

Results and Themes from Student Data

Throughout the data analysis, it became clear that the students perceived

themselves as effective learners of Arabic according to three main themes. The themes

that emerged in almost every student’s data are integration into society with colloquial

Arabic, real life applications, and learning preferences.

Integration into society with colloquial Arabic. Most of the participants admitted

the importance of knowing and using a spoken variety to be able to integrate with the

society of the host country. They all believed that speaking a colloquial variety was

better than speaking Fusha alone. This is not to say that they never used MSA, indeed

they did, but they also spent time learning from the natives so they could integrate more

easily into society and gain the natives’ trust.

S-1: I definitely felt that speaking in a dialect of Arabic helped me integrate better than speaking simply Fusha. When I arrived to Jordan, I had almost no knowledge of the Levantine dialect. Since some of the locals I first met (such

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as the baggage handlers and the hotel bell-hop) barely understood Fusha, I was nearly unable to communicate with them. Once I began learning and using some of the simple words and phrases used on the street by locals, I received much stronger reception by the local culture. After living several months in Jordan and becoming more proficient in using a more spoken variety of Arabic, I felt very welcome and part of the culture.

S-2: It was obvious through people’s reaction that I was not a local; both my

appearance and accent made it fairly obvious. In the Arabic-speaking world an outsider, regardless of his language, is much less trusted than a family member, or a family friend. Speaking only in English created an awkward language barrier, which I felt also created a wall of distrust/skepticism. By speaking MSA the barrier and awkwardness was slightly reduced. By speaking a local dialect however, I felt there was the least amount of tension/distrust.

The notion of trust was pointed out by several participants to be predicated on the

belief that if they spoke the language of natives they would be more trusted. Trust, they

felt, was a major component of integration. One particular student was very emphatic

when asked if he felt more trusted when he spoke to natives in their own dialect.

S-3: A resounding ‘yes’ to this question. Any time I ventured into unfamiliar territory or felt I was looked at with suspicion, using a few colloquialisms to break the ice usually warmed up the atmosphere and opened up a level of trust toward the obvious suspicion of a white American nosing around in strange areas.

S-4: I felt that I was more able to integrate into the culture by using a spoken

variety of Arabic versus formal Arabic. For example while traveling in Lebanon and Syria it is virtually impossible to get by without knowing spoken Arabic. In certain situations the people can understand you, but you can’t understand them; however, in most cases, you will not be understood by speaking formal Arabic. Consequently, in the Arabic language, knowing a spoken variety of Arabic is not simply a matter of “integration” but an absolute necessity for communication. Therefore, I had to learn the equivalent words, phrases and pronunciation of the formal Arabic in the local dialect while traveling in the Middle East in order to be understood. I feel like I gained a lot of trust with the people in Lebanon and Syria by speaking Arabic in the first place and speaking in a local dialect only increased this level of trust. I believe that people trust you more as a foreigner speaking in

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a local dialect because it shows an immediate and specific interest in the local culture. I witnessed this on numerous occasions and had people tell me that they were proud that I was learning their language.

Students were asked to provide concrete examples of their experiences using

colloquial Arabic. For example, when the researcher asked one student to be specific

about how he felt more trusted and how speaking colloquial Arabic gave him a sense of

belonging, he shared his shopping experiences with her. He also noted that some people

still kept him at a distance no matter what variety, MSA or SCA, he used to communicate

with the citizens.

S-5: People certainly greeted me with gusto when they found I spoke Arabic and be much more open with me. This experience was not uniform, however, for some people still held me at arms distance yet still polite, if not cold. Something I noticed in particular was when I would go downtown to shop; the prices would be much, much lower when I would speak in Arabic. While I couldn’t exactly bargain, having the prices start at 3 dinar instead of 5 dinar certainly made things easier on me and my pocketbook.

One student had a different opinion than the majority of the group with the regard

to the importance of speaking colloquial Arabic. She believed in the ability to

communicate strictly in Arabic without giving so much importance to the variety used,

High or Low, as long as one was able to manage and get by using it.

S-: I think formal or colloquial Arabic has little or no impact on culture integration. I think showing effort and understanding cultural boundaries and expectations directly impact integration. Also, if you’re able to communicate, it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s MSA or something else so your level in either is more important than picking one or another.

One student stated that his ability to integrate and his choice of language were

based more on the culture. He said:

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S-: I can’t answer this question without defining culture. While in Lebanon, I was more able to integrate into my age group and demographic by speaking English than by using formal Arabic or my limited knowledge of Lebanese Arabic. With government officials, literary academics or older more “cultural” Beirutis I fared better with my limited Lebanese Arabic than with formal Arabic, but I didn’t know enough of either to ever really be accepted into the culture.

Most of the participants admitted the importance of knowing and using a spoken

variety to be able to integrate in the society of the hosting country. All but one student

believed that speaking a colloquial variety was better than speaking Fusha alone. This is

not to say they never used MSA because they did, but they also spent time learning from

the natives so they could integrate more easily in the society and gain the natives’ trust.

Real-life applications with spoken Arabic. Participants were asked to describe

their real-life experiences that led them to believe colloquial language was as important

for communication as the Fusha they learned. All of them noted that speaking the local

dialect helped them get by in everyday situations. Some of the participants noted that

once they mastered the local dialect, they were able to understand the Arabic culture

better and relate to the natives better. Some noted that their usage of Fusha versus

Aamiya changed as they moved from one country to another.

In the Near East, two different countries could be using the same dialect, but give

more or less importance to the High variety. One student visited Jordan and Lebanon

and, even though those two countries are in the Levant, she got by very well using Fusha

in Jordan but felt she had to learn and use colloquial in Lebanon. No matter when and

where the participants felt they needed to use MSA, what was consistent is that once they

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immersed themselves, they all realized the importance of knowing a dialect to function

and communicate effectively in that world.

S-1: I had two different cultural experiences in the Middle East. When I studied abroad in Jordan, I got by just fine speaking formal Arabic. I picked up very few colloquial terms…but I was able to integrate using formal on the streets. It was a completely different experience when I lived in Lebanon for four months. When I would speak formal Arabic, either no one understood me, or they pretended not to. A lot of native speakers even laughed or made fun of my Arabic because it was so formal to them. There, I ended up taking local classes in colloquial Lebanese Arabic. It benefited me greatly to be able to speak the colloquial Arabic as opposed to the formal.

S-1 learned from her real-life experiences quickly and acted on them. She signed

up for Lebanese colloquial classes because her interest was to help in the Palestinian

refugee camp and she needed the Levantine dialect to get by. Perception on the student’s

part, as well as her motivation, is obvious in this particular case. Three other students felt

they were looked at peculiarly until they began speaking colloquial Arabic. The

following statements reflect their belief.

S-2: MSA was never useful in Lebanon. I remember distinctly my first attempt to speak Arabic in a ‘natural’ setting was on my ME Airlines flight to Beirut from Paris. I attempted to speak MSA and was looked at with confusion. Oftentimes in Lebanon, as I developed dialect more and more, I would throw in a Fusha word here and there. This was effective in eliciting the Lebanese translation of the word I said. For instance, at first I was always set on saying ‘yam al-kadm’, but learned to say bukra quickly.

S-3: I noticed that when I would try to speak in formal Arabic, I would receive a

lot of quizzical looks, but I eventually was able to get my meaning across. Alternatively, when I would speak colloquial Arabic, at first I would receive the same quizzical look, but after getting my pronunciation down, I noticed a change in how I was treated and people were much more comfortable to speak quickly with me, not that I could understand them well, try as I might.

S-4: In the first experience I had in the Middle East (Jordan), my knowledge of

the colloquial Arabic was close to nothing. The first time I took a taxi, I was

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completely lost and unable to understand anything he said to me because I was not used to the accent and the dialect. If I had known the dialect prior to my traveling it would have saved a lot of discomfort, embarrassment, and misunderstandings.

As noted from the data gathered, the concept American students have about

diglossia is different once they leave the classroom and immerse themselves in the

Arabic-speaking world. It becomes clear to them that spoken Arabic is the living

language while MSA is kept for formal situations and environments. Knowing MSA

helps them follow the news broadcasted but does not help so much in buying groceries or

finding their way around in the visiting country.

Learning preferences for Arabic varieties. One of the questions the researcher

asked the students was “If you could start all over again, would you want to learn a

spoken variety of Arabic before traveling to an Arabic-speaking country? Please explain

why.” Four of the ten students interviewed were in favor of learning a dialect at home

before traveling abroad. Typical responses from such students were as follows:

S-1: Yes, while MSA provides a solid foundation in Arabic, it does very little for human interaction and communication (which is of course the goal of language). Similar to Latin or Shakespearian English, there is a reason that MSA is not spoken. While it is beautiful, it is not highly functional. Had I been prepared better for spoken Arabic in my country, my spoken Arabic learning abroad would have been greatly accelerated.

S-2: If I could go back, I would definitely have preferred to have also studied a

spoken dialect of Arabic. When I first began studying Arabic, I did not have a clear idea of where in the Middle East I wanted to study and work. Given the vast differences between the Modern Standard Arabic and the spoken dialects, it would have been very useful to have that exposure prior to traveling abroad. It would be most helpful to a student to know where they will study in the Middle East in order to determine which of the several dialects to study.

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S-3: Absolutely yes. Most students know where they will be headed if traveling to the Middle East, which should direct them to studying the spoken language of that country or region.

S-4: Yes. Having only learned the formal Arabic before traveling to an Arabic-

speaking country I was unprepared for how little I would understand the Arabic being spoken around me and how little I would be understood. Learning formal Arabic provides a great and necessary foundation for understanding the media and being able to read Arabic literature, but fails to provide language skills for communicating with the vast majority of Arabic speakers.

Some students, even though convinced of the practicality and the convenience of

knowing a spoken variety, put more weight on the immersion for acquiring proficiency in

a dialect. One particular student said it would depend on the hosting country. She visited

Damascus-Syria where Levantine is spoken and then visited Morocco where North

African is spoken. After her different experiences there she noted:

S-1: I might have wanted to learn it before traveling, but I wouldn’t study it for more than one semester. You’ll learn what you need to learn when you’re there, in the countries of the Levant like Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. But if you are going to Morocco you need some background in Aamiya.

One student had the opportunity to learn it before traveling and testified to the

usefulness and the preparedness it offered.

S-2: I had the fortunate experience of learning a spoken dialect before I went abroad. While there are appreciable differences between the Jordanian dialect and the Egyptian dialect, a fair amount of the vocabulary is the same and it was very useful to learn how colloquial pronounces formal Arabic words differently. Additionally, speaking a dialect is easier.

It is obvious that this student benefited from his early exposure since his

institution adopted the correlated method of teaching both Amiyya and Fusha to the

Arabic learner. What makes the testimony of this particular student unique is that he

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discovered, during his stay abroad and as he was introduced to a second dialect, that

knowing one dialect makes learning another one easier. It is a benefit of learning

colloquial Arabic that had not been mentioned by other participants which makes the

testimony of this particular student unique, and could open a door for future studies.

One particular student makes the balance between the two varieties and shares his

belief in the equal importance of them both in the following statement.

S-3: Despite my suggestion for an initial two-year period of formal Arabic only, after such a time learning both would be fine but I suggest it. In order to immerse oneself completely in the Arab culture, I feel you must have a deep understanding of the formal language as well as an intimate knowledge of day-to-day Arabic that communicates what MSA cannot.

On the other hand, one student puts more weight on acquiring proficiency in

Fusha, which is kind of a laissez-passer (a passport) between all 23 Arabic countries.

This student’s opinion is not a unique one. Later in the study, one of the instructors

stated that a student expressed the same belief to her saying it is the good foundation in

MSA that helped her learn the different dialects when abroad. This particular student

admitted to the researcher:

S-4: If I could start again and learn a dialect, I would also want to have learned Modern Standard Arabic. Given the uncertainty of where in the Arab world I would study, and given the differences between each of the dialects, Modern Standard Arabic would still have been essential for me to function in the Middle East. While many locals are not very well versed in Arabic, it is a language shared through each of the countries which provide non-native speakers a ‘fall back’ language in some situations. It is also important for any of those wishing to pursue a professional career n the Middle East.

For the most part, the participants in this study were reflective and comfortable

with the way they had been taught. The researcher noticed that while participants wished

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they had learned a spoken variety before traveling, they still believed in the importance

and usefulness of MSA during the foundation years of learning Arabic.

Results and Themes from Instructor Data

The themes that emerged from instructor data regarding Arabic language

instruction are dialect teaching preferences, funding problems faced by Arabic

coordinators, sanctity of the language (Arabic is the language of the Qur’an), curriculum

design, and teachers’ availability.

Dialect teaching preferences. When asked about which dialect they felt more

comfortable teaching, all participants said, “Mine!” In subsequent interview questions,

however, all instructors emphasized that despite their comfort with their native dialect,

they did not impose it on their students. Instead, instructors encouraged the students to

choose the dialect to be learned depending on their interests such as research, homeland

security, volunteering in Palestinian refugee camps, communicating with an Arabic-

speaking spouse, etc.

I-1: There are many issues involved in making dialect teaching part of the curriculum. First, whether there is a need to teach a dialect. Second, what dialect to teach? Would a university adopt one dialect only and hire only those who can speak it? Or would those students fare when they go to work in an Arab country where people speak a different dialect from that they learned? What if they learned a dialect that is politically charged and unacceptable in some other country?

Some instructors based their decision on models of language instruction such as

ESL and, within this context, did not believe it critical to teach dialects. In fact, one

instructor posits a view, which is very opposed to teaching dialects.

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I-2: The claim that educated Arabs use either spoken Arabic or a mix of it and MSA is true. It is called the proponents of teaching the spoken variety “linguistic reality”. I do not object to this designation. But are we tasked with teaching ”linguistic reality”? Have you ever seen an ESL test that has slang in it or colloquial speech? Do the French test Patois and the Germans Low German? That is also linguistic reality. Every language has this phenomenon, but it is not the area of serious language teaching, let alone university instruction. I would stress the fact that we should be more serious about teaching Arabic by instructors who are well trained in order to deliver instruction that is conductive to raising the learners’ level of proficiency in MSA (all skills) rather than distracting them by offering courses that would not make a dent in their proficiency.

This instructor has a traditionalist view regarding an integrated teaching approach.

This view is shared by many involved in teaching Arabic whether they are native or non-

native Arabic speakers. The group of traditionalists believes that Modern Standard

Arabic should be the primary focus of Arabic language teaching and that instructors

should work on teaching this High variety with excellence in order to get their students to

attain superior competency. The same instructors believe that teaching dialects is a waste

of time and energy.

Sanctity of the language; Arabic is the language of the Qur’an. A theme that

emerged from the instructor data only and that students in this research did not comment

on is the sanctity of the Arabic language. By language the researcher means MSA. Most

of the instructors were aware of the fact that formal Arabic is the language of the holy

book of Islam, the Qur’an, and that its status remains untouchable and unquestionable.

By preserving the language, scholars are preserving the religion. There seems to be a

consensus in all 23 Arabic countries, people and government, that formal Arabic is

sacred. One of the instructors interviewed for this study explained:

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I-1: When churches stopped using Latin in mass, Latin died. Arabic insisted on keeping the language tied with the religion and thus, kept it sacred. Islam took the language of Qureish and built the Qur’an on it. Islam also created a text corpus presented by Qur’an and the prophet’s Hadith and created standards for them. After the Hadith was gathered then came the explanations or Shourouhaat then, came the poets like Al Mutanabbi, etc…and through all these phases the common denominator remained that there is a sanctified body and untouchable body of text. Even when the Nahda renaissance happened with Christian Lebanese writers like Al Bustani and Al Yazigi, these writers went back to the corpus. And if you look at the writing of Al Yazigi or Al Manfalouti, it will all be comparable to what Ibn el Muqaffaa wrote way before them and here is the paradigm.

The corpus is the standards for Arabic and it is, in the opinion of the instructor

interviewed above, what prevented the spoken variety from being modified. Because as

long as he, who was born in Damascus-Syria, learned the same formal language a person

from Mauritania learned, they would be able to sit together and understand each other as

they used their common denominator of Fusha. To him, if Arabic people were to

abandon formal Arabic or Fusha, it will be like giving up on their history, and it would

be a losing battle. Belief in the sanctity of the Arabic language is a factor in instructors’

protectiveness of MSA. In this aspect, the researcher at the 2010 Middle East Studies

conference in San Diego quoted one of the presenters Camellia Suleiman: “by learning

Arabic one will understand Islam.”

Funding problems faced by Arabic coordinators. Funding or lack of funding is a

theme that emerged from instructor data and was not found at all in the student data. As

she conducted the interviews, the researcher found that some of the instructors she

interviewed were in charge of the Arabic program at their institution. One was also in

charge of the Spanish program. Therefore, they were involved in budgeting and

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coordinating classes and knew that sometimes the demand and the need to offer a class is

there but the possibility to supply the demand is not. Some institutions only offered two

semesters of Arabic, and so the integration of an additional course of Arabic dialect was

challenging. Institutions that offer four to five years and/or a major or minor in Arabic,

Middle Eastern, or Islamic studies might find it more justified to offer spoken courses

concurrently with other required Arabic courses like literature, poetry, theatre, and such.

I-1: One of the difficulties that some institutions who offer Arabic face is lack of funding. For example Santa Monica, where I used to teach, only offers one semester of Arabic. I have been promised the continuation, but the means don’t exist. At UC Irvine, we have first and second year and more chances of integration spoken.

Many language programs have been hit by the recent budget crisis. The author

herself saw her Arabic program go from a two-year to a one-year program and two of her

classes cut in spite of their popularity due to budget constraints across the Cedar State

University campus. When classes are being cut, the choices for students become limited

and the teachers of Arabic may find themselves integrating colloquial within their regular

formal instruction classes since they do not have the means to open new sections strictly

for spoken varieties.

I-2: Some of our students are in the military and will go to Iraq. They ask to learn the Iraqi dialect. Some who are in research ask to learn Lebanese. We encourage them to buy tapes. For funding reasons and due to budget constraints, we do not have the means to offer specific courses in the dialectal region. We would rather expose our students to spoken through everyday tasks like song, poetry, proverbs, films, stories, debates, etc. We might offer spoken courses in the future. It’s a possibility, but it’s not a high probability one.

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Funding is not a concern of students but rather one of administrators such as

schedule coordinators or language department chairs. These data show that the

instructors felt the budget constraints some colleges had to go through in the past few

years were the reason why so many of those colleges have not yet been able to offer

spoken classes of Arabic.

Curriculum design and teachers’ funding and availability. “We must explain to

the American student that we are not ready to change what the Arabs know and believe in

and that he can never become fluent in spoken if he is not proficient in MSA!” This

quote is from one of my colleagues at the last Middle East Studies Association MESA

conference in San Diego when I asked him how to respond to a student who comes back

from the Arab World and tells us that he feels there has been a discrepancy between the

language we taught him and the one actually used. In contrast to my colleague’s remark,

instructors in this study felt differently about the usefulness of teaching spoken Arabic.

I-1: Yes, I would make dialect classes part of the curriculum if I were in charge of the program at my institution. In fact, I am doing it right now in my classes because it’s the living Arabic. If we want to make the student fluent, we have to teach them the one that’s been lived.

Some of the courses were also offered depending on the supply of instructors and

the dialect they could teach.

I-2: We do include spoken in our curriculum but we don’t impose a specific dialect. It’s based on supply and the background of the teachers we have at the time instead of imposing certain dialects on our own. We don’t impose a dialect because it will be unnatural to for a teacher to start using a dialect they are not used to or comfortable with compared to their own dialect.

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Data from the instructor below shows he is vehement about the value and

importance of MSA. This instructor taught a distinguished variety like MSA. Therefore,

he felt that academia is not the right place for teaching a Low variety mainly used in

informal situations.

I-3: There are several reasons for excluding spoken Arabic from the curriculum. First, it is not viewed as a “scholarly” medium. As all Arabs know, spoken Arabic is not the language of scholarship or literature, nor is it the language of literature…Secondly, there is a pragmatic reason. The question is; given the multiple dialects, which dialect should a program teach and why? Even if the program decides on one and sets up an overseas program in a certain Arab country, the students might decide to go somewhere else (I speak from experience). In addition, and as a colleague put it, we have nothing against learning the spoken variety, but academia is not the place for it.

It is obvious from the data that there is a consensus among Arabic scholars to

keep MSA alive. Is it because it is a more distinguished version of the language, and,

therefore, a manifestation of diglossic attitudes? Is it because it is the language of the

holy book Qur’an? Or is it because it is the common denominator that holds the Arabic

countries together? Building on all the above concepts, MSA was and still remains in a

strong position. The following section builds on the concepts found in the data collected

from both groups of participants. Some of the themes discussed above will be repeated

within the analysis of the data.

Themes Common to Both Students and Instructors

The themes presented here are very similar to the beliefs the teachers shared

above with regard to the effective ways of presenting spoken Arabic to the U.S. learner.

The themes that emerged from both student and instructor data and presented in this

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section are: timing for dialect instruction, usefulness of MSA, and the importance of

study abroad.

Timing for dialect instruction. In many cases, language classes constitute the sole

opportunity students have to learn about the target language. Thus, some instructors

propose dialect should be taught systematically, along with Fusha whenever students are

available and as early as possible in the language classroom. The instructors/participants

in this study shared the belief that learning a spoken variety is important for an Arabic

learner, but their opinions differed when it came to the right timing for this type of

instruction. When asked about when it would be preferable to introduce dialects to the

American student learning Arabic, some sample answers of instructors were in favor of

the immediacy of teaching it, some respondents went along with introducing it at a later

stage, and some felt it was important to strictly learn MSA from the beginning while

others left the timing flexible.

I-1: From day one! The majority of the students want to be able to communicate with the native speakers or heritage speakers and knowing MSA alone is like Shakespearian, it only gets them a certain way. A more intense exposure to colloquial will happen at a later time when they are more comfortable with Arabic.

I-2: There is a necessity to teach spoken but when and how remains the question. I-3: I believe in teaching strictly MSA for the first year at least. Then, a course or

two during the second year might be helpful if the program knows where the students are heading to study abroad. From experience, the two varieties of Arabic seem to the beginning and intermediate levels as two separate codes. So if colloquial Arabic is offered, it should be in a separate course initially, and then as the learner’s proficiency increases, the two varieties can be integrated. In fact, spoken Arabic on its own can be introduced at any level, to absolute beginners as well as to advanced learners. However, if it is introduced to beginners alongside MSA courses, they may be confused,

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hence my recommendation above to wait till they hit the intermediate proficiency range.

As the data show, it was not only the instructors’ beliefs but also their experiences

that contributed to their philosophy regarding when and where dialects should be taught.

Some believed in exposing the student to dialects form the first year, others believed in

introducing it during the second year, while a third group disagreed with the first group

saying it can be confusing to the student to learn the two varieties at once; therefore,

instructors should wait until their students have acquired intermediate proficiency before

exposing them to spoken dialects.

When the researcher asked the students about when they would have wanted to

start learning colloquial, answers varied. Eight students out of the ten interviewed were

in favor of being exposed from day one and others believed they would have wanted for

this to happen at a later stage of their learning meaning after getting a good grasp of

MSA. The first two quotes represent the feelings of the group that preferred early

introduction to colloquial Arabic.

S-5: As early as the first semester would be fine for learning greetings. Learning how to conjugate in dialect second semester would be great too.

S-6: I believe that my 2nd year of learning Arabic would have been a good time to

integrate colloquial Arabic. The reason being because my second year, I had already picked up on some dialect without knowing that it was dialect. In fact, I was completely oblivious to the fact that here were dialects that were so different from formal. I remember hearing verbs start with the sound ‘b’ (dialect) and wonder why we didn’t learn that in class. When I started using it, I had no idea I was speaking colloquial in my MSA class.

The following excerpt from a student interview takes the position that later

instruction in colloquial Arabic is better:

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S-2: Integrating colloquial any sooner than the first year will be too tricky for students…Once students feel they have a grasp on the general grammar rules of MSA, they will feel more comfortable accepting colloquial and being able to integrate it into their learning. It is also extremely important to brief the student on why it is important to learn colloquial.

Several of the student answers had to do with concerns about getting confused

between MSA and colloquial or being overwhelmed with two different varieties.

S-3: Personally, I have always learned MSA and colloquial separately. I think I prefer this to learning them at the same time. It is almost like learning two different languages – if you learn them at the same time, it will lead to a lot of confusion.

S-4: I believe that beginning Arabic learners need to start off with MSA first and

then gradually begin to learn about the Arabic language, learning Arabic is already difficult enough; adding a dialect in addition to that would be too overwhelming. The beginning of the second year of college would have been most appropriate. Having that background makes it more manageable for students to better comprehend and retain the differences between the MSA and spoken Arabic.

S-5: I have tried studying both at the same time and it is difficult for me. I would

choose to learn them separately. Since this seems to be the standard process, I think after two semesters of Arabic I would be comfortable integrating spoken Arabic into the process.

Another group of learners had a more conservative approach. They seemed less

in a hurry to learn a spoken variety of Arabic but rather more interested in acquiring a

solid foundation of MSA before going on an adventurous new learning trip. Most of

them would have wanted to get two years or a minimum of three semesters of Arabic

before attempting to learn a spoken variety.

S-1: It wouldn’t matter if I have to learn them at the same time as long as MSA was given more weight, i.e., more time of class instruction. The second or third year of Arabic is the perfect time to begin integrating spoken Arabic into the process because that is the time that you begin to realize people

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won’t understand you (will make fun of you) if you speak to them in MSA, so many students turn away from Arabic.

S-2: I would actually suggest that one take two years of formal Arabic before they

begin studying a dialect. This would bring you to a certain level of comfort with the language, both in terms of vocabulary and general pronunciation and when you begin studying a dialect, the process is smoothed out because you have a greater ability to listen and decipher words. A firm foundation in MSA is key to learning colloquial.

S-3: I would say my third or fourth semester I would have been most comfortable

integrating spoken Arabic into my Arabic studies. Learning the differences between a spoken Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic would have been beneficial once I had a solid foundation for reading and writing Arabic as well as the basic grammar.

The general feeling from the above statements from students is that roughly two

years of formal Arabic learning are necessary for them before the introduction of a

spoken variety so they can acquire a solid foundation of the MSA reading, writing, and

grammar before new learning concepts related to colloquial are introduced to them.

Preferred dialects to learn or to teach. During the course of the interviews with

the students, the researcher asked them to choose one dialect out of the five major Arabic

ones, Egyptian, Levantine, Iraqi, Gulf, and North African. Instructors were asked if they

had the choice to learn a dialect, which dialect did they think would be the most popular

or in demand if their institution offered dialect classes? Lastly, the researcher asked them

how many dialects each one of them was suited for teaching. Some of them marked

more than one dialect.

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Table 7

Dialect Preferences

Dialect Egyptian Iraqi Gulf Levantine North

African

No

preference

Students (10) 5 0 0 9 0 1

Instructors (10) 7 1 1 9 1 3

Note: These data were collected prior to the February 2011 uprisings in North

African and African countries. One might only expect that there could be a new interest

in learning the North African dialect and an increased interest for the Egyptian dialect

should another study be conducted after those events.

Sample answers from students regarding preferred dialect(s) to learn varied. Some

based their choice on the country they wish to visit, others on their personal interest,

while a few students showed interest in learning more than one dialect.

S-4: I didn’t know there were five, but now that I realize there aren’t that many categories, I would like to be introduced to each one. In a two-year program, a student should be exposed to at least four (of course this would be done while concurrently learning MSA). Why should we specialize if we are not PhDs? Before I graduate, I want to learn as much about Arabic as I can.

S-1: I needed to learn the Levantine dialect before traveling because the countries

in the Levant are the only ones I have spent a substantial amount in. S-2: I would have wanted to learn Levantine or Eastern Arabic dialect. S-3: Levantine for sure…I love Lebanon- it is probably the most accessible

country in the Middle East. Additionally, I will be working in Palestine later this year. Preparation in Levantine dialect would be awesome.

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S-5: While Egyptian dialect is the most widely understood dialect in the Arab world, my main interest in the region is the Levant. My interest in this dialect, in a large part, comes from the question of Palestine; to have a familiarity with a dialect similar to that one in was a priority being that I see myself involved in the future of that area in some sort of capacity. Additionally, much of my studies have focused on Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan so I am much more interested in broadening my knowledge of this region as opposed to others.

S-6: If I had known where I would be studying or working in the Middle East, I

would have likely preferred either the Levantine or the Egyptian dialects. I mention the Egyptian dialect because I found it was widely understood throughout my experiences in Jordan, Syria, and Bahrain.

All instructor participants in this study stated they would be suited to teach one to

two dialects: theirs, and Levantine or Egyptian. As previously noted none of them

imposed their own dialect on the students, but rather believed in teaching them the dialect

that paired with their individual interest. Some of the sample instructors’ answers

regarding dialect variety were drawn from their interest in dialects, their specialization, or

their feelings about MSA.

I-1: I am a dialectologist by trade. I can scientifically teach most varieties of Arabic: From Syrian to Moroccan. I spent enough time listening to the newly formed sounds in various regions.

I-2: I am able to teach dialects of the Near East (Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinian,

and Jordanian). Not all teachers can teach all dialects. They might understand them but there is no way they can produce them let alone teach them.

I-3: As long as MSA is taught with one of the dialects, it does not matter; when a

native speaker of Moroccan cannot use his/her dialect to communicate with speakers of other dialects, he/she can resort to MSA or a mixture of dialect and MSA. Without the knowledge of MSA, the dialect alone would be insufficient.

I-4: For speaking, I am able to teach the Lebanese variety. For listening

comprehension, I am able to teach all Levantine varieties. Based on my

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experience at the DLI, I think there are enough qualified teachers to teach Iraqi and all Levantine varieties.

The general feeling the researcher got from participants is that instructors of

Arabic should be qualified to teach both MSA and a dialect in an integrated approach.

The dialect chosen for instruction would depend on the purpose of the learning. The

crucial element here is not which dialect but rather who teaches it; in other words, MSA

and a dialect should be taught by a qualified instructor, which means that native fluency

is not a sufficient factor in one’s ability to teach a language or a dialect. Teachers should

have the necessary credentials, pedagogy, and adequate training in the foreign language

field according to the ACTFL guidelines. They should also attend workshops and

conferences on teaching Arabic as part of their professional development to expose the

students to the most recent and effective ways of learning the language.

Usefulness of MSA. The participants in this study all shared the belief that MSA

is the foundation for any Arabic instruction even though learning does not happen in

isolation. The participants’ thoughts are best reflected in the data below.

S-1: I think that there is no preference of one over the other because MSA strengthens the dialects. Unifying the Arab formal language consolidates the conversations among Arabs.

S-2: I think MSA is a great way to begin to learn the language. Learning to read

and write in Arabic 101 all in MSA would be fine, concurrently learning traditional greetings from around the Arab world. I think at the 102-200s level Arabic should really be split into dialects, i.e., khalijii, Levantine, Egyptian, North African.

It is obvious that this last student believes strongly about the importance of

strictly MSA as a foundation while also wanting to be exposed to spoken once in higher

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levels. One of the student participants felt very strongly about her academic choice and

believed it had a powerful impact on her study abroad experience. She discussed several

times in her interview that the next time she travels to an Arabic-speaking country, she

would educate herself in the spoken dialect of that country before traveling so as to be

more prepared to apply the notions learned in context. The second student conveys a

similar position.

S-1: Beginning as soon as I got off the plane at Beirut International Airport I knew I had made a mistake studying MSA. Not only was the vocabulary useless in the MSA program, but in areas such as the Levant and Egypt the colloquial language is so far from MSA that communication can be impossible. Now, as I continue to be forced through my Master’s program to study MSA, I study Levantine Arabic on my own parallel track before heading back to the region later this year.

S-2: MSA was NEVER used in Lebanon. I remember distinctly my first attempt

to speak Arabic in a ‘natural’ setting was on my ME Airlines flight to Beirut from Paris. I attempted to speak in MSA and was looked at with confusion…In spoken Arabic, MSA makes one look more ‘unnatural’ than even speaking in relaxed English would.

The Theory of Supply and Demand as it Relates to Dialect Classes

Students were asked whether instructors helped them with regard to learning

dialects. Several students found it challenging to rock the boat in their MSA or Arabic

classes by asking to learn dialects from their instructors.

S-6: Yes I have, they usually brush it off. S-3: Some have accommodated my request if they knew the dialect, some were

obviously proud of their own dialect (Egyptian, Iraqi) and did their best to steer my interest to their language, which failed.

S-7: Before I traveled to Lebanon I was completely unaware of how different

spoken would be from MSA…In my current course, I requested that we

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spend sometime on dialect; however, the title of the course is Arabic media, so this will be challenging.

Other students were fortunate enough to be pointed in an independent direction to

obtain their studies of dialect elsewhere or were even able to communicate with their

instructor in a dialect outside of class.

S-2: I had inquired about learning local dialects during my Arabic studies, but at the time I mentioned it, I was not aware of the vast differences between MSA and the other dialects. My teacher was supportive of the idea of learning dialects, and even assisted in putting me in touch with a Jordanian tutor prior to departing.

S-4: I always express my wish to study colloquial to my teachers. However, most

of my teachers continue to teach MSA in the class, but will talk to me in colloquial outside of class.

One student even had a Lebanese teacher who taught him the Lebanese variety of

the Levantine dialect before traveling to Beirut.

S-5: I was fortunate enough to have a Lebanese teacher at UC, San Diego who was willing to teach me the basics of Levantine dialect before I went abroad. She was thrilled to be able to speak in her own dialect for a change and appreciated my interest in that particular dialect.

Some instructors in this study stated it was important to supply the demand of the

students and others explained why this was not always a practical and feasible approach.

I-1: Yes, I have been approached many times by students who wanted to learn a spoken variety and I do incorporate it in my class.

I-2: I haven’t been approached by such students. But at the Defense Language

Institute (DLI), students are intrigued by the fact that their teachers speak a different language than the one they teach (MSA) and wonder why they are not taught this spoken variety. Since they learn the language for their career, they think only MSA is needed.

I-5: Not really.

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I-6: Yes some have, if they are military and go to Iraq; they will ask to learn Iraqi dialect. Some, who are in research, ask to learn Lebanese.

I-8: Yes, they are mostly those students who visited an Arab country and felt that

they couldn’t function well. We had a little workshop to teach the dialect at the survival level.

I-9: Yes I have, and I incorporate it in my class. Other instructors explained why teaching dialects was not always a practical and

feasible approach.

I-3: Most of our students are either heritage speakers and are in our classroom to learn MSA or they are clean-slate students, so unfortunately, I cannot say that I have had that experience.

I-10: No, that did not occur. However, when spoken Arabic is offered, students

who studied overseas tend to desire a more advanced course in the dialect to keep up and even enhance the acquired ability.

I-4: Yes- Most students have SPECIFIC plans in mind- Work, Interviews, field

work…it is very rare to find learners who have long-term plans- Some can easily change their opinion on which variety to learn depending on funding, political or economical changes…but I do recommend alternatives or possibilities for those who have had experience in the Arab world!

When I asked the instructors how they developed their courses to integrate spoken

Arabic instruction, they all focused on student interest and teacher availability for

teaching a specific dialect. Data revealed that while some teachers could teach the

spoken variety of a certain dialect, they may not be able to teach its written and

grammatical variety. Most instructors noted they could teach their dialect and one other

one. Usually, the other one was either Levantine or Egyptian.

Importance of study abroad and/or immersion. The study abroad environment

seems to offer optimal conditions for second language acquisition by providing learners

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with greater access to authentic input along with sustained and varied opportunities to use

the target language with native speakers. Four teachers shared with the researcher their

perception regarding the importance of studying abroad to acquire proficiency in spoken

Arabic. They also noted the role immersion played in presenting spoken varieties to the

learner in context.

I-1: The American student will not absorb the language fully unless he travels and immerses himself in an Arabic-speaking country.

I-2: Spoken Arabic is learned best in the environment where it is spoken, not by

watering down MSA courses with words and phrases from a dialect. I-3: From conversations with students who have reached the Advanced High

Proficiency level, most of them said that introducing them to a dialect early on confused them and they believe hindered and slowed their learning in Arabic. They commented that if they could go back in time that they would just focus on MSA and then later they would just go do a semester in an Arab country to learn the dialect.

I-4: I doubt that many university programs can accommodate students for 25

hours each week (yes that is five hours every day) for a period of the one-and-a half years for students to become proficient. The MLA published in 2007 the number of hours it takes for a person to become proficient in a category three language such as Arabic is 2200. Most programs that I know of offer Arabic for a maximum of five hours a week. At this level, it would take the students almost 8 years to become proficient and be prepared for a global career. Even half that time is often not an available resource to many programs. However, those students who do take it upon themselves to go on to a host-country do actually succeed and I know of many that have actually been appointed to positions around the world where they are using their Arabic in a business capacity.

One student did not believe in the traditional way of teaching Arabic to the

students in the U.S. He also believed that this traditional method is not preparing them

well to their study abroad experience.

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S-1: Having spent some time in the Middle East; I believe dialect is extremely important. If students intend to study to the Middle East, it should be recommended by their teacher that they learn the dialect of the region first. How can a student expect to get by if they cannot give directions to a taxi driver, or order food from a fast food restaurant? Or engage in conversations with locals? They might get by, but the experience will be so much better if they learn how to communicate using everyday language.

What is evident from this study is that, in many ways, the conventional wisdom

that SA is beneficial indeed holds true. What is less clear though is what specific areas

the SA experience can help, or how. Thus, the goal of this study is to seek further

support for the positive outcomes of SA by examining it in relation to another variable

often considered beneficial to language learning: instruction. Pairing SA with At Home

(AH) exposure to the dialects prior to traveling can have a good impact on the students

when they hit the Arabic ground and face the language reality.

In summary, this study of instructor and student perceptions regarding Arabic

language instruction revealed a convergence of beliefs and preferences. Those themes

emerging from the student data are: integration, study abroad. From the instructor data,

the following themes were identified: sanctity of the language, supply and demand.

Through an analysis of both the student and instructor data sets, this study showed there

were certain beliefs and perceptions about Arabic language teaching that both groups

held in common (usefulness of MSA).

Summary

The findings presented in this chapter from both groups of participants provided a

substantive amount of information about which there is little research: acquisition of

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Arabic varieties through study abroad and language instruction. Participant interviews,

and the researcher’s experience and reflections were synthesized to provide a description

of the combined effect of instruction and immersion on Arabic-speaking proficiency.

The data analysis process also led to the discovery that while some learners had a certain

aptitude for L2 learning and would learn the spoken dialect of the visiting country within

a short stay, the majority of the learners would benefit from some sort of class

preparation before traveling. Results of the data found that by exposing the learners to

the Arabic dialect that matched best their interests, changes of being possibly

linguistically shocked will decrease when they visit the target country. Chapter 5

discusses the results and examines the implications and recommendations of this study’s

results for both future research and Arabic language instruction.

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Chapter 5

SUMMARY, DISCUSSION, IMPLICATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS

This study was based on qualitative inquiry, specifically phenomenology. The

purpose of this study was to analyze 10 students’ and 10 instructors’ perceptions

regarding academic preparation to function in the Arabic-speaking world. Instructors

were asked about their beliefs regarding teaching Arabic to L2 learners. The significance

of this study was in providing data regarding the methods by which instructors of Arabic

in higher education in the U.S. developed their curriculum or teaching preference and the

degree to which their students believed these preferences helped them function in the

Arabic-speaking world.

Summary of Findings

When studying the impact diglossia has on the quality of Arabic language

instruction of undergraduate students in the U.S., and according to the data gathered

through interviews with 20 participants (10 students and 10 instructors) the researcher

found most instructors felt that teaching mainly MSA is still the most beneficial way of

teaching the Arabic language to the American learner. Students, however, felt that

learning at least one dialect was desirable to enhance their functioning and effective

communication once they immersed themselves in studying abroad. All the participants

in the study believed MSA to be the foundation for learning the Arabic language and that

dialect learning and teaching must follow. Some of the participants focused more on

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early exposure to spoken varieties than others without taking away any of MSA’s

prestige or sanctity. However, every participant shared beliefs that learning and teaching

had to be revisited and was built on a process of building blocks with each concept taught

related to others. Some students/instructors believed strongly that not enough importance

was given to dialect instruction but recognized that this marginality could be the result of

budget constraints or lack of specific dialect experts’ availability. These beliefs that

students/instructors developed over time were created by experiences they had.

Some of the participants attributed those beliefs to the fact that they had

experience with study abroad. Thus, their opinions were based on real-life experience.

Three participants in particular noted that if they had to learn Arabic again, MSA would

be their first choice. One student believed he did not necessarily have to learn a dialect

prior to departure, since exposure due to immersion took care of that diglossic situation.

Instructors/students throughout the study also gave recognition to the experiences they

had with students/instructors before and after immersion. One student in particular gave

tribute to his Arabic instructor who introduced him to a Jordanian tutor to teach him the

dialect before his study abroad in Amman.

When the researcher tried to inquire the students interviewed about their learning

preferences, three overall themes emerged from the data analysis: timing for dialect

instruction, importance of study abroad, and usefulness of MSA. The data from this

research clearly point out that the students’ and instructors’ preferred way of acquiring

proficiency in a spoken dialect was to experience study abroad or total immersion. All of

the instructors felt the more a student was proficient in MSA, the more adept she/he will

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be at learning a dialect and even more than one dialect. The data show that students did

agree with this philosophy. The more information both groups of participants gave about

their learning/teaching experience, the clearer it became that a learning preference is not

always the best approach. In this sense, other constraints such as funding, availability of

suitable instructors, and demand for classes can be the reason behind this delay in course

offering and in curriculum stagnation. The students, however, did express their

preferences to have learned a spoken dialect before traveling abroad during the

interviews. Some of them even expressed this desire to their instructors, but only a few

have seen cooperation.

Research question #3: What is the difference between a student who studies a spoken form of Arabic before traveling and one who doesn’t?

The researcher tried to find the difference between a student who studied a dialect

before traveling to the Arabic speaking world and one who did not. It appeared to her

that only 20% of the students interviewed fit the profile of the prior exposure criteria. As

she was analyzing the data, two major themes arose from it: (1) Integration in the Arabic

culture and (2) Timing for dialect instruction. Clearly, the two students exposed to

spoken variety through college classes or private tutoring were positive about their

preparation and glad they had learned it prior to their departure. Students who only

learned MSA were split between two groups: One who wished they had learned a spoken

variety before immersion and another smaller group who said that given relearning

Arabic, they would want a good foundation of MSA first and understood that learning

spoken could have happened for them AH or abroad. Once there though, all of the

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participants noted that learning the dialect of the natives was necessary to function and

get by with everyday situations.

When the researcher attempted to find why and how instructors of Arabic in

higher education chose to teach their language classes, three major themes arose from the

data: (1) Dialect teaching preferences, (2) Usefulness of MSA, and (3) Importance of

study abroad. While not as prevalent, other important themes were sanctity of the Arabic

language, budget and curriculum, and supply and demand for classes. Beyond the three

themes that emerged was the belief again that MSA should remain untouchable to

preserve its sacred status among Arabic-Islamic states.

Further discussion of the results in relation to the research questions is given in

the next section. This section will present the themes found throughout the data analysis

in relation to the 4 research questions this study attempted to answer. This study, like any

other in the related field, has its limitations and several unanswered questions. It offers a

valuable contribution to the field of Arabic language and learning instruction, however,

given the limited research currently available in this area. The contribution is best related

in the implications presented after the discussion through two distinct parts: educational

and policy implications, and recommendations and research implications and

recommendations.

Discussion of Results

This section presents a discussion of the results as framed by the research

questions. Before this discussion, it should be noted that there is a paucity of literature

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available, particularly empirical literature, on topics related to instruction of Arabic to

non-native speakers. There are also few studies examining students’ preferences for

varieties used in Arabic language instruction and the beliefs and preferences of their

instructors. The lack of empirical literature on topics related to Arabic language learning

among non-native students presented a unique challenge. It was, therefore, not always

possible to correlate the results of this research with existing literature.

Research Question #1: What is the impact of diglossia on the quality of Arabic

language instruction of undergraduate students in the United States? The first research

question was posed broadly to investigate the relationship between diglossia and Arabic

instruction. It explored the theme of diglossia in relation to instructional methods.

It is evident from this study that diglossia continues to have a dramatic impact on

Arabic language instruction. As we saw in the student data, many had experienced

Arabic language instruction that was almost exclusively restricted to MSA. This pattern

shows that MSA continues to have high status, not only in Arabic nations, but also in the

U.S. in terms of which variety is chosen for teaching U.S. students. The analysis further

showed that some of the students felt a discrepancy between the language they were

taught and the one they needed to know and use to get by in the Arabic-speaking world.

The teachers, on the other hand, were well aware of this discrepancy, but could not

always find a solution for many reasons based on funding and/or availability

contingency.

For some of the instructor participants of this study, MSA offers a more

distinguished version of the language, and, therefore, a manifestation of diglossic

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attitudes. It also has a religious and nationalistic reason behind its strength and its status.

What preserved MSA is the fact that it is the language of the Qur’an, the holy book of

Islam, and the fact that it holds all 23 Arabic countries, each having their own dialects,

with one rope called MSA.

Research question #2: Among students who are expected to have high-

intermediate proficiency in Arabic after study abroad, what are their language learning

preferences for instruction? Results related to this research question built upon four sub

questions: (1) If you could start over again, would you want to learn a spoken variety of

Arabic before traveling to an Arabic-speaking country? Why? (2) Would you have

wanted to learn spoken varieties of Arabic at the same time as MSA or separately? (3)

What semester or year do you think would be the most comfortable for integrating

spoken Arabic into your learning process? Why? (4) What spoken variety of Arabic or

what specific dialect out of the five major ones would you have wanted to learn before

traveling? The second research question investigated the usefulness of MSA and spoken

varieties of Arabic from the students’ perspectives as well as their learning preferences.

Results of the interviews with students showed their choice of a specific dialect to learn

was based on their interest.

The participants in this study all shared the belief that MSA is the foundation for

any Arabic instruction keeping in mind that learning does not happen in isolation; Low

variety and High variety are the essence of the diglossic nature of this particular

language. The teachers in this study felt it imperative and important that students and

colleagues realize that learning spoken varieties takes time and they cannot be taught in

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isolation, but should be connected to prior knowledge of MSA. Students in this study

revealed that while abroad the majority of them were not communicating much in MSA

beyond and not including homework.

The participants also had a general feeling that although they expected all students

to learn spoken varieties during study abroad, the need to learn a specific dialect

depended sometimes more on their individual interest. Therefore, teachers directed their

Arabic learners to the adequate dialect aligned with their interest: religious studies,

research, communication with a spouse, etc.

Research Question #3: What is the difference between a student who studies a

spoken form of Arabic and one who does not?

This research question built upon two sub questions: (1) Have you expressed your

wish to study a spoken variety to your instructor(s)? If so, what was his/her opinion? (2)

Were you able to integrate into the culture when you tried to communicate in a spoken

variety of Arabic or when you used formal Arabic? How so?

In writing it and looking at it, the researcher felt this third research question was

an important one to her study. But the small set of participants was not enough to gather

enough data. Only 2 of the 10 students interviewed had been taught spoken Arabic

before traveling and could testify to the benefit of their exposure prior to travel. One of

the two students who was going to immerse himself in Amman Jordan had his teacher

refer him to a Jordanian tutor who gave him private lessons in the Jordanian dialect. This

same student traveled later to Lebanon where Lebanese is spoken which falls under the

category of Levantine dialects and, therefore, was able to communicate with the natives

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there. The second student learned the Egyptian dialect because it was offered at the

college where he studied Arabic; he said he was glad to have had prior exposure. Data

analyzed from student participants of this study for this particular research question was

sparse. But this question could be good for future studies based on a larger number of

participants.

Research question #4: Why and how do instructors in higher education in the

United States choose to teach their Arabic classes in terms of MSA and colloquial

varieties?

This research question built upon four sub questions: (1) What dialect are you

able to teach? Are there enough instructors suited to teach all five major dialects? (2) In

your opinion, what is the most popular dialect to teach if you had to choose one? (3) If

you were in charge of the Arabic curriculum at your institution, would you include

learning a spoken variety in it? Why/why not? (4) Have you been approached by

students who wanted to learn a spoken variety? Were those students ones who had

previously immersed themselves in the Arabic-speaking world? If, so what was your

opinion on the possibility? Together these four sub-questions investigated timing for

dialect instruction, funding, sanctity of the Arabic language, curriculum, and traditional

teaching methodology from students’ and instructors’ points of view depending on the

group (instructors or students) to which the theme applied.

It is interesting to note that the majority of the participants interviewed (students

and instructors) agreed to teaching both spoken Arabic and MSA, but the two groups had

a range of options regarding the timing of dialect instruction. All students in this study

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believed that students should learn spoken Arabic before traveling abroad. However,

none of the students said they would have wanted to learn it from day one. On the other

hand, while most instructors interviewed for this study believed firmly that during a

second year of Arabic would be the appropriate time to start teaching spoken Arabic to

the learners, there were others who believed in exposing the learners to colloquial

varieties from day one or from the first hours of Arabic contact.

Regardless of how and when spoken Arabic is taught, data from this questionnaire

demonstrated that most students support learning it before traveling to the Arabic-

speaking world. Moreover, there are items on the questionnaire that present data

depicting the advantages of using spoken Arabic in-country.

The instructor data revealed a close relationship between funding and curriculum

decisions. Believing that classes of spoken Arabic should take a place in the curriculum

is one thing, but having the means to offer these courses is a different matter. As one

instructor explained to the researcher in his interview, sometimes, departments of world

language improvise with what they have during budget constraints. Poems, stories, films,

etc. are used to expose students to the dialects rather than instructional tapes or videos on

the dialects, which the university cannot afford.

Another belief that emerged from several of the instructors concerned the sanctity

of the Arabic language. Some teachers in this study stated it was crucial for MSA to

remain the strong and main component in the Arabic curriculum to keep its weight and

importance. It was also deduced from the study that there was a strong correlation

between Arabic and Islam, Arabic being the language of Qur’an. Keeping it alive in

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academia would guarantee its perpetuity and its status as a living language. Instructors

and scholars sharing this position felt strongly about keeping MSA untouchable to avoid

the same fate that happened to Latin when Latin stopped being used in churches.

Language is like any other notion; if you do not use it you lose it.

The majority of instructors in this study felt it was imperative and important that

students and colleagues realize that learning spoken Arabic takes time and that the low

varieties cannot be taught in isolation. They felt, instead, that colloquial varieties should

be connected to prior knowledge and good command of MSA. According to the

participants of this section of the study, learning SCA is not a stagnate process. As noted

in their answers, it became clear to the researcher that many instructors believed that for

students to learn spoken Arabic, they must have taken two years of MSA.

Another commonality among most instructors was to leave the learning of

colloquial variety to the study abroad exposure. This has been the traditional way

instructors deal with the diglossic nature of Arabic. Some teachers, however, decided to

break this tradition; two of them shared during the course of the interview how they

broke up concepts and decided to teach the spoken varieties over a period of time to

revisit the learning of Arabic and build upon MSA concepts. It is these kinds of

individuals who can be characterized as transformational leaders in academia. Later in

this chapter is a section regarding transformational leadership and its significance for the

instruction and curriculum improvement of Arabic programs in higher education in the

U.S. The participants’ position on study abroad was echoed by a colleague’s statement at

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a recent conference: “The American student will not absorb the Arabic language fully

unless he travels and immerses himself.”

Educational Implications and Recommendations

Arabic teaching at all university levels was thrust into new challenging territory

after terrorists’ attacks in the U.S. on September 11, 2001. Arabic became a language of

national interest to students across the U.S. and overseas. Universities and colleges have

developed new Arabic programs in response. “Recent statistics (Al Batal & Belnap as

cited in Al-Batal, 2006) comparing numbers of Arabic language programs in the United

States in 1998 with those in 2002 reflected a strategic increase of 82% across all

institutional types” (p. 178). Growing enrollment at summer Arabic programs in the U.S.

and overseas has increased demand for more summer programs. Also, the speedy rise to

the top of language course choices means a scramble for universities to staff such courses

(Al-Batal, 2006).

There is a huge demand for learning Arabic at the present time in the U.S., but not

enough trained teachers to supply this demand. Institutions should recognize this need

and programs should offer specialization in the area of Teaching Arabic as a Foreign

Language (TAFL). Such programs do exist at a few universities such as Georgetown

University, the University of Arizona, the University of Michigan, Ohio State University,

and the University of Texas, but they are not big enough programs to supply the huge

need for Arabic language teacher training.

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The current crisis in Arabic language instruction is further complicated by the

inconsistent quality of language training available in overseas Arabic programs. By and

large, the Arabic study abroad experiences of American students tend to be positive in

terms of the cultural exposure, but not in terms of language training. Arabic study abroad

programs frequently lack curricular articulation with their corresponding U.S.

institutions. They can also suffer from poor faculty training in language pedagogy and in

the needs of American foreign learners. Similarly, study abroad programs have no

funding to bring about any new curricular changes or to provide in-service teacher

training and professionalization.

Funding or lack of funding was a theme that emerged in the analysis of

instructors’ data of this study. The Arabic field in the U.S. is contingent on federal

funding for programmatic support. However, the federal funding has not been consistent.

It is expected that after the uprising events in North Africa at the beginning of 2011, the

support will increase as it did after 9/11. But there is no long-term national strategy for

language education in the U.S. to assure the constant flow of this funding.

In an article published in the Modern Language Journal (2007) on Arabic and

national language policy, Mahmoud Al-Batal noted:

These problems for the Arabic field stem from a much larger problem caused by long years of neglect and the absence of a national agenda for foreign language education in the United States. The much talked-about deficiency in the number of Americans proficient in Arabic is not an anomaly, but rather symptomatic of a much larger national deficiency in the number of Americans proficient in languages in general. Although awareness of the importance of language education in the United States has increased in recent years, the practice of teaching languages at the K-16 levels lags behind for a country that is so deeply involved in global affairs. (Al-Batal, 2006, p. 209)

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Al-Batal mentioned that Margaret Spellings referred to the issue as a language

deficiency. It had been acknowledged prior, in 1987 by Lambert, but nothing was done

about it. Hence, new Arabic language programs are developed without the professional

community to keep it adhering to certain guidelines. Various tacks are used to develop

such programs. Some use content-based instruction while others use proficiency-based

instruction. Nonetheless, the programs rarely have the faculty or other resources to

assess the students and keep the programs going (Al-Batal, 2006). Clearly, this

opportunity does not belong to the Arabic field alone but also to the nation. Only a

comprehensive agenda for language education will enable us to avoid future crisis.

Language educators and policymakers alike regularly express great confidence in

the study abroad experience as a context for language learning, often based on successful,

perhaps life transforming experiences of their own. However, in the case of Arabic, there

has been a consensus among instructors to teach MSA within the curriculum and leave

colloquial acquisition to the study abroad phase. This leaves the student with minimal

exposure to Arabic dialects during his/her academic preparation. Although the quality of

study abroad experiences is clearly as much a matter of students’ chosen ways of life as it

is subject to intervention by educators, there are clear implications to be taken from this

and other research on language learning abroad. American students going abroad to learn

languages today clearly need strategies (Paige et al., 2002), but they have greater and

perhaps more pressing needs as well. Students need to understand that the development

of advanced language competence requires a long-term investment of time and effort. In

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light of this fact, they need to formulate realistic goals for the length of their sojourn

abroad. They need to become aware of the role of language in shaping social reality and

learn to be socially astute observers of language in use (Kinginger, 2008).

While the above paragraphs have described some research questions that future

work will want to address, there are also numerous implications in terms of language

teaching, course offerings, and curricula in general.

Educational Recommendation One

Based on the present findings, language departments should recognize the value

of both instruction and immersion, both in a general sense and with respect to L2

phonology. A good number of college and university Arabic departments offer a course

on SCA that addresses the primary diglossic problems for students, but most do not

require it for undergraduates. In light of the increased accuracy seen here for students

who had taken this course, administrators may want to consider making it a requirement.

At the same time, then, one must consider the most effective ways of teaching dialects, an

issue that has yet to be settled (e.g., Elliott, 1995; Gonzales-Bueno, 1997; Lord, 2005,

2008).

Based on the findings of this research, instructors of Arabic should encourage

their students planning to study abroad to learn at least one variety of spoken Arabic,

particularly one related to their field of interest and the area of the Arabic-speaking world

they are planning to visit.

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Educational Recommendation Two

The second recommendation is that instructors of Arabic create a task-based,

interactive classroom environment (Doughty & Long, 2003) that supports authentic

language use, rather than adhere to the traditional classroom course pattern identified by

Doughty and Long (2003) that supports authentic language use. Instructors could plan

their lessons in a way that allows them to expose their students to different dialects and to

use those dialects within context. For example, the researcher would show sequences of

Syrian drama, currently popular, then ask the students to do an oral presentation in the

same dialect, pretending they were actors in a Syrian soap opera themselves.

Educational Recommendation Three

The third recommendation centers on student motivation to interact with the

different Arabic dialects and how this contributes to the development of speaking

proficiency. Instructors can incorporate tasks and activities that target students’

integrative and instrumental motivations. The integrating of authentic Arabic-spoken

language media throughout the curriculum can foster interactive and instrumental aspects

of student motivation. This can provide language learners with meaningful opportunities

to use the target spoken language in a wide range of communicative contexts before

immersion.

Educational Recommendation Four

To further enhance student motivation and interaction with the target spoken

language, instructors could use social networking sites to connect AH students to second

language speakers and other second language learners. Coffey and Banhidi (2007), for

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example, discussed a program with native speakers in Colombia and other Spanish-

speaking countries through the social software program Skype. This same technique

could be used to communicate with Arabic natives in their own dialect to enhance the

linguistic awareness of AH students preparing for a future SA experience in the Arabic-

speaking world.

While most language departments already offer and encourage SA programs, they

now can offer additional evidence in favor of the linguistic gains such an experience may

have. Language instructors tend to recognize the inherent benefits of language

immersion, although research has not always consistently backed these institutions, as

discussed above. Finally, the issue, of when to do what, must be addressed. Based on the

findings of this study, Arabic instructors may want to encourage their students to enroll in

a dialect course prior to participating abroad. While future research may determine that a

different order is more or equally beneficial, for the time being, however, it should be

clear that both High and Low varieties can only help students’ language acquisition and,

specifically, their communication skills.

Recommendations for Transformational Leaders

What are the implications of this study for transformational leadership in Arabic

instruction? Transformational leadership was developed by James McGregor Burns

(1978) as a result of his studies of military officers, business executives, and political

leaders. Burns described transformational leaders as raising supporters’ awareness of

ethical issues for reforming institutions. A transformational leader implements and

evaluates strategic leadership practices based on various theories, models, and approaches

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for achieving organizational transformation/change efforts. Effectiveness and

satisfaction will be increased with a clear peer-learning process. These peer-learning

experiences provide students with benefits beyond the acquisition of content knowledge

as students learn to work with each other. An illustration of this is provided by Boud

(2001), “Learning about how groups operate, how learning can be facilitated and how to

give each other feedback are not just interesting options but may need to be incorporated

as normal parts of the curriculum” (p. 172). Leadership that transforms current thinking

into viewpoints and actions that implement and evaluate strategic leadership practices are

key. These transformational leadership practices assist in pushing theory into practice so

change, with a goal of continuous improvement, can occur.

How Does this Study Relate to Transformational Leadership?

This study should give an incentive to instructors of Arabic to increase the

learning outcomes and speaking proficiency of the students. According to the ACTFL

table “How Long Does it Take?” presented earlier in this study, Arabic is one of the four

most difficult languages to learn. In this regard, my investigation relates to the

effectiveness of teaching formal Arabic alone versus along with spoken as students move

from the U.S. to the Arabic-speaking world where colloquial Arabic is used every day.

The transformational leadership here would be the recognition of this need and the taking

of the necessary steps by both instructors and students groups to address this need.

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Research Implications and Recommendations

There are a number of directions this research could take in the future. One of the

directions is a comparison between two groups who study Arabic abroad. The study

could be conducted with a semi-homogenous group split for control and treatment

purposes. Such a study could be done in a study abroad setting. One of the groups could

include instruction only in MSA with another group receiving instruction in both MSA

and SCA. The effects of the treatment could be investigated. This would add to the

understanding of language variety instruction.

The present study suggests that learners’ AH exposure to dialects is an important

factor in shaping the development of speaking proficiency in both AH and SA contexts.

Results suggest a role for explicit instruction in different Arabic dialects and approaches

that enhance AH learners’ motivations and interactions with the spoken varieties of the

target language. At the same time, future research comparing AH and SA dialect

learning is needed. With regard to the present study, one might question whether or not

the self-reported estimated level of proficiency were accurate estimates of the students

since they were not assessed through an Oral Proficiency Exam (OPI) tool before or after

traveling to the Arabic-speaking world. Consequently, future research should include an

actual language proficiency assessment to further explore the effectiveness of MSA and

SCA instruction.

Future research should also examine classroom conditions in both AH and SA

environments (Lafford, 2006). Further studies must assess the role of explicit instruction

designed to enhance AH and SA students’ use of communicative strategies in multiple

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Arabic dialects. By expanding the research agenda in these areas, foreign language

educators will be able to improve AH and SA learning. The possibilities for future

studies are numerous. Future work should examine cases of immersion followed by

instruction, as well as instruction during immersion, to be able to compare to the

instruction-then-immersion findings. In addition, the duration of time abroad should be

considered as well.

Limitations and Future Directions

The greatest limitation with this study is its small sample size with only 10

participants out of 14 targeted students agreeing to take part. The small sample size was

unavoidable in this case, but similar studies could be carried out with larger populations.

A greater sample size would allow for better statistical procedures, and greater

confidence in the findings.

Another methodological weakness inherent in the study design is the fact that no

data were collected prior to the dialect courses taken by some of the students/participants.

Because the students took these courses at different points in their undergraduate careers,

and because participants were identified after coming back from the different SA

programs at different times, it was not possible to test them prior to the start of the study

abroad and upon completion and return. In sum, given the promising findings of this

study, a more ambitious methodological design could be undertaken, thus, tracking

students through specific dialect courses as well as immersion experiences. Such a study

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could sort out the effects of one variable from the other and the combined effects of the

two could more confidently be analyzed.

In spite of the methodological drawbacks and the remaining unanswered

questions, the contributions of this study are many. This study represents one of the first

on the topic of Arabic diglossia. While the above paragraphs have described some

research questions future work will want to address, there are numerous implications in

terms of language teaching, course offering, and curricula in general.

Based on the present findings, Arabic language departments should recognize the

value of both instruction and immersion on acquiring proficiency in SCA. Many

universities now offer a course on a dialect or two depending on teachers’ abilities and

dialect proficiencies, but most do not require it of undergraduates. In light of the

usefulness seen here for students who had taken those courses, institutions of higher

education may want to consider making it a requirement. At the same time, one must

consider the most effective ways of teaching dialect to meet the students’ needs of the

21st century.

In Chapter 2 of this study, the researcher compared the events of the recent

interest in learning Arabic in the U.S. to the events of Sputnik and the ushering in of the

“Space Race” in 1957. Indeed, foreign language educators often refer to the surge of

American national interest in language study in the late 1950s as the “Sputnik Moment.”

The post-9/11 era represents the Sputnik moment for Arabic.

A review of Chapter 2 shows there are many connections between the findings of

this research and the two theories in the theoretical framework section of the first chapter

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of this study. The two theories are Charles Ferguson’s (1959) theory on diglossia and

Dell Hyme’s (1966) theory on Communicative Competence. The following section

demonstrates the connections amongst the major research findings for the research

question and how they tie to the literature on Diglossia and Communicative Competency.

Charles Ferguson’s theory relates to this study in that Classical Arabic is a

prestigious variety of the Arabic language. It is a variety applicable if used in certain

restricted contexts like religious sermons, political debates, news broadcasts, etc., but is

not so useful in everyday situations. Ferguson (1959) claimed diglossic languages

embody a higher register not regularly used “as a medium of ordinary conversation, and

any attempt to do so is felt to be…pedantic and artificial” (p. 35). The major findings

from the research question regarding the impact of diglossia and the quality of instruction

on Arabic undergraduate students in the U.S. as well as research questions regarding

language learning/teaching preference with regard to diglossia are that Arabic is a

diglossic language and should be taught or learned according to this reality. As the data

from this current study showed, several of the teachers said that the classical variety is

not functional in the real world, and that they have opted to expose their students to

colloquial. The students, after immersion, also discovered how detrimental it was to not

know how to speak a dialect. They admitted that knowing MSA helped them understand

the language in particular situations like newscasts and religious sermons, but did not

help them get by in everyday situations, which supports the notion of prestige Ferguson

presented for the high variety of the Arabic language.

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Ferguson also talked about the pedantic and artificial aspect of MSA. In this

study, several students shared that when trying to communicate in MSA with average

natives, they were looked at with ridicule. In fact, while everyone in the Arabic-speaking

world understands Fusha, only an educated person will have a good command of it. The

idea above is supported by Ferguson who believed in the existence of separate speech

registers (High variety and Low variety). To him, the High variety is used in specific

circumstances. Ferguson also emphasized the role of a sizeable body of literature and

restricted literacy “to a small elite” in diglossic speech communities (p. 36).

While Ferguson’s theory deals with the diglossic nature of the Arabic language,

Hymes’s theory on communicative competence deals with the most effective way of

teaching a language. Linguistically, a language user who shows communicative

competence has grammatical knowledge of syntax, morphology, phonology, and the like,

as well as social knowledge about when to use the utterances appropriately.

Communicative competence is a superior model of language. Hymes’s theory was

preceded by Noam Chomsky’s theory in 1965. Chomsky is the father of linguistic

competence, but Hymes opposed him by saying that our era is an era of communication.

Thus, the central goal of foreign language education should be communicative

competence.

In relation to this study, the findings showed that although the students had

studies Arabic for three and likely acquired high-intermediate proficiency in Arabic

before traveling abroad to immerse themselves in the Arabic-speaking world. Those who

did not learn the colloquial form of the language could not communicate effectively in

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real-life situations. They could have been prepared linguistically as Chomsky’s theory

claims, but not communicatively. Speaking is one of the four learning skills a student

must learn with any language. Being able to read and write, but not speak a version of it,

whether high or low, could be a learning handicap. Student participants in this study

testified numerous times that they wished they had been exposed to spoken varieties

before traveling. In fact, one of the main findings of this research was that the students’

perception of the diglossic nature of the language completely changed once they

immersed themselves in the Arabic-speaking world. Some instructors, on the other hand,

still believe there is no room for colloquial in academia and look down on the vernacular

form of the language leaving the learning part of it to a study abroad context. It is hoped

that having provided this research piece, those few instructors opposed to including

dialects in the curriculum will start to deal with the linguistic realities of the language.

Recent Trends

After the researcher finished analyzing her findings and making

recommendations, she came across two major steps conducted at different colleges on the

national level to address this issue. The first is: “Beyond the Standard,” a project in

process at The College of William and Mary (2010) and the second is: “Integrating

Colloquial in the Arabic Curriculum,” a combined effort of Cornell University, Brigham

Young University , and the University of Texas, Austin (1990).

The first project is highlighted by Ducibella (2010) who published an article

detailing changes moving toward communicative competency-based teaching of Arabic.

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Two associate professors at The College of William and Mary are writing seven new

textbooks for use in Arabic language classrooms. Three of the books focus solely on

MSA while the other four cover Moroccan, Egyptian, Syrian, and Iraqi Arabic. The

books will come with videos and other accessories (Ducibella, 2010). The two

professors, John Eisle and Driss Cherkaoui, received a three-year grant from the United

States Department of Education. They already have a publisher, Pearson Education,

which has never before published Arabic textbooks.

Eisle and Cherkaoui and the U.S. government see the project as having created a

more inclusive method for learning and teaching Arabic that will help in dealing with the

war on terrorism. The U. S. government, in particular, has seen the demand in the

military for Arabic fluency. Both authors purport that they are not for one variety of

Arabic or another but instead for communicative competence. Students must be exposed

to as much Arabic as possible if they are going to the Middle East for any reason. They

also see this as a huge step in increasing Americans’ cultural knowledge of the Arab

societies (Ducibella, 2010, pp. 16-17).

The second project the researcher learned about when she attended the 14th

Annual National Conference for Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCLCTL) held on

April 7, 2011 in Madison-Wisconsin. Mahmooud Al-Batal (University of Texas, Austin),

Kirk Belnap (Brigham Young University), and Munther Younes (Cornell) presented a

five- hour workshop on implementing an “integrated approach” to teaching Arabic,

illustrating both the early stages and results of Advanced-level students who began their

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study of Arabic using such an approach. They shared survey results and case studies that

address the commonly posed question as to what vernacular(s) should be taught.

During his speech at the NCLCTL workshop Belnap said that 30 years ago, the

emphasis on learning any language was on reading. However, now that travel and study

abroad have taken a big place in the college life of many students instruction in Arabic

should be focusing more on speaking. He added to the audience:

We are no longer facing a generation of students who are in it for the text, but rather students who want to be able to communicate…once you understand who your learners are, you will be able to give them what they need…the more relevant the material is presented the more likely is the learner to grab it and absorb it. (Belnap, NCLCTL conference, April 7, 2011) One very important notion the researcher got from Belnap at this conference is

that the students who decide to learn Arabic deserve to know what they are up against.

He continued, “If we do not expose the student to dialect we have at least to let them

know the sociolinguistic dynamic that they are going to be facing when they hit the

ground” (Belnap, NCLCTL conference April 7, 2011).

In 1990, Cornell and BYU started a project of integrated approach that offered a

solution the two universities came up with to face the Arabic diglossia problem. Munther

Younes, from Cornell, published three textbooks and uses them in his “integrated

approach” classes. The textbooks are called Living Arabic: A Comprehensive

Introductory Course, Intermediate Arabic; An Integrated Approach, and Tales from

Kalila wa Dimna for Students of Arabic. Younes stated,

Results from students who have registered in such courses show that the integrated approach has produced far better speakers of Fusha than those who studied Fusha alone. Of course there is nervousness that this new approach would

130

not be in the students’ best interest. Some traditional instructors would be concerned that this method would play a trick on the learner and make them loose Fusha, but it takes vision and trust on the part of leading instructors to decide to face these challenges. (Younes, NCLCTL conference, April 7, 2011). Last, but not least, Mahmoud Al-Batal co-author of Al-Kitaab (2004) an Arabic

textbook published by Georgetown, and used by most universities in the U.S. suggested

that instructors make good use of both varieties saying that Aamiya can happen as part of

the curriculum. He confirmed that if instructors have a programmatic vision based on the

speaking learning outcomes mentioned earlier in this study, students should have more

control of the mixed varieties by the end of the sixth semester. Al-Batal stated, “We

cannot say we have to wait for our students to travel to deal with this issue. We need to

prepare them to study abroad. Cultural proficiency will not develop from Fusha alone”

(Al-Batal, NCLCTL conference, April 4, 2011). He ended his speech by revealing that

resistance to integrating spoken in Arabic curriculum comes from natives and non natives…in the new guidelines for Arabic, one must show sustained proficiency in Fusha or in Aamiya…the students that we have today are not the students that we had 30 years ago. So how do I succeed as an instructor with this generation? How can I justify that we are teaching for proficiency if our students cannot function in spoken? (Al-Batal, NCLCTL conference, April 7, 2011) Projects such as the ones started by Cornell, BYU, UTA, and The College of

William and Mary should be an example to follow by Arabic programs nationwide which

aim at producing proficient students in both varieties of the Arabic language because

teaching does not happen in isolation.

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Conclusion

Arabs view classic Arabic – the language of the Qur’an – as a sacred language.

Modern Standard Arabic is the formal version of the tongue used in schools, newscasts,

and in documents. But throughout the Arabic world, a range of colloquial dialects

dominates everyday speech. Convincing college educators there is value in something

other than the traditional approach can be a difficult task, but is necessary in order to deal

with the linguistic reality of the Arabic language and teach it as a whole. In this way,

many students receive more of what they need when they wish to speak the Arabic

language in its natural context. Many involved in teaching Arabic believe that Modern

Standard Arabic should be the primary focus of Arabic language teaching in the first two

to three years, leaving the learning of the everyday colloquial speech to a later point in

time, if at all. Yet, this researcher’s inquiry confirms that not only is a more integrated

approach desired, but also it is beginning to occur.

A generational shift is going on right now in the U.S. with regard to teaching the

dialect. Projects such as the one started by the two professors at The College of William

and Mary College or the ones started in 1990 by BYU, Cornell, and UT, Austin can

validate its success once implemented and convince educators of Arabic of the value of

such reforms. Such calls should be answered to better prepare learners of Arabic for the

linguistic realities in the Arab world. Making room for the different dialects in the

Arabic curriculum should not mean taking away any the prestige or stature of Modern

Standard Arabic. There is no doubt that there are many opportunities for ambitious

linguists to study code-switching and language contact phenomena for years to come, in

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addition to using effective approaches to help the U.S. undergraduate students become

communicatively competent in Arabic.

133

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APPENDICES

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APPENDIX A

Consent to Participate Forms

Consent to Participate in Research (Students)

Purpose of the Research You are being asked to participate in a study conducted by Eva Aramouni, Doctoral Candidate in Educational Leadership & Policy Studies, at California State University, Sacramento. This study will investigate the experience of non active college students who studied Arabic during the summer intensive program at (MIIS) Monterrey Institute for International Studies in California, and (CSUS) California State University Sacramento. The students interviewed will have done a total immersion in an Arabic-speaking country and would be back in the U. S. before being interviewed. This study will also investigate the experience of scholars and instructors who teach the Arabic summer programs at MIIS and scholars who teach Arabic at the higher education level in the U. S. This study will investigate the learning and teaching experience, with the principal objective of developing recommendations to revise existing teaching methods and curriculum regarding Arabic diglossia. My dissertation chair is Dr. Virginia Dixon, Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies Professor.

Research Procedures You will be asked to participate in an interview consisting of ten open-ended questions about your experiences regarding learning Arabic at the higher Ed level, Arabic diglossia, and your preference for learning MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) or a mixed method of formal and colloquial Arabic. The interview will last no longer than 90 minutes at a location of your choosing. With your permission, the interview will be audio recorded, from which a transcription will be made.

Risks There are no harmful or risky questions with this interview, but you don’t have to answer any question if you don’t want to and you can stop any time.

Benefits It is hoped that the results of this study will help to clarify the strengths and limitations of the existing teaching methods of MSA in higher Ed, and the effectiveness of the methods adopted so far and the possibilities of alternating MSA and spoken Arabic.

Confidentiality To preserve the confidentiality of all information gathered in this study, you will be issued a pseudonym. A pseudonym will also be used for your institution. With your permission the interview will be audio taped in order for the researcher to be completely engaged in the conversation. The tape will be destroyed after all the interviews have been

142

transcribed, and the data analyzed, no longer than 6 months after the interview. All tape transcripts and notes from the interview will be kept in the researcher’s home office in a locked file cabinet until data analysis has been completed, and will be destroyed no later than 6 months. If you decide at any time that you would like to stop the interview, your data will be withdrawn from the study and destroyed.

Compensation There will be no compensation for participating in this research study. Contact information If you have any questions about this research, you may contact Eva Aramouni at (916) 671-9830; evaram@csus.edu. My dissertation chair, Dr. Virginia Dixon is also available at (916) 278-5516 or dixonv@csus.edu Participant priant name Participant signature Date I agree to have this interview audio taped Yes No Participant print name Participant signature Date Researcher’s print name Researcher’s signature

143

Consent to Participate in Research (Instructors) Purpose of the Research You are being asked to participate in a study conducted by Eva Aramouni, Doctoral Candidate in Educational Leadership & Policy Studies, at California State University, Sacramento. This study will investigate the experience of non active college students who studied Arabic during the summer intensive program at (MIIS) Monterrey Institute for International Studies in California, and (CSUS) California State University Sacramento. The students interviewed will have done a total immersion in an Arabic-speaking country and would be back in the U. S. before being interviewed. This study will also investigate the experience of scholars and instructors who teach the Arabic summer programs at MIIS and scholars who teach Arabic at the higher education level in the U. S. This study will investigate the learning and teaching experience, with the principal objective of developing recommendations to revise existing teaching methods and curriculum regarding Arabic diglossia. My dissertation chair is Dr. Virginia Dixon, Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies Professor.

Research Procedures You will be asked to participate in an interview consisting of ten open-ended questions about your experiences regarding teaching Arabic at the higher Ed level, Arabic diglossia, and your preference for teaching MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) or a mixed method of formal and colloquial Arabic. The interview will last no longer than 90 minutes at a location of your choosing. With your permission, the interview will be audio recorded, from which a transcription will be made.

Risks There are no harmful or risky questions with this interview, but you don’t have to answer any question if you don’t want to and you can stop any time.

Benefits

It is hoped that the results of this study will help to clarify the strengths and limitations of the existing teaching methods of MSA in higher Ed, and the effectiveness of the methods adopted so far and the possibilities of alternating MSA and spoken Arabic.

Confidentiality To preserve the confidentiality of all information gathered in this study, you will be issued a pseudonym. A pseudonym will also be used for your institution. With your permission the interview will be audio taped in order for the researcher to be completely engaged in the conversation. The tape will be destroyed after all the interviews have been transcribed, and the data analyzed, no longer than 6 months after the interview. All tape transcripts and notes from the interview will be kept in the researcher’s home office in a locked file cabinet until data analysis has been completed, and will be destroyed no later than 6 months. If you decide at any time that you would like to stop the interview, your data will be withdrawn from the study and destroyed.

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Compensation There will be no compensation for participating in this research study.

Contact information If you have any questions about this research, you may contact Eva Aramouni at (916) 671-9830; evaram@csus.edu. My dissertation chair, Dr. Virginia Dixon is also available at (916) 278-5516 or dixonv@csus.edu Participant print name Participant signature Date I agree to have this interview audio taped Yes No Participant print name Participant signature Date Researcher’s print name Researcher’s signature Date

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APPENDIX B

Student and Instructor Questionnaires

Students’ Questionnaire

1) What prompted you to study Arabic in college or in a language institute?

2) What is your actual level in reading, writing, and speaking?

3) Do you know another language before studying Arabic? If so, did it affect your learning of Arabic? How so?

4) Were you more able to integrate into the culture when you tried to communicate in a spoken variety of Arabic?

5) Did you feel that people trusted you more in the Arabic-speaking world when you tried to communicate with them in a spoken variety of Arabic?

6) If you could start over again. Would you want to learn a spoken variety of Arabic before traveling to an Arabic-speaking country?

7) Would you have wanted to learn spoken varieties at the same time than MSA or separately?

8) What semester or year do you think you would have been the most comfortable integrating spoken Arabic into your learning process?

9) What spoken variety of Arabic or what specific dialect out of the major five ones would you have wanted to learn before traveling?

10) Have you expressed your wish to study a spoken variety to your Arabic instructor(s)? If so, what was their opinion?

11) Open question…left to student to talk about their learning preference now that they have acquired high-intermediate proficiency level and traveled to the Arabic-speaking world.

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Instructors’ Questionnaire

12) Do you believe in teaching strictly Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), or using a mixed method of formal and spoken?

13) Do you believe that MSA and colloquial should be taught separately, at once, or intermittently?

14) At what level can a student be ready to be introduced to a spoken variety?

15) In your opinion, why are your institution and so many others not teaching a spoken variety as part of their curriculum?

16) Can it be confusing for a student to learn both MSA and colloquial at the same time?

17) What spoken variety of Arabic are you able to teach? Are there enough instructors suited to teach all five major dialects?

18) What is the dialect that would be the most popular to teach should you have to choose one?

19) If you were in charge of the Arabic curriculum at your institution, would you include learning a spoken variety in it? Why or why not?

20) Have you been approached by students who would want to learn a spoken variety? If so, what was your opinion on the possibility?

21) Open question…for instructors for any recommendation(s) based on their experience teaching Arabic in higher education and how to meet the actual needs of the students in the 21st century.