#sharek

Algerian sweets, my mother bought them for my thesis jury.

DXVK-Sarek v1.10.4

Выпущен DXVK-Sarek для старых графических процессоров v1.10.4

Arabia Saudí otorgará visados especiales a turistas que asistan a eventos

Las autoridades de Arabia Saudí, informaron que otorgarán visados especiales a los turistas extranjeros que quieran acudir a un evento deportivo o espectáculos en el reino con el fin de diversificar su economía.

Arabia Saudí abrirá sus fronteras por primera vez a los aficionados del deporte, música y cultura en vivo con la puesta en marcha de un proceso electrónico con el objetivo de dar la…

What is emergent language and why is it important to language teachers?

One way of answering is that emergent language is the language that comes out of casual communication in the classroom, the word that a learner may have heard (or misheard) but is still waiting for the right encouragement to be uttered, or even the gap in a phrase that’s waiting to be filled.

As a matter of fact, we, as teachers, are too often worried about “teaching the Unit”, “doing the exercise”, and “practicing the structure” to the extent that we can forget about the fuzzy nature of language, the complexity of its paths and the unpredictability with which some language items are maintained in the process of language acquisition while others seem to be forgotten, only to resurface some time later and then return to the background and so on.

By forgetting these aspects of language learning, we are actually trying to swim against the current, and, worst of all, we’re expecting our learners to do that together with us. This is the reason why it’s important to recognise that there is a linguistic space, between that part of memory where we store information for long term retrieval and “working” memory, where words and grammar are stored for use, but not consolidated yet, where we can have an idea of the direction in which the “river” of each learner flows.

But while most theorists nowadays recognise that language acquisition is also a subconscious process that results from informal, natural communication, in which emotions and even the biographical memory of the individual play a fundamental part, how can we create in the classroom the same conditions that would occur in casual, relaxed conversation?

As Scott Thornbury recently commented in his blog, “language emerges in second language learning situations, especially when learners are engaged in communicative interaction. The learner talks; others respond. It is the scaffolding and recasting, along with the subsequent review, of these learner-initiated episodes that drives acquisition.”

As teachers, what we can do, is to create the right context for the learners where they can engage in the communicative interaction, supported by the teacher providing vocabulary or other forms of support, from simple encouragement to the recasting of a phrase.

One activity that I find very successful to this purpose can be found in the book by Ken Wilson entitled “Drama and improvisation”. The name of the activity is “T-shirts”.

The preparation is not overly complicated:

The teacher cuts a t-shirt for each learner and one for himself out of a big sheet of paper.

To offer a model to start with, he/she needs to draw on the t-shirt something that is related to aspects of his life.

Then he will ask the learners to ask questions about the drawings.

After having finished all the questions related to the teacher’s t-shirt, the learners will be invited to draw on their own t-shirts pictures of things that are meaningful to them.

After that they will be encouraged to ask questions about their classmates’ drawings.

The teacher’s role is fundamental in that he or she has to guide the conversation with the aid of the drawings, paying attention to recast the students’ utterances with the correct grammar and pronunciation. The teacher can also provide the vocabulary when required, but keeping in mind that the main aim is to have the students talk about themselves with the language they know.

This activity works extremely well even at beginners level, where very simple questions can be asked, like: “why” followed by the name of the thing depicted in the drawing or even by simply pointing at it, and merely asking “why”.

The teacher will then “recast” the question correctly in the target language “why the books?”

The learner repeats the question in correct form, then the teacher will provide an answer. For example: “because I read many books for my work”.

This activity has many aspects that make it great for working with emergent language:

Firstly, it offers the possibility of a very high level of personalisation, allowing the learners to talk about themselves and the things that are important to them.

The drawings constitute a reliable base for the learners to clearly identify what they want to talk about.

The activity can be easily adapted to different levels by moving from the concrete to the abstract, using the drawings as a starting point.

Last but not least, I think that this activity offers the learners the opportunity to use some vocabulary items that absolutely are relevant to them but that might not be present in the coursebook, giving teachers and learners alike, the chance of catching a glimpse of the richness of the world that everyone holds within himself or herself, moving beyond the dry and quite prescriptive patterns of traditional language courses.

After all, shouldn’t language be a social device used to get in touch with each other?

–Ed

*My description of the activity T-Shirts is actually an adaptation from Ken Wilson, “Drama and improvisations”, 2008: Oxford University Press, p. 29.

*The quote from Scott Thornbury is taken from the post “E is for Emergence” https://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2017/07/23/e-is-for-emergence/ (Last accessed 03/08/2017)

As a low level learner of Arabic, I really appreciate it when the teacher asks me lots of questions. In fact I’d go so far as to say that this is one of the main ways in which I learn in a classroom. Of course, it’s important that the level of the questions is pitched appropriately. If they are too easy it can feel a bit patronising; too challenging and I end up feeling frustrated.

In this video taken from an online class I took with Sharek Centre teacher, Rahaf, I think she gets the level of questions just right for me and I can feel myself learning quite a lot. Using a single picture, which she shared with me through Zoom, she carefully graded the questions she asked me, to give me lots of exposure and practice in some simple verb phrases. Here are the stages we followed:-

Rahaf showed me the picture and asked me to choose names for some of the people in the picture.

She went through them all and checked that we both knew who everyone was.

She asked me questions starting with ‘Who..’ for example ‘Who is running?’, ‘Who is behind the tree?’ I was being challenged to understand the questions in Arabic, but I only had to respond with the names of the people.

She asked me checking questions like ‘Samira is behind the tree, right?’ I had to process the language at a slightly higher level but what I actually had to say was still very simple.

She gave me the name of the person and asked me to say what that person is doing in the picture. This is more challenging since it’s the first time I actually have to produce the target forms myself.

She showed me some written sentences using the forms that we had been focussing on. This is a very useful challenge for me because my reading is much weaker than my ability to understand spoken Arabic.

She asked me some personalised questions using the same target language; ‘Do you run?’ ‘Do you walk the dog?’ etc. This was a good way to hear different conjugations of the verbs and to connect the language to myself.

For Sharek centre’s online Arabic classes we use a free tool called Zoom. This is a good name for it because it allows learners of Arabic anywhere in the world to zoom in to high quality classes with our team of experienced and qualified Arabic teachers at Sharek.

Here’s a very short excerpt of a class with Sharek teacher, Isra’a and a beginner in Arabic (me). Zoom is also a good way of looking at two necessary processes involved in REALLY learning a language, and you can see both of them happening in the video. We need to zoom in on language – that is look at the spellings of words, how to pronounce things, the meanings etc, but we also need to zoom out and use language for genuine communication; to share who we are with others and to make sense of the world around us.

We have lots of different types of learner at Sharek but the most typical situation is that students have previously done lots of zooming in type activities (memorising word lists and grammar transformation exercises etc), but have generally had fewer opportunities for communication and freer conversation. At Sharek, in both our online and our face to face classes, we put lots of emphasis on balancing zooming in with zooming out. because we believe that you need both these things in order to make the language your own.

What does it mean to share a language ?

Being myself a learner of Arabic language I’ve spent quite a long time looking around for any kind of materials that would make it easier for me to acquire new words and modes of expression, or looking for songs to improve my listening skills, or films that would allow me to practice the language and get to know better the Arab culture. Here’s a shortlist of my favourites:

1. We love Arabic

“We love Arabic” is a blog hosting an incredible amount of links to resources that will help you learn the language, online and offline; it contains pages about facts and famous people related to Arab culture, historical events, literature, politics and much more. The blog has a rich section about Levantine ‘ammiyyah, presenting a host of useful websites that’ll allow you to explore the richness of the Eastern varieties through grammar, songs and films. Unluckily some of the links are no more active, but you can always copy and paste the names of the links into a search engine and find what you were looking for in different locations.

2. Dictionary al-Maany

Let’s admit it, Google translate is totally unreliable for Arabic, and so are most of the dictionaries availble online. However, al-Maany is probably one of the best. Not only it can be used to translate a word to and from Arabic,  but it can also be used as an Arabic-Arabic dictionary complete with definitions, plurals of words, forms of verbs and so on. It is especially useful for all the more modern language that is not covered by classics such as the dictionary of Hans Wehr and even al-Mawrid.

3. Reverso

The ace up your sleeve. Do you need to communicate something quickly and can’t find the words? Take a look at Reverso, type in a small phrase and the website will immediately provide you with a small corpus of short texts that include the phrase you wanted to translate. The most important thing about Reverso is that it will display some of the possible contexts in which the words that you need might appear. Wicked.

4. All the Arabic you never learned the first time around

This website is dedicated to the book “All The Arabic You Never Learned The First Time Around” by James M. Price. The author of the website has also created a downloadable PDF completely for free. While the book is praised for its “no-nonsense” approach to learning Arabic, it won’t certainly answer some of the trickiest questions that advanced learners might have. Nonetheless, its clear and concise approach, with lots of examples, will certainly help beginners and intermediate students to face the intricacies of Arabic grammar with a sparkle of glory in their eyes. 5. “al-Manahil”

“al-Manahil” is the title of an educational TV show broadcast by Jordanian television during the 80s and 90s. All the actors speak an outstandingly clear Fusha, or Classical Arabic and while some episodes nowadays may look a little bit dated, some others are still genuinely funny. The grammar points are always made extremely clear through graphic examples and through the chosen target language. Had I been a kid in Jordan in the 80s, the episodes of Abu al-huruf would have been my favourite cartoon ever. Well it is now.