Fun with the Madrasas
Learning Arabic and more about me
“Oh Gaad, Staap it you kids!” I can still hear my mom screaming, in her Minnesota accent, at my brother and me fighting in the back seat of our 1972 International Harvester Travelall, the original oversized family wagon, just before getting the “invisible hand” from my father. From the time I was born, all I remember were the endless road trips we would take as a family. Some were vacations sure, but not less than 10 of the 2000-plus mile trips I would take from birth to the age of eight were due to moving.
Dad was a Marine officer and was stationed in different parts of the United States which makes me a military brat. My knowledge base of the English language and American culture growing up revolved around my forced adaptation to subtle language differences in the US. I was aware cognitively from a very young age that there was a larger picture of the world, and a larger system of sounds of the English out there that I knew of compared to that of my young peers wherever I might have been at the time. Living in Minnesota, Virginia, and North Carolina then moving to Washington then to Rhode Island with month-long fishing adventures in northern Manitoba within 8 years certainly gave me a deep cultural and linguistic understanding of the vastness and adaptability of language.
The number of geographical dialects alone in the English language is baffling. Even in the United States according to the American Heritage Dictionary the Standard American Dialect is highly elastic and variable, since what counts as Standard English will depend on both the locality and the particular varieties that Standard English is being contrasted with. A form that is considered standard in one region may be nonstandard in another. I distinctly remember pulling in to our new house in “Branchwood” the housing development in Jacksonville, North Carolina listening to Queen on the radio for the umpteenth time on that road trip and trying to talk “southern” with my brother like the real-estate lady that wore Vaseline on her cheeks to make them extra shiny.
Jacksonville is a typical Military town, complete with a strip and everything, where families from all over the nation come which makes the accent among many more “standard” than one may think. Nonetheless, public school was a place where you wanted to fit in, and it bes-sutchya to try and do so or it could get a little rough. On the other hand I was making friends with other military brats who I would know through my parents.
The friend I would usually make, like me were a little different than the typical military brat. We were “officer brats.” We were kids who were used to meeting up with high-ranking powerful people from the Marine Corps and other services and had to behave in a certain way not to bring embarrassment to our fathers. We were responsible to be able to converse formally and casually within the framework of a very rigid hierarchal culture. In order to do so I would imitate how they spoke, how they joked, and what kind of conversations they had. My brother and I would often try to come up with political insight at very young ages, most often about winning wars.
At 19 when I moved to Montana after living 3 years in North Carolina and 4 years in Washington DC, I had to change my accent drastically in order to fit better culturally. My first week living there I was invited to play in a Men’s soccer league and I recall vividly someone yelling to cover “the guy from Alabama or something.” Wow! After about 4 months of living in Montana and after getting some abuse from a couple of very large football players from Miles City in the UM dorms I didn’t get mistaken again too much.
This kind of morphing I would make with my language and my persona between different places from birth helped me tremendously not just to fit in better in pockets of culture throughout North America, but eventually to become a second and third language learner of Spanish and Russian. At any rate, at 23, when I decided to try my feet at playing professional soccer in Chile in 1993 I was able to immediately tune into the nuances of the language due to the fact that I was listening to these mannerisms, called utterances. By focusing on the meta-language, the uhs, ahs, ems, and oohs, as well as the extra words used like chico, pues, and po.
To this day I am able to recognize subtle differences in accents and linguistic mannerisms and upon reflection of my first language for this diary I have also recalled the tremendous effort I would make to try and repeat almost instantly what someone is saying. I thought that if I did this I would somehow be able to improve my supernatural skills of telepathy. On long trips across the country my brother and I would do it to each other until one of us would eventually just lose it completely. After hours on the road we would stop at a restaurant and of course we would try the same thing on our mom. “Staap it!” she would say.
The telepathy never really came about, but in a sense I believe that in focusing on each accent or language intensely listening for any change in rhythm, intensity or accent I was more open to diverse speaking styles. We read that children are born with the physical ability to produce the sounds of any language and eventually they learn to become experts. We learned that the ideal conditions for language learning are to be exposed to vast quantities of language in diverse contexts, have opportunities to interact with more proficient language users, amongst other things.
I feel lucky to have had this experience in my first language. Sounding different to me, while sounding alike others, has always been intentional and covert. At some point when I imitate I even notice that I think a little differently my persona is different. At some unconscious or subconscious level I believe that there is a mechanism inside of me that just wants to fit in with others. Though because I am, or always have been the new one on the block, and have had the confidence to cut to the chase, which stems directly from fearless interaction with strangers, I am interesting to talk to, but I am often misread. It goes to show that culture goes beyond language we imitate.
Getting to know Arabic/ Learning Strategies
I have to admit that because I am somewhat of a competent language learner, I have often tried to get a couple of words here and there in Arabic. However, Saalamalekum and alekum salaam has been the extent of my usage. Nevertheless, I have always revered the language due to its influence on Spanish. The city of Granada, for example was a cradle of multicultural intellect and trade. Spanish has many Arabic words that are part of it or even have the same meaning like Ojala (law sha’a Allah) if Allah so desires. Furthermore, the alphabet has always intrigued me, especially after I having learned Cyrillic I figured that Arabic could be a positive next step. And, how can Arabic not be interesting to anyone from the United States since 911 and Arabic’s linguistic association to many extremist who have declared war?
Since day one of beginning to look at the language I have conjured up deep feelings of anxiety and stress. Perhaps it is due to the mystery that surrounds the culture, especially Islam, or the fact that I have some prejudice and distrust because of my stereotypes such as my immediate connection of terrorism to Arabic speakers. Or, it may be the nervousness I have when thinking about ways to decode the language into a set of rules that I can understand and learn. Regardless, I have never been a person to shy away from my prejudices so it seems quite normal for Arabic to come into my life just as I am getting older and more set in my opinions. Nevertheless, it just seems so incredibly foreign to me! And, quite honestly it looks like a ton of work.
I have learned languages in two different ways. Spanish I learned through a combination of complete auditory and oral immersion, self study of grammar, reading, and contextual vocabulary lists and memorization. Russian I learned first in an intensive setting at the Defense Language institute in Monterrey California, then in Russia in an immersed environment. However, I have never been a very proficient classroom study of language from scratch in a non-immersed environment. In fact, I was never comfortable with the forged setting somewhat of DLI and did not put forth my best effort. In the end this affected my overall grade and overall content knowledge. Yet, when I went to Russia with a group from my base I seemed to be the best at understanding and speaking with native folks. I attribute this to the aforementioned self analysis of my first language experience. Simply put, bouncing ideas off of people who value you for what you are thinking and not whether you are saying it correctly is a much better language-learning environment.
We have read about ideal language learning environments in Coelho’s text (p 147) and the immersed, strong context, high expectations of comprehensibility, simplification and success rate occurs much more naturally when immersed. Kaplan talks about the morphing of first her voice then her appearance as she transformed into a Frenchwoman. I too have seen myself go through a similar metamorphosis in Spanish. In fact, when I look at a picture of me among my friends on a soccer team just after returning from playing professionally in Chile and Bolivia, I appear darker, thinner, and just more exotic. A successful environment for learning language will invite this metamorphosis naturally you just need to open your mind and body to the experience.
Learning Arabic in a home setting with limited number of lesson that I can afford to guide me through the process is a whole new adventure. The experience is neither like the intense 7-hour class day of DLI nor like the immersed experience of Chile. Is it even possible? Maybe not. I am nervous about the project and I am quite frankly intimidated. However, the only way I know to stem that nervousness is to come up with a plan that pulls experiences from my other language experiences.
I have thus far begun to us a “Teach Yourself Arabic” book from the Teach Yourself series. I also have begun to study a workbook that is used at the college level. When my neighbor, who is Algerian, first gave me the workbook I caught myself twisting and turning the book every which way to try and get my eyes to look at the words from right to left. Of course this physical act was to no avail, but it does reveal that the first real task to learning Arabic is to learn the writing style. I have achieved the first step by starting to recognize some letter combinations and it has come clear to me the logic by which the letters come together. I still catch myself tilting my head or pointing moving my hand in a right to left motion in order to remind myself which way to read.
The book comes with a CD that begins with greetings then moves on to personal information. I have not learned much but I am able to recognize and recall meaning or responses when I hear some expressions. The books states, “The first step in learning a language is listening and understanding. Concentrate initially on that, and then work on your writing skills.” Whether or not this is I don’t know, but before I even read this excerpt I began to put together a set of flash cards with the transliteration and translation on the back. I use the printed alphabet in the text that also provides the phonetic sound so that I can begin to pronounce the word.
Nonetheless, the spelling rules of Arabic are very tricky due to the fact that there is not, what I call a one-to-one correspondence of letters in the alphabet to letters in a word. Letters change shape when they are in a word because of its placement and many of the letters look exactly like, to me anyway. So this leaves me with the only option of creating a sort of “sight word” vocabulary as I build my spelling skills. For example, I will try to recognize صباح الخير as “Sabah el kheer or Good Morning” instead of breaking down each letter to sound out the word. However, I feel that I must learn the alphabet so that I can apply my previous knowledge and that will come with a tutor. I have also found some good sites on the web and on youtube that give a good introduction in sounding out the alphabet.
In sum, I find myself both anxious and excited about this learning process. I have begun to challenge my way of thinking in both the political-linguist arena and in the language acquisition arena. I have begun to think about ways to immerse myself in Arabic already just to give myself some more motivation to learn. I have also thought more deeply about my fears and prejudice toward the Arabic culture and the Arabic spelling system. Yet, this is just a humble beginning, I hope to go deeper.
Memorizing Arabic?
Before beginning this lesson I was convinced that I was going to try and memorize the patterns of Arabic words due to the fact that I was having some difficulty identifying the combinations of letters in the words. However, while doing preparation for my first tutoring session I did some google and youtube searching and discovered some alphabet or alifbaataa or tajweed videos. Alif, Baa, and Taa are the first three letters of the standard Arabic alphabet. I found some good lessons about the alphabet presented by Arabic teachers on youtube as well. I feel now that knowing the Arabic alphabet is very important to figuring out the essential sounds of language.
Sounds that come in the form of music is much easier to remember. Think about how the alphabet song is used to teach children. (Coehlo, 247) I learned two “alphabet” songs. The first, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI3oBB_n1AU&feature=related seemed like it could be sung to any Arabic speaking child and was full of animated Arabic letters with children singing. However, upon deeper analysis of the children involved in the second video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK9kq0UMDdY&feature=related this song was obviously meant for children from Indonesia who are Muslim and who are learning Arabic for religious purposes. I did not know that Arabic is the only official language of Muslim. So all services are held in Arabic, which explains the reason Muslim children from Indonesia are leaning the Tajweed.
I practiced the songs for about an hour but still did not remember them exactly although the melody was stuck in my head. Nonetheless, what I noticed most about practicing the songs is that the muscles in my throat were extremely tired afterwards. Trying to hear the sounds while simultaneously imitate throughout the song I felt as though many of the sounds came from the area between the epiglottis and glottis, almost like I was swallowing most of the sounds. (Freeman, 56) One good example of the varying points from which similar sounds comes is are the letters ح /ħ/ خ /kh/ and ه /h/. According to islamicart.com, ح is a “heavy breathy h, خ is the ch sound in the word loch, and ه is the h as in house. The /kh/ is often heard and imitated by English speakers, it is also the same sound found in Spanish in the jota. However, the difference between the others are simply that one is vocalic and the other not. Imagine saying “house” without moving your vocal chords. (Coehlo, 56)
Farida, who is my Algerian neighbor, and has volunteered her time to help me with this project. She is also a French teacher at Montgomery Community College, and will be teaching Arabic in the Spring of 2009. . At the beginning of the lesson I tried to show off my work from the previous night by sounding out the song that I had learned the melody to. My teacher was impressed with my ability not to feel embarrassed by attempting something like this. We briefly discussed the fact that one must not be afraid to risk looking odd in front of others while learning a language. Naturally, we are going to feel funny trying to make the sounds of another language.
Though English sounds different in the context of the new language, I have not found myself even coming to a point where I am trying to make direct comparisons to English while immersed in the lesson. I find that when I try to shift completely away from my native I can hear the sounds more clearly. I also watch the way the mouth moves and try incessantly to master the sound repeatedly. There is a Russian saying that supports this learning strategy, “повторение - мать изучения,” or “repetition is the mother of learning.”
Farida and I went through the alphabet slowly in our meeting focusing primarily on the sounds. Since she is a teacher her insight on the phonetics of Arabic was very valuable. She would pause, place her hand on the part of pallet from which the sound comes and work with me on each letter until I was close. During the lesson I began to hear how beautiful the sounds of Arabic were, also quite logical. Really, if people are speaking Arabic, then it must be useful and contain beauty.
Arabic or Arabic? Oh.. Arabic?
Aside from the fact that the population Arabic-speaking people is so vast and diverse, the communication and cultural barriers in the United States has led to a negative and narrow perception of this group. As stated in a previous entry, my own narrow view of the population is one of the biggest reasons I want to be introduced to the language. Yet, a larger reason for my desire to learn some Arabic is to pass on some simple phrases onto my students so that they might have an entry unto a world that is more misunderstood than mysterious. As I learn basic phrases like the greetings الّسَلامُ عَلِيْكُم and وَعَلَيْكُم الّسَلام for example it opens a window to meaning for students due to the fact that the phrases mean more than “hello,” but rather “may peace be with you.” As discussed in Krashen’s Theory of Second Language Acquisition, instead of approaching the language like any subject, finding meaning brings about a subconscious identification to the power of cultural significance to communication. (Freeman, 35)
In this session I worked with my tutor Nabil, from Jordan, with whom I worked at Germantown Academy. He and his wife Salwa are both teachers of Science and Mathematics. I wanted to build my reading skills and learn to identify some common expressions that I have been hearing in my CD’s and seeing in my workbook. Although with the reading I can hardly separate the writing aspect. Due to the fact that I have been working to make the right sound with the right letter by seeing my hand write the grapheme tends to support the intention of sounding out a word letter by letter and then recognizing patterns of words. Phonics is important for word recognition and spelling assists in the science of the language generating a more linguistic approach to learning. (Freeman, 127)
Although I am applying a science to the grammar, spelling, phonemes, etc, I believe that there is something more thoughtful and attentive at work in quotidian interaction. There is a trust almost immediately born from the fact that I am interacting in another voice, or as singing a different song. In a sense, Arabic becomes a part of me when I interact with my tutors, and although it does not fill up no where near the area in my brain that English does, I can feel the potential. That’s powerful! You know if 200 million people speak it at the subconscious level Arabic has meaning, I just simply need to supply the right words.
Yet there are many dialects of Arabic to be considered. Nabil, who is Jordanian, asked “Which Arabic are you learning?” From some research, I have discovered that there are about twelve main dialects with varying degrees of differences below those categories. Yet, there is a cultural norm written in the Arabic the newspaper which all speakers of every dialect understands. Although, the Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich statement that, “A language is a dialect with an army and navy,” thus far I have not run into any real differences in power or where there is any friction amongst Arabic speakers through my interactions with native speakers. The cohesiveness of the Arabic people is brought about more by the similarities than the differences. Nonetheless, it is important to know that there is a different kind of printed and broadcasted Arabic than that you would find in the daily lives of its speakers.
I'll let someone else learn it for me!
Technology has come a long way in bringing the world closer. However, in getting a little closer to the Arabic I am suppose to try and learn, my contact with real world Arabic is this from aljazeera.net:
واشنطن تستبعد اتفاقا أمنيا مع بغداد بحلول نهاية يوليوقالت الولايات المتحدة الأميركية إنه لن يكون بالإمكان إتمام الاتفاقية الأمنية التي تناقشها مع الحكومة العراقية قبل نهاية الشهر الجاري. ومن جانبه أكد باراك أوباما في تصريحات أنه أجرى "مناقشات بناءة للغاية" مع رئيس الوزراء العراقي نوري المالكي في زيارته للعراق
How on earth am I to get anything from this? Well, unfortunately nothing but real hard work and study skills is the answer. I would have to focus letter by letter, sound by sound, and only then look up the words in a dictionary, memorize the word then move on to the next one. To my credit I did figure out that the first word in the paragraph واشنطن, (remember read from right to left) is Washington. My point is that no matter what kind of technology you use nothing beats good ole fashion persistence.
Another way Krashen claims that you develop a second language is through “acquisition.” He states that acquisition occurs when someone goes to another country and picks up the language in the process of day-to-day living and interacting with native speakers.” (Freeman, 36) If technology can truly mimic the day-to-day immersed environment, then the acquisition of language may take place. Most programs that you buy cannot guarantee this model and leave it up to the learning to be persistent and studious.
Rosetta stone tries to emulate the criteria for acquisition. They claim that their method works because it's: intuitive, interactive, and visually engaging and that you will never need to translate, memorize, or see lists of words. The upside for Rosetta Stone is that it has good user interface. The software is very easy to navigate. You can leave the activity if it is too easy or too hard for you. I tried the free trial and can remember the words for man, adam, boy, oghur, and girl, kiz. Not bad for a 2 minute lesson without forcing myself to memorize. Rosetta Stone is very interactive because you have to click on the images or type in texts. You are being constantly assessed. This will keep you engaged during your learning of a new language. Simply listening to a canned like the one that I am using becomes old very quickly.
My cd goes something like this: The transliterated Arabic is spoken by a native speaker and is immediately followed by a translation by an English woman. wasalumalekum – hello waalekumsalaam – hello, sabahalkur – how are you? Wahumdalah – fine, thank you. Basically this method goes against everything subconscious and meaningful due to the dullness and lack of variation. However, I have used the system in the morning while having coffee and I am able to focus on the different sounds and sayings. Yet to learn more I find that I must be engaged in some sort of academic process. I imagine that although Rosetta Stone makes huge guarantees to rid yourself of pesky lists and God forbid grammar, at some point getting down and dirty and forcing yourself to memorize will have to take place in order to reach and conversational level.
Of course language classes have tried to emulate the acquisition environment before. Alice Kaplan relates her experience with a “sink or swim” method she calls the Capretz method. Where the class never uses L1 and there are no exercises in translation. “Like Fonda exercises you can get your French in shape.” The method is suppose to reproduce the conditions, ie. Krashen’s acquisition, with the caveat of being able to reproduce the scenes over and over again. Assumably, a large amount of translation and grammar work individually augments the program considerably. In my language studies I have recorded news programs or TV shows onto a cassette and listened to them over and over again. I agree with Kaplan that the method brings you in contact with “the personality of life” and can work if the student is motivated. (Kaplan, 132)
As mentioned earlier, I have also used the internet to guide my learning. I find that listening to dialogues forces me to tune my ear in to at least pick up on the familiar words that I have already learned. Some free Arabic-learning website are also available to use. Some are great just for the fact that they supply you with verb charts:
Adrus - I study
Tadrus - You (m.) study
Tadrusii[n] - You (f.) study
Tadrus - She studies
Yadrus - He studies
Nadrus - We study
Tadrusuu[n] - You (pl.) study
Yadrusuu[n] - They study
Other sights have many sayings with a youtube video provided to enhance the audio with a word or speakers. I have found that seeing people speak in a controlled environment has helped me considerably in making contact with the language. In sum, I find that technology helps you make a connection with the language you are studying and anything is better than simply memorizing from a book when the real world experience of immersion is 8000 miles away.
Language Teaching Methods, Desire, Necessity, Risk Vulnerability
Di buona volantà sta pieno l'inferno
In a previous entry I discussed the similarities between the anxieties that I am feeling to an ESL learner. Now I am feeling more sympathetic to Spanish students of mine who simply see no real good reason to be taking my class. I could write my own progress report it would look like this:
Although Stephen has shown short periods of enthusiasm to meeting the demands of Arabic 1, the bottom line is that he simply cannot stretch himself beyond enthusiastic endeavors in the daily goings-on of the classtime to develop any motivation to really go deeper in the language individually. Stephen has a real natural ability to use classroom phrases daily, form and ask questions in Arabic, and demonstrates excellent pronunciation for the basic level. Nonetheless, he truly needs to spend much more time working on his letter and word identification, vocabulary, basic verb structure, spelling, and reading. Language is best learned when one saturates himself with the language. For all practical reasons this cannot happen outside of the classroom. Nevertheless, some more quality time spent listening and writing down dialogues will help him at least reproduce some of the enthusiasm he has shown in class.
Professional teachers are familiar with how motivation works in the classroom. Teachers strive to create an intrinsically rewarding environment as opposed to an extrinsic one. In this respect ELLs in the U.S. are treated no differently than their peers. Nonetheless, in most cases an ELL will naturally be more motivated to learn due the necessities of an English-speaking culture in which he or she is part of. However, whether “learning the language” means basic interpersonal language skills (BICS) or Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) also brings into the picture a students motivation in the classroom. A child who values talking to some native English speakers in order to hang out will learn English but not the level that will allow him or her to advance in school and become highly literate.
We have discussed in class there are a great many ethnic communities within the US that do not value an English education or that the school system is failing them. We discussed the situation at Frankford High School in North Philadelphia where many of the Dominican and Puerto Rican students master BICS but have no motivation to get tested out of ESL because that is where their friends are, they feel more comfortable, or they feel like they can slide. For whatever reason, entire communities in the US can function with limited or no contact with English. Perhaps some ELLs may feel like this is the place for them.
Sometimes motivation can become diminished in an environment where students feel like they may make too many mistakes or they feel vulnerable. For example, an ELL may feel as though his sense of identity is a threatened. Therefore it is a good teaching practice to value the students’ culture by utilizing his or her L1and recognizing important dates. (Coelho, 162,163) Students will make mistakes, but how the student perceives them can lead to either corrective performance or diminished returns. Creating small groups where students can experiment with English without the anxiety of standing in front of the class gives the student time to be corrected by peers, or gives a teacher an opportunity to listen and correct in a one on one setting.
Close analysis of Arabic learning
When you are learning another language it you begin to expose layers that give you an idea about not only the complexities of anther culture but also the complexities of your own. When I teach my Spanish class I like to tell a story of how one culture’s meaning for a word has an entirely different meaning in another. In the 1980’s I was inundated every evening on the news by the battles raging between freedom fighters and gorillas. I would ask my mom and dad, “Why do we call them gorillas?” “Because they fight in the forest and attack you from the trees. Like gorillas?” Not until I learned Spanish while living in Chile that I finally understood what was going on. Those gorillas were actually guerrillas! Guerrilla is a diminutive form of Guerra, war, guerrilla is little war, or a war fought without conventional battle order. Somehow in our translation guerrilla becomes the fighter of the “little war.”
I bring up this issue due to the fact that this week in my session with Nabil I began to break through some of my preconceptions that I spoke of in an earlier entry. I spoke of these negative notions due to the fact that I feel as though like it or not I am flooded with Arab prejudice as I was with the gorillas fighting against the US supported “freedom fighters.”
While I was attempting to simply gain some verb and vocabulary knowledge from Nabil I was exposed to a very similar story to the one above. Nabil and I were going the verb to be and the following occurred:
This is mudariisa? Teacher? (pointing at the notebook)
This is Moo-Dar short vowel sa. You see, so I put the mark, mudariisa.
…
O.K. and to teach?
udarice
Oh so mudar is the root? Or, school or something?
School is Maadraasa. You see with the news of Bin Laden they speak of maadrasas?
Oh, that’s where I heard it.
Those special schools that they are talking about are the general common word for schools, yes? The news wants to blame all for being in a school. Yes you are in a school because a “school” in Arabic is maadrasa. But because they were teaching Islamic….in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Maadrasa Taliban?
Maadrasa Taliban. O.k. so when the foreigners hear this word Maadrasa they think about them wanting to kill Americans they think maadrasa! With an intonation of terrorism!
…
Do you ever get offended by that?
Oh no.
But its sad. Sad.
But anyway I am Christian not muslim.
Do you ever think that its unfair that some bad people can make everyone look bad?
Of course its bad. Because as you said there are so many good people… there are bad people of all religions
Do you know what a “guerrilla” a gorilla is?...
The relationship among students’ cultural and experiential background and the process by which they learn are intimately intertwined and all modern ESL theory supports in one way or another actively and positively engaging the diversity of culture presented in the class room. (Freeman, 83) However, I believe that due to the fact that a teacher by nature represents cannon of the dominant culture you have to essentially embrace your demons and be mindful of how culture affects you. (Harris) The private thoughts that you have that you never act upon like prejudice for example may be what the premise is by which others judge you. I do not feel that I in anyway try to act on any prejudice. However, the majority of my familiarity with Arabic culture comes through the primarily a lens skewed by my own.
Since 9-11 I have actively sought out the Aljazeera website for news where at least I can get a bit more understanding of “their” perspective. Interesting enough, I find that Aljazeera is consistently more neutral on international news than the main body of US coverage. Nevertheless, to allow myself to be more skilled in the know-how of cultural capital I must admit that most people in the world see me as a carbon copy American who buys into the mainstream media and yes, stereotypes all Arabs.
There are many facets to mindfulness, including living in the present moment; engaging fully in what you are doing rather than ‘getting lost’ in your thoughts; and allowing your feelings to be as they are, letting them come and go rather than trying to control them. When we observe our private experiences with openness and receptiveness, even the most painful thoughts, feelings, sensations and memories can seem less threatening or unbearable. In this way mindfulness can help us to transform.
Russell Harris
Harris, Russell (August, 2004) Embracing Your Demons: An Overview of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Psychotherapy in Australia, vol. 12 n. 4
Freeman, D. (1998). Doing teacher research: From inquiry to understanding, New York: Heinle & Heinle
Understanding the Structure of a new language
I let Nabil and Farida know that I wanted to learn some present-tense verb conjugations in order to gain more insight into how the system of root words works and to see how my explicit knowledge of grammar can help me decode the language.
In an earlier entry I discussed the system of roots in Arabic and how words are based on three-letter combinations and various vowels, prefixes and suffixes are used with the root letters to create the desired inflection of meaning. Examples are:
a-b father, ancestor, forefather
(ab, abû)
f-q-h to understand, comprehend or to teach, instruct
(fiqh)
s-l-m to be safe, secure, protected, to surrender, to submit
(al-salâm, islâm, salîm, muslim
I worked simply on identifying correct conjugations and forming simple sentences and questions? I often use the interrogation technique to assist my language learning. It both provides me with the basic format in which to make a statement and also presents me with new vocabulary. In general students that use L2 to ask questions will progress more quickly due to increased motivation and scaffolding. We have practiced this in class with the map activity where the person asking the question also must be a good listener in order to attain the desired information.
According to an Arabic wiki, http://www.mesiti.it/arabic/wiki/wiki.asp?db=wikiasp&o=TheRootSystem
“By adding infixes to the first class of the verb and varying its internal vowelisation Arabic obtains a variety of derived forms. Currently only ten are the most used derivatives but fifteen were common until up to comparatively recently, and can still be found in old books.” This system helps me clearly identify with the logic of the language. And, although I have not been able to memorize the roots and practice them enough so that they sink in, knowing the structure helps me identify that the basic system is simple at its root and difficulty arises with pragmatics and its influence on meaning of the cluster.
This brings to my attention how Arabic, although spoken in extremely distinct dialects can still maintain its status as the language. Like My neighbor for example, who is an eighteen year-old Algerian that has been in the US for eight years says only that she speaks “Algerian” (Darija) not “that stuff my mom speaks.” (Standardized Arabic) How different is Algerian to Syrian, for example where Nabil is from? Is it, say, similar to the differences between Spanish and Italian? Or, Peninsular Portuguese compared to Brazilian Portuguese? Regardless it is easy to see how the seemingly straightforward consonant-cluster system can become increasingly diglossic.[1]
According to About.com, “an adult (Arabic speaker) wishing to learn how to read would find himself learning a completely new language on top of the skills it takes to read. Children going to school for the first time also experience this shock and essentially become bilingual by the end of their scholastic careers, while teachers often report spending inordinate amounts of time translating texts written in Classical or Modern Standard Arabic into the local dialect.”
[1] The Handbook of Sociolinguistics, Florian Coulmas (ed.), Basil Blackwell, Ltd., 1997
Learning Arabic and more about me
“Oh Gaad, Staap it you kids!” I can still hear my mom screaming, in her Minnesota accent, at my brother and me fighting in the back seat of our 1972 International Harvester Travelall, the original oversized family wagon, just before getting the “invisible hand” from my father. From the time I was born, all I remember were the endless road trips we would take as a family. Some were vacations sure, but not less than 10 of the 2000-plus mile trips I would take from birth to the age of eight were due to moving.
Dad was a Marine officer and was stationed in different parts of the United States which makes me a military brat. My knowledge base of the English language and American culture growing up revolved around my forced adaptation to subtle language differences in the US. I was aware cognitively from a very young age that there was a larger picture of the world, and a larger system of sounds of the English out there that I knew of compared to that of my young peers wherever I might have been at the time. Living in Minnesota, Virginia, and North Carolina then moving to Washington then to Rhode Island with month-long fishing adventures in northern Manitoba within 8 years certainly gave me a deep cultural and linguistic understanding of the vastness and adaptability of language.
The number of geographical dialects alone in the English language is baffling. Even in the United States according to the American Heritage Dictionary the Standard American Dialect is highly elastic and variable, since what counts as Standard English will depend on both the locality and the particular varieties that Standard English is being contrasted with. A form that is considered standard in one region may be nonstandard in another. I distinctly remember pulling in to our new house in “Branchwood” the housing development in Jacksonville, North Carolina listening to Queen on the radio for the umpteenth time on that road trip and trying to talk “southern” with my brother like the real-estate lady that wore Vaseline on her cheeks to make them extra shiny.
Jacksonville is a typical Military town, complete with a strip and everything, where families from all over the nation come which makes the accent among many more “standard” than one may think. Nonetheless, public school was a place where you wanted to fit in, and it bes-sutchya to try and do so or it could get a little rough. On the other hand I was making friends with other military brats who I would know through my parents.
The friend I would usually make, like me were a little different than the typical military brat. We were “officer brats.” We were kids who were used to meeting up with high-ranking powerful people from the Marine Corps and other services and had to behave in a certain way not to bring embarrassment to our fathers. We were responsible to be able to converse formally and casually within the framework of a very rigid hierarchal culture. In order to do so I would imitate how they spoke, how they joked, and what kind of conversations they had. My brother and I would often try to come up with political insight at very young ages, most often about winning wars.
At 19 when I moved to Montana after living 3 years in North Carolina and 4 years in Washington DC, I had to change my accent drastically in order to fit better culturally. My first week living there I was invited to play in a Men’s soccer league and I recall vividly someone yelling to cover “the guy from Alabama or something.” Wow! After about 4 months of living in Montana and after getting some abuse from a couple of very large football players from Miles City in the UM dorms I didn’t get mistaken again too much.
This kind of morphing I would make with my language and my persona between different places from birth helped me tremendously not just to fit in better in pockets of culture throughout North America, but eventually to become a second and third language learner of Spanish and Russian. At any rate, at 23, when I decided to try my feet at playing professional soccer in Chile in 1993 I was able to immediately tune into the nuances of the language due to the fact that I was listening to these mannerisms, called utterances. By focusing on the meta-language, the uhs, ahs, ems, and oohs, as well as the extra words used like chico, pues, and po.
To this day I am able to recognize subtle differences in accents and linguistic mannerisms and upon reflection of my first language for this diary I have also recalled the tremendous effort I would make to try and repeat almost instantly what someone is saying. I thought that if I did this I would somehow be able to improve my supernatural skills of telepathy. On long trips across the country my brother and I would do it to each other until one of us would eventually just lose it completely. After hours on the road we would stop at a restaurant and of course we would try the same thing on our mom. “Staap it!” she would say.
The telepathy never really came about, but in a sense I believe that in focusing on each accent or language intensely listening for any change in rhythm, intensity or accent I was more open to diverse speaking styles. We read that children are born with the physical ability to produce the sounds of any language and eventually they learn to become experts. We learned that the ideal conditions for language learning are to be exposed to vast quantities of language in diverse contexts, have opportunities to interact with more proficient language users, amongst other things.
I feel lucky to have had this experience in my first language. Sounding different to me, while sounding alike others, has always been intentional and covert. At some point when I imitate I even notice that I think a little differently my persona is different. At some unconscious or subconscious level I believe that there is a mechanism inside of me that just wants to fit in with others. Though because I am, or always have been the new one on the block, and have had the confidence to cut to the chase, which stems directly from fearless interaction with strangers, I am interesting to talk to, but I am often misread. It goes to show that culture goes beyond language we imitate.
Getting to know Arabic/ Learning Strategies
I have to admit that because I am somewhat of a competent language learner, I have often tried to get a couple of words here and there in Arabic. However, Saalamalekum and alekum salaam has been the extent of my usage. Nevertheless, I have always revered the language due to its influence on Spanish. The city of Granada, for example was a cradle of multicultural intellect and trade. Spanish has many Arabic words that are part of it or even have the same meaning like Ojala (law sha’a Allah) if Allah so desires. Furthermore, the alphabet has always intrigued me, especially after I having learned Cyrillic I figured that Arabic could be a positive next step. And, how can Arabic not be interesting to anyone from the United States since 911 and Arabic’s linguistic association to many extremist who have declared war?
Since day one of beginning to look at the language I have conjured up deep feelings of anxiety and stress. Perhaps it is due to the mystery that surrounds the culture, especially Islam, or the fact that I have some prejudice and distrust because of my stereotypes such as my immediate connection of terrorism to Arabic speakers. Or, it may be the nervousness I have when thinking about ways to decode the language into a set of rules that I can understand and learn. Regardless, I have never been a person to shy away from my prejudices so it seems quite normal for Arabic to come into my life just as I am getting older and more set in my opinions. Nevertheless, it just seems so incredibly foreign to me! And, quite honestly it looks like a ton of work.
I have learned languages in two different ways. Spanish I learned through a combination of complete auditory and oral immersion, self study of grammar, reading, and contextual vocabulary lists and memorization. Russian I learned first in an intensive setting at the Defense Language institute in Monterrey California, then in Russia in an immersed environment. However, I have never been a very proficient classroom study of language from scratch in a non-immersed environment. In fact, I was never comfortable with the forged setting somewhat of DLI and did not put forth my best effort. In the end this affected my overall grade and overall content knowledge. Yet, when I went to Russia with a group from my base I seemed to be the best at understanding and speaking with native folks. I attribute this to the aforementioned self analysis of my first language experience. Simply put, bouncing ideas off of people who value you for what you are thinking and not whether you are saying it correctly is a much better language-learning environment.
We have read about ideal language learning environments in Coelho’s text (p 147) and the immersed, strong context, high expectations of comprehensibility, simplification and success rate occurs much more naturally when immersed. Kaplan talks about the morphing of first her voice then her appearance as she transformed into a Frenchwoman. I too have seen myself go through a similar metamorphosis in Spanish. In fact, when I look at a picture of me among my friends on a soccer team just after returning from playing professionally in Chile and Bolivia, I appear darker, thinner, and just more exotic. A successful environment for learning language will invite this metamorphosis naturally you just need to open your mind and body to the experience.
Learning Arabic in a home setting with limited number of lesson that I can afford to guide me through the process is a whole new adventure. The experience is neither like the intense 7-hour class day of DLI nor like the immersed experience of Chile. Is it even possible? Maybe not. I am nervous about the project and I am quite frankly intimidated. However, the only way I know to stem that nervousness is to come up with a plan that pulls experiences from my other language experiences.
I have thus far begun to us a “Teach Yourself Arabic” book from the Teach Yourself series. I also have begun to study a workbook that is used at the college level. When my neighbor, who is Algerian, first gave me the workbook I caught myself twisting and turning the book every which way to try and get my eyes to look at the words from right to left. Of course this physical act was to no avail, but it does reveal that the first real task to learning Arabic is to learn the writing style. I have achieved the first step by starting to recognize some letter combinations and it has come clear to me the logic by which the letters come together. I still catch myself tilting my head or pointing moving my hand in a right to left motion in order to remind myself which way to read.
The book comes with a CD that begins with greetings then moves on to personal information. I have not learned much but I am able to recognize and recall meaning or responses when I hear some expressions. The books states, “The first step in learning a language is listening and understanding. Concentrate initially on that, and then work on your writing skills.” Whether or not this is I don’t know, but before I even read this excerpt I began to put together a set of flash cards with the transliteration and translation on the back. I use the printed alphabet in the text that also provides the phonetic sound so that I can begin to pronounce the word.
Nonetheless, the spelling rules of Arabic are very tricky due to the fact that there is not, what I call a one-to-one correspondence of letters in the alphabet to letters in a word. Letters change shape when they are in a word because of its placement and many of the letters look exactly like, to me anyway. So this leaves me with the only option of creating a sort of “sight word” vocabulary as I build my spelling skills. For example, I will try to recognize صباح الخير as “Sabah el kheer or Good Morning” instead of breaking down each letter to sound out the word. However, I feel that I must learn the alphabet so that I can apply my previous knowledge and that will come with a tutor. I have also found some good sites on the web and on youtube that give a good introduction in sounding out the alphabet.
In sum, I find myself both anxious and excited about this learning process. I have begun to challenge my way of thinking in both the political-linguist arena and in the language acquisition arena. I have begun to think about ways to immerse myself in Arabic already just to give myself some more motivation to learn. I have also thought more deeply about my fears and prejudice toward the Arabic culture and the Arabic spelling system. Yet, this is just a humble beginning, I hope to go deeper.
Memorizing Arabic?
Before beginning this lesson I was convinced that I was going to try and memorize the patterns of Arabic words due to the fact that I was having some difficulty identifying the combinations of letters in the words. However, while doing preparation for my first tutoring session I did some google and youtube searching and discovered some alphabet or alifbaataa or tajweed videos. Alif, Baa, and Taa are the first three letters of the standard Arabic alphabet. I found some good lessons about the alphabet presented by Arabic teachers on youtube as well. I feel now that knowing the Arabic alphabet is very important to figuring out the essential sounds of language.
Sounds that come in the form of music is much easier to remember. Think about how the alphabet song is used to teach children. (Coehlo, 247) I learned two “alphabet” songs. The first, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI3oBB_n1AU&feature=related seemed like it could be sung to any Arabic speaking child and was full of animated Arabic letters with children singing. However, upon deeper analysis of the children involved in the second video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK9kq0UMDdY&feature=related this song was obviously meant for children from Indonesia who are Muslim and who are learning Arabic for religious purposes. I did not know that Arabic is the only official language of Muslim. So all services are held in Arabic, which explains the reason Muslim children from Indonesia are leaning the Tajweed.
I practiced the songs for about an hour but still did not remember them exactly although the melody was stuck in my head. Nonetheless, what I noticed most about practicing the songs is that the muscles in my throat were extremely tired afterwards. Trying to hear the sounds while simultaneously imitate throughout the song I felt as though many of the sounds came from the area between the epiglottis and glottis, almost like I was swallowing most of the sounds. (Freeman, 56) One good example of the varying points from which similar sounds comes is are the letters ح /ħ/ خ /kh/ and ه /h/. According to islamicart.com, ح is a “heavy breathy h, خ is the ch sound in the word loch, and ه is the h as in house. The /kh/ is often heard and imitated by English speakers, it is also the same sound found in Spanish in the jota. However, the difference between the others are simply that one is vocalic and the other not. Imagine saying “house” without moving your vocal chords. (Coehlo, 56)
Farida, who is my Algerian neighbor, and has volunteered her time to help me with this project. She is also a French teacher at Montgomery Community College, and will be teaching Arabic in the Spring of 2009. . At the beginning of the lesson I tried to show off my work from the previous night by sounding out the song that I had learned the melody to. My teacher was impressed with my ability not to feel embarrassed by attempting something like this. We briefly discussed the fact that one must not be afraid to risk looking odd in front of others while learning a language. Naturally, we are going to feel funny trying to make the sounds of another language.
Though English sounds different in the context of the new language, I have not found myself even coming to a point where I am trying to make direct comparisons to English while immersed in the lesson. I find that when I try to shift completely away from my native I can hear the sounds more clearly. I also watch the way the mouth moves and try incessantly to master the sound repeatedly. There is a Russian saying that supports this learning strategy, “повторение - мать изучения,” or “repetition is the mother of learning.”
Farida and I went through the alphabet slowly in our meeting focusing primarily on the sounds. Since she is a teacher her insight on the phonetics of Arabic was very valuable. She would pause, place her hand on the part of pallet from which the sound comes and work with me on each letter until I was close. During the lesson I began to hear how beautiful the sounds of Arabic were, also quite logical. Really, if people are speaking Arabic, then it must be useful and contain beauty.
Arabic or Arabic? Oh.. Arabic?
Aside from the fact that the population Arabic-speaking people is so vast and diverse, the communication and cultural barriers in the United States has led to a negative and narrow perception of this group. As stated in a previous entry, my own narrow view of the population is one of the biggest reasons I want to be introduced to the language. Yet, a larger reason for my desire to learn some Arabic is to pass on some simple phrases onto my students so that they might have an entry unto a world that is more misunderstood than mysterious. As I learn basic phrases like the greetings الّسَلامُ عَلِيْكُم and وَعَلَيْكُم الّسَلام for example it opens a window to meaning for students due to the fact that the phrases mean more than “hello,” but rather “may peace be with you.” As discussed in Krashen’s Theory of Second Language Acquisition, instead of approaching the language like any subject, finding meaning brings about a subconscious identification to the power of cultural significance to communication. (Freeman, 35)
In this session I worked with my tutor Nabil, from Jordan, with whom I worked at Germantown Academy. He and his wife Salwa are both teachers of Science and Mathematics. I wanted to build my reading skills and learn to identify some common expressions that I have been hearing in my CD’s and seeing in my workbook. Although with the reading I can hardly separate the writing aspect. Due to the fact that I have been working to make the right sound with the right letter by seeing my hand write the grapheme tends to support the intention of sounding out a word letter by letter and then recognizing patterns of words. Phonics is important for word recognition and spelling assists in the science of the language generating a more linguistic approach to learning. (Freeman, 127)
Although I am applying a science to the grammar, spelling, phonemes, etc, I believe that there is something more thoughtful and attentive at work in quotidian interaction. There is a trust almost immediately born from the fact that I am interacting in another voice, or as singing a different song. In a sense, Arabic becomes a part of me when I interact with my tutors, and although it does not fill up no where near the area in my brain that English does, I can feel the potential. That’s powerful! You know if 200 million people speak it at the subconscious level Arabic has meaning, I just simply need to supply the right words.
Yet there are many dialects of Arabic to be considered. Nabil, who is Jordanian, asked “Which Arabic are you learning?” From some research, I have discovered that there are about twelve main dialects with varying degrees of differences below those categories. Yet, there is a cultural norm written in the Arabic the newspaper which all speakers of every dialect understands. Although, the Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich statement that, “A language is a dialect with an army and navy,” thus far I have not run into any real differences in power or where there is any friction amongst Arabic speakers through my interactions with native speakers. The cohesiveness of the Arabic people is brought about more by the similarities than the differences. Nonetheless, it is important to know that there is a different kind of printed and broadcasted Arabic than that you would find in the daily lives of its speakers.
I'll let someone else learn it for me!
Technology has come a long way in bringing the world closer. However, in getting a little closer to the Arabic I am suppose to try and learn, my contact with real world Arabic is this from aljazeera.net:
واشنطن تستبعد اتفاقا أمنيا مع بغداد بحلول نهاية يوليوقالت الولايات المتحدة الأميركية إنه لن يكون بالإمكان إتمام الاتفاقية الأمنية التي تناقشها مع الحكومة العراقية قبل نهاية الشهر الجاري. ومن جانبه أكد باراك أوباما في تصريحات أنه أجرى "مناقشات بناءة للغاية" مع رئيس الوزراء العراقي نوري المالكي في زيارته للعراق
How on earth am I to get anything from this? Well, unfortunately nothing but real hard work and study skills is the answer. I would have to focus letter by letter, sound by sound, and only then look up the words in a dictionary, memorize the word then move on to the next one. To my credit I did figure out that the first word in the paragraph واشنطن, (remember read from right to left) is Washington. My point is that no matter what kind of technology you use nothing beats good ole fashion persistence.
Another way Krashen claims that you develop a second language is through “acquisition.” He states that acquisition occurs when someone goes to another country and picks up the language in the process of day-to-day living and interacting with native speakers.” (Freeman, 36) If technology can truly mimic the day-to-day immersed environment, then the acquisition of language may take place. Most programs that you buy cannot guarantee this model and leave it up to the learning to be persistent and studious.
Rosetta stone tries to emulate the criteria for acquisition. They claim that their method works because it's: intuitive, interactive, and visually engaging and that you will never need to translate, memorize, or see lists of words. The upside for Rosetta Stone is that it has good user interface. The software is very easy to navigate. You can leave the activity if it is too easy or too hard for you. I tried the free trial and can remember the words for man, adam, boy, oghur, and girl, kiz. Not bad for a 2 minute lesson without forcing myself to memorize. Rosetta Stone is very interactive because you have to click on the images or type in texts. You are being constantly assessed. This will keep you engaged during your learning of a new language. Simply listening to a canned like the one that I am using becomes old very quickly.
My cd goes something like this: The transliterated Arabic is spoken by a native speaker and is immediately followed by a translation by an English woman. wasalumalekum – hello waalekumsalaam – hello, sabahalkur – how are you? Wahumdalah – fine, thank you. Basically this method goes against everything subconscious and meaningful due to the dullness and lack of variation. However, I have used the system in the morning while having coffee and I am able to focus on the different sounds and sayings. Yet to learn more I find that I must be engaged in some sort of academic process. I imagine that although Rosetta Stone makes huge guarantees to rid yourself of pesky lists and God forbid grammar, at some point getting down and dirty and forcing yourself to memorize will have to take place in order to reach and conversational level.
Of course language classes have tried to emulate the acquisition environment before. Alice Kaplan relates her experience with a “sink or swim” method she calls the Capretz method. Where the class never uses L1 and there are no exercises in translation. “Like Fonda exercises you can get your French in shape.” The method is suppose to reproduce the conditions, ie. Krashen’s acquisition, with the caveat of being able to reproduce the scenes over and over again. Assumably, a large amount of translation and grammar work individually augments the program considerably. In my language studies I have recorded news programs or TV shows onto a cassette and listened to them over and over again. I agree with Kaplan that the method brings you in contact with “the personality of life” and can work if the student is motivated. (Kaplan, 132)
As mentioned earlier, I have also used the internet to guide my learning. I find that listening to dialogues forces me to tune my ear in to at least pick up on the familiar words that I have already learned. Some free Arabic-learning website are also available to use. Some are great just for the fact that they supply you with verb charts:
Adrus - I study
Tadrus - You (m.) study
Tadrusii[n] - You (f.) study
Tadrus - She studies
Yadrus - He studies
Nadrus - We study
Tadrusuu[n] - You (pl.) study
Yadrusuu[n] - They study
Other sights have many sayings with a youtube video provided to enhance the audio with a word or speakers. I have found that seeing people speak in a controlled environment has helped me considerably in making contact with the language. In sum, I find that technology helps you make a connection with the language you are studying and anything is better than simply memorizing from a book when the real world experience of immersion is 8000 miles away.
Language Teaching Methods, Desire, Necessity, Risk Vulnerability
Di buona volantà sta pieno l'inferno
In a previous entry I discussed the similarities between the anxieties that I am feeling to an ESL learner. Now I am feeling more sympathetic to Spanish students of mine who simply see no real good reason to be taking my class. I could write my own progress report it would look like this:
Although Stephen has shown short periods of enthusiasm to meeting the demands of Arabic 1, the bottom line is that he simply cannot stretch himself beyond enthusiastic endeavors in the daily goings-on of the classtime to develop any motivation to really go deeper in the language individually. Stephen has a real natural ability to use classroom phrases daily, form and ask questions in Arabic, and demonstrates excellent pronunciation for the basic level. Nonetheless, he truly needs to spend much more time working on his letter and word identification, vocabulary, basic verb structure, spelling, and reading. Language is best learned when one saturates himself with the language. For all practical reasons this cannot happen outside of the classroom. Nevertheless, some more quality time spent listening and writing down dialogues will help him at least reproduce some of the enthusiasm he has shown in class.
Professional teachers are familiar with how motivation works in the classroom. Teachers strive to create an intrinsically rewarding environment as opposed to an extrinsic one. In this respect ELLs in the U.S. are treated no differently than their peers. Nonetheless, in most cases an ELL will naturally be more motivated to learn due the necessities of an English-speaking culture in which he or she is part of. However, whether “learning the language” means basic interpersonal language skills (BICS) or Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) also brings into the picture a students motivation in the classroom. A child who values talking to some native English speakers in order to hang out will learn English but not the level that will allow him or her to advance in school and become highly literate.
We have discussed in class there are a great many ethnic communities within the US that do not value an English education or that the school system is failing them. We discussed the situation at Frankford High School in North Philadelphia where many of the Dominican and Puerto Rican students master BICS but have no motivation to get tested out of ESL because that is where their friends are, they feel more comfortable, or they feel like they can slide. For whatever reason, entire communities in the US can function with limited or no contact with English. Perhaps some ELLs may feel like this is the place for them.
Sometimes motivation can become diminished in an environment where students feel like they may make too many mistakes or they feel vulnerable. For example, an ELL may feel as though his sense of identity is a threatened. Therefore it is a good teaching practice to value the students’ culture by utilizing his or her L1and recognizing important dates. (Coelho, 162,163) Students will make mistakes, but how the student perceives them can lead to either corrective performance or diminished returns. Creating small groups where students can experiment with English without the anxiety of standing in front of the class gives the student time to be corrected by peers, or gives a teacher an opportunity to listen and correct in a one on one setting.
Close analysis of Arabic learning
When you are learning another language it you begin to expose layers that give you an idea about not only the complexities of anther culture but also the complexities of your own. When I teach my Spanish class I like to tell a story of how one culture’s meaning for a word has an entirely different meaning in another. In the 1980’s I was inundated every evening on the news by the battles raging between freedom fighters and gorillas. I would ask my mom and dad, “Why do we call them gorillas?” “Because they fight in the forest and attack you from the trees. Like gorillas?” Not until I learned Spanish while living in Chile that I finally understood what was going on. Those gorillas were actually guerrillas! Guerrilla is a diminutive form of Guerra, war, guerrilla is little war, or a war fought without conventional battle order. Somehow in our translation guerrilla becomes the fighter of the “little war.”
I bring up this issue due to the fact that this week in my session with Nabil I began to break through some of my preconceptions that I spoke of in an earlier entry. I spoke of these negative notions due to the fact that I feel as though like it or not I am flooded with Arab prejudice as I was with the gorillas fighting against the US supported “freedom fighters.”
While I was attempting to simply gain some verb and vocabulary knowledge from Nabil I was exposed to a very similar story to the one above. Nabil and I were going the verb to be and the following occurred:
This is mudariisa? Teacher? (pointing at the notebook)
This is Moo-Dar short vowel sa. You see, so I put the mark, mudariisa.
…
O.K. and to teach?
udarice
Oh so mudar is the root? Or, school or something?
School is Maadraasa. You see with the news of Bin Laden they speak of maadrasas?
Oh, that’s where I heard it.
Those special schools that they are talking about are the general common word for schools, yes? The news wants to blame all for being in a school. Yes you are in a school because a “school” in Arabic is maadrasa. But because they were teaching Islamic….in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Maadrasa Taliban?
Maadrasa Taliban. O.k. so when the foreigners hear this word Maadrasa they think about them wanting to kill Americans they think maadrasa! With an intonation of terrorism!
…
Do you ever get offended by that?
Oh no.
But its sad. Sad.
But anyway I am Christian not muslim.
Do you ever think that its unfair that some bad people can make everyone look bad?
Of course its bad. Because as you said there are so many good people… there are bad people of all religions
Do you know what a “guerrilla” a gorilla is?...
The relationship among students’ cultural and experiential background and the process by which they learn are intimately intertwined and all modern ESL theory supports in one way or another actively and positively engaging the diversity of culture presented in the class room. (Freeman, 83) However, I believe that due to the fact that a teacher by nature represents cannon of the dominant culture you have to essentially embrace your demons and be mindful of how culture affects you. (Harris) The private thoughts that you have that you never act upon like prejudice for example may be what the premise is by which others judge you. I do not feel that I in anyway try to act on any prejudice. However, the majority of my familiarity with Arabic culture comes through the primarily a lens skewed by my own.
Since 9-11 I have actively sought out the Aljazeera website for news where at least I can get a bit more understanding of “their” perspective. Interesting enough, I find that Aljazeera is consistently more neutral on international news than the main body of US coverage. Nevertheless, to allow myself to be more skilled in the know-how of cultural capital I must admit that most people in the world see me as a carbon copy American who buys into the mainstream media and yes, stereotypes all Arabs.
There are many facets to mindfulness, including living in the present moment; engaging fully in what you are doing rather than ‘getting lost’ in your thoughts; and allowing your feelings to be as they are, letting them come and go rather than trying to control them. When we observe our private experiences with openness and receptiveness, even the most painful thoughts, feelings, sensations and memories can seem less threatening or unbearable. In this way mindfulness can help us to transform.
Russell Harris
Harris, Russell (August, 2004) Embracing Your Demons: An Overview of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Psychotherapy in Australia, vol. 12 n. 4
Freeman, D. (1998). Doing teacher research: From inquiry to understanding, New York: Heinle & Heinle
Understanding the Structure of a new language
I let Nabil and Farida know that I wanted to learn some present-tense verb conjugations in order to gain more insight into how the system of root words works and to see how my explicit knowledge of grammar can help me decode the language.
In an earlier entry I discussed the system of roots in Arabic and how words are based on three-letter combinations and various vowels, prefixes and suffixes are used with the root letters to create the desired inflection of meaning. Examples are:
a-b father, ancestor, forefather
(ab, abû)
f-q-h to understand, comprehend or to teach, instruct
(fiqh)
s-l-m to be safe, secure, protected, to surrender, to submit
(al-salâm, islâm, salîm, muslim
I worked simply on identifying correct conjugations and forming simple sentences and questions? I often use the interrogation technique to assist my language learning. It both provides me with the basic format in which to make a statement and also presents me with new vocabulary. In general students that use L2 to ask questions will progress more quickly due to increased motivation and scaffolding. We have practiced this in class with the map activity where the person asking the question also must be a good listener in order to attain the desired information.
According to an Arabic wiki, http://www.mesiti.it/arabic/wiki/wiki.asp?db=wikiasp&o=TheRootSystem
“By adding infixes to the first class of the verb and varying its internal vowelisation Arabic obtains a variety of derived forms. Currently only ten are the most used derivatives but fifteen were common until up to comparatively recently, and can still be found in old books.” This system helps me clearly identify with the logic of the language. And, although I have not been able to memorize the roots and practice them enough so that they sink in, knowing the structure helps me identify that the basic system is simple at its root and difficulty arises with pragmatics and its influence on meaning of the cluster.
This brings to my attention how Arabic, although spoken in extremely distinct dialects can still maintain its status as the language. Like My neighbor for example, who is an eighteen year-old Algerian that has been in the US for eight years says only that she speaks “Algerian” (Darija) not “that stuff my mom speaks.” (Standardized Arabic) How different is Algerian to Syrian, for example where Nabil is from? Is it, say, similar to the differences between Spanish and Italian? Or, Peninsular Portuguese compared to Brazilian Portuguese? Regardless it is easy to see how the seemingly straightforward consonant-cluster system can become increasingly diglossic.[1]
According to About.com, “an adult (Arabic speaker) wishing to learn how to read would find himself learning a completely new language on top of the skills it takes to read. Children going to school for the first time also experience this shock and essentially become bilingual by the end of their scholastic careers, while teachers often report spending inordinate amounts of time translating texts written in Classical or Modern Standard Arabic into the local dialect.”
[1] The Handbook of Sociolinguistics, Florian Coulmas (ed.), Basil Blackwell, Ltd., 1997
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