A reflective inquiry into the teaching of post-primary Arabic in Australia

Abstract

?? 1997 Lamees Jaber (Saffoury)

The researcher taught Arabic in the Saturday School of Languages for three and a half years, at junior and senior levels. This provided considerable experience with the many difficulties faced by students and teachers of Arabic in Australia and provided the impetus for a reflective inquiry into the nature of the problems so as to find some clearer way towards resolving them. This study documents the course of that investigation. 
 
 The researcher revealed the difficulties students face from a number of perspectives, linguistic, social and pedagogical. Linguistic difficulties are grounded in a major way in the nature of Arabic itself, a diglossic language of many spoken dialects and a separate written form not directly related to any one dialect. This situation is made even more difficult for students in Australia whose own spoken language and that of their parents is often limited by a lack of education and lack of exposure to a wide range of forms and functions. Integral to students' development in Arabic also are the Australian Government's policies on immigration and multiculturalism, which underwent a total turn-around in the course of the past twenty years. 
 
 Thus defined the problems were clearer, but seemingly intractable. Only through a study of the nature of literacy at a deeper level than I had considered before could a path forward be found: one which acknowledges the complexity of the learning task, the comparatively impoverished learning environment, and the rich diversity in needs of the learners.