Handbook for Arabic Language Teaching Professionals in the 21st Century

Kassem M. Wahba, Zeinab A. Taha, Liz England, Kassem M. Wahba, Zeinab A. Taha, Liz England

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134999040
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

This landmark volume offers an introduction to the field of teaching Arabic as a foreign or second language. Recent growth in student numbers and the demand for new and more diverse Arabic language programs of instruction have created a need that has outpaced the ability of teacher preparation programs to provide sufficient numbers of well-qualified professional teachers at the level of skill required. Arabic language program administrators anticipate that the increases in enrollment will continue into the next decades. More resources and more varied materials are seriously needed in Arabic teacher education and training. The goal of this Handbook is to address that need.
The most significant feature of this volume is its pioneer role in approaching the field of Arabic language teaching from many different perspectives. It offers readers the opportunity to consider the role, status, and content of Arabic language teaching in the world today. The Handbook is intended as a resource to be used in building Arabic language and teacher education programs and in guiding future academic research. Thirty-four chapters authored by leaders in the field are organized around nine themes:

• Background of Arabic Language Teaching;
• Contexts of Arabic Language Teaching;
• Communicative Competence in Arabic;
• The Learners;
• Assessment;
• Technology Applications;
• Curriculum Development, Design, and Models;
• Arabic Language Program Administration and Management; and
• Planning for the Future of Arabic Language Learning and Teaching.

The Handbook for Arabic Language Teaching Professionals in the 21st Century will benefit and be welcomed by Arabic language teacher educators and trainers, administrators, graduate students, and scholars around the world. It is intended to create dialogue among scholars and professionals in the field and in related fields--dialogue that will contribute to creating new models for curriculum and course design, materials and assessment tools, and ultimately, better instructional effectiveness for all Arabic learners everywhere, in both Arabic-speaking and non-Arabic speaking countries.

I

Background

1

History of Arabic Language Teaching

Kees Versteegh

University of Nijmegen

LEARNING ARABIC IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD

In the opening sentence of his Kitāb al-ՙUsūl (I, 35.2-4, ed. 'A. al-Fatlī, Beirut, 1985) the grammarian Ibn al-Sarrāj (d. 928) states that his aim in writing grammar (naḥw) is "that the speaker by learning it moves towards the Arabic language" (ՙan yanḥuwa l-mutakallim ՙidhā taՙallamahu kalā m al-ՙarab); he adds that "it is a science which earlier scholars deduced from their observation of the Arabic language, so that they reached the ultimate aim of beginners in this language" (huwa ՙilm istakhrajahu l-mutaqaddimūna fīhi min istiqrā' kalām al-ՙarab ḥatta waqafū ՙala l-ghara

alladhi qasadahu l-mubtadiՙ ūna bi-hā dhihi l-lughah). Clearly, Ibn al-Sarrāj regards grammar as a tool for learners of Arabic.

Elsewhere, grammar is sometimes defined without reference to the learners, but as a tool to correct mistakes. For instance, al-Rummānī (d. 994) defines grammar as "the distinction of correct from incorrect speech according to the manner of the Arabs by way of analogical reasoning" (tabyīn ṣawā b al-kalā m min Khataՙ ihi ՙala madhhab al-ՙarab bi-

arīq al-qiyās ) (

udūd 38, ed. M. Jawād & Y. Maskūnī, Baghdad 1969). Ibn Khaldūn (Muqaddima 546, ed. Beirut, n.d.) links the origin of the discipline of grammar with the corruption of speech in the newly conquered territories. This corruption inspired scholars to codify the grammatical rules as they observed them in the language of the native speakers, in order to stop the corruption and help people to speak Arabic correctly. These definitions emphasize the applied function of grammar and the gram-marians' role as language teachers, whose task it is to help learners acquire Arabic.

This is not the approach to linguistics taken by the majority of grammarians from the classical period. Their aim was not the description of Arabic, let alone the teaching of the rules and norms of Arabic, but the explanation of the linguistic phenomena they found in the speech of the idealized native speakers, the Bedouin. It is not as if they did not have any didactic considerations. In fact, from the beginning of the l0th century many grammarians engaged in writing elementary treatises for students, from Zajjājī's Jumal to Ibn Jinnī's Lumaՙ, a tradition that culminated in versified treatises like Ibn Mālik's 'Alfiyya (13th century). But these treatises addressed young students who were already native speakers of the language rather than newl earners who had to learn the language from scratch.

If grammarians were generally not predisposed to assist learners of the language, how then were the supposed to learn the language? The answer is that there probably were not too many new learners anyway. By the time the Islamic empire started to institutionalize education, the process of Arabicization had already progressed to such an extent that it had become unnecessary to provide any program for second language acquisition because most children spoke a vernacular variety of the language. As the Arabic language spread over the Islamic empire, its standardized form became the language of the school system, in which all children learned to read and write, whether or not they spoke a vernacular variety of Arabic. The famous grammarian Sībawayhi (d. ca. 796) himself is a good example: Even though he came from Persia and presumably spoke Persian in his youth, when he came to Basra in the 770s he must have known enough Arabic to start studying hadith, before switching to grammar— according to the biographers—because of the grammatical mistakes he made.

After their primary education in a kuttāb where children were taught to read and write and recite the Qur'ān, most students attended lessons by various teachers in different branches of Islamic learning, simply by joining the circle (ḥalqa) of a scholar. At one time or another, they all joined the ḥalqa of a grammarian, because grammar was a normal component in an intellectual's education, a natural sequel to the learning of the script (Ahmed, 1968). This may be called the majlis type of education, in which instruction was given by a teacher to a varying group of students, without a set program.

Everywhere in the Islamic world, even in those regions where Arabic was not the colloquial language, whenever people came together to study Islamic science, the medium of instruction was Arabic, the language of the texts that were studied. This system of scholarship ensured that one could travel from West Africa to Southeast Asia and still be able to attend lessons of famous scholars because these were all given in Arabic (although they might be interspersed by comments or explanations in an indigenous language). Arabic therefore functioned as an international language of scholarship, in much the same way as Latin did in Europe.

A new type of learning institution came up in the 11th century, the madrasa, grown out of the combination of a mosque—the traditional place of learning—and the khā n, a place of lodging for the students (Makdisi, 1981).

The madrasa functioned more like a university, with a fixed program and appointed professors. But neither in the majlis nor in the madrasa was there any curriculum for learning the Arabic language as such. Actually, the lack of tools for learners of Arabic as a second language was quite logical: There was no demand for such tools because in both the Arabic- and non-Arabic-speaking parts of the Islamic empire, the Classical language was acquired together with the principles of reading and writing at a very early age.

The lack of material for learning the language as opposed to studying grammar also tallies with the Arabs' almost complete disinterest in other languages. The Arabo-Islamic empire was basically a monolingual community, not in the sense that no other languages were spoken—there were indeed many speakers of Coptic, Syriac, Persian, Berber—but in the sense that the official language was Arabic. No other language had any status at all, at least not in the first four centuries before Persian became the language of the Islamic East. This monolingual character is also reflected in the attitude of the grammarians themselves. An anecdote told by the 10th – century grammarian Ibn Jinnī(Khaṣaՙiṣ I,143.1-5, ed. M.'A. al-Najjār, Cairo, 1952–1956) shows how far this sense of superiority for Arabic prevailed even among those who knew other languages: When he asked his teacher al-Fārisī about the Persian language, this scholar of Persian origin answered that the Arabic language was far superior to Persian both aesthetically and rationally.

Geographers and travellers sometimes refer to the existence of other languages, and within linguistics there are a few half-hearted references to other languages, intended to demonstrate the superior structure of Arabic. The only grammarian showing any scholarly interest in other languages was the Andalusian 'Abū Hayyān (d. 1345). He wrote his Arabic grammar of Turkic, Kitāb al-'Idrāk li-Lisān al-'Atrāk, in order to facilitate the communication between the Arabic-speaking Egyptians and their Mamluk rulers (Ermers, 1999). Speakers of other languages—for instance, Syriac, Persian, Coptic, Berber—wrote grammars of their own language in an effort to preserve their own cultural and sometimes religious identity. But they borrowed the framework of Arabic grammar because the Arabic language and the grammatical tradition that had been developed to analyze it were regarded as the natural framework for linguistic analysis in general. Even the Hebrew grammarians used the vernacular language of the Jews in the Islamic empire, Arabic, for the analysis of the language of their holy scriptures, Hebrew. Most grammatical and lexicographical writings about Hebrew were first written in Arabic, and only then translated into Hebrew.

What applies to the Arabic-speaking parts of the Islamic empire to some extent also applies to those regions that did not take over the Arabic language. In many parts of the world, from Southeast Asia to West Africa, Arabic was introduced as the language of Islam by missionaries, who sometimes were not even native speakers of Arabic but had been trained in the Islamic sciences in Arabic. In the system of education they introduced, which is still current throughout the Islamic world, young children learn Arabic along with the principles of reading and writing by going to a traditional teacher and learning to recite religious texts, chiefly the Qur'ān. Later they go to the majlis of a teacher where they start studying texts. Most of the teachers have been educated in the same system and become experts in a language they can read and write, but do not speak.

Linguistically, this process is interesting because knowledge about Arabic was not transmitted through contact with native speakers, but transmitted in a written fash-ion. This led to the introduction of hundreds of Arabic loanwords in the languages involved, but not to the command of Arabic as a living language. In these Islamic countries, Arabic has remained the language of the Qur'ān and as such it is revered, but for most students speaking the language is not one of their aims. In some countries, such as Mali, along with the traditional system of teaching, a modernized system has been introduced, often called madrasa, where Arabic is taught in a classroom using modern didactic materials, with the explicit aim of teaching the students not only to read it but also to write and speak it. In other countries networks of schools of this type, for instance the indonesian pesantren, are used to spread particular forms of Islam.

LEARNING ARABIC OUTSIDE THE ISLAMIC WORLD: ARABIC COMES TO EUROPE

Relations with Arabic outside the Islamic world were obviously quite different because of the religious gap between Christians and Muslims. In the early centuries of the Islamic...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of Contributors
• PART I BACKGROUND
• PART II CONTEXTS OF ARABIC LANGUAGE TEACHING
• PART III COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE IN ARABIC
• PART IV THE LEARNERS
• PART V ASSESSMENT
• PART VI TECHNOLOGY APPLICATIONS
• PART VII CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT, DESIGN, AND MODELS
• PART VIII ARABIC LANGUAGE PROGRAM ADMINISTRATION AND MANAGEMENT
• PART IX PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE OF ARABIC LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING
• Author Index
• Subject Index