Mahmoud Al-Batal (ed.): Arabic as One Language: Integrating Dialect in the Arabic Language Curriculum

For several decades, the question of whether to teach regional spoken dialects within programs of Arabic language instruction has been controversial. In the years since the turn of the millennium, these debates have gained prominence, especially in the USA, and in certain circles, the question has morphed into a more substantive dilemma, focusing less on ‘whether’ and more on ‘how’ to teach such dialects in programs that until recently had focused on teaching the formal variety of Arabic, commonly known as Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). The editor and authors of this volume have a definitive answer to both questions: Should we teach dialects, in addition to MSA? A resounding ‘yes.’ How to do this? Using an integrated approach (IA), that is, to teach both MSA and a spoken dialect in one sequence of courses, where the two varieties are used, each in its appropriate context.

The editor is a veteran Arabic linguist, textbook author, program administrator, and practitioner of teaching Arabic as a foreign language (TAFL). Its reader will learn from the 16 essays that it comprises that while the ‘whether’ controversy still prevails, there are now in place a number of interpretations of the IA, which in turn are successfully implemented in a variety of higher education institutions. Most of the institutions represented in the book are in the USA, but it also includes examples from Scotland, Italy, and Sharjah. The preponderance of chapters devoted to American Arabic language programs is not accidental. It is in the USA where the IA was initially thought out, manifesting itself in both textbook design and curriculum development, as well as in teaching methods and preparation of materials. The main active proponents of integrating dialect instruction with that of MSA are Munther Younes at Cornell University (primary author of all three volumes of the ‘Arabiyyat Al-Naas book series) and Al-Batal himself, in collaboration with Kristen Brustad and Abbas Al-Tonsi (authors of the Al-Kitaab fi Ta‘allum al-‘Arabiyya series). In fact, it is refreshing to see both Younes and Al-Batal contributing to a volume like this, as some degree of competition has existed between these two textbook series for quite some time.

The preface to the book does a good job briefly presenting the individual chapters, so I shall refrain from repeating this information. Rather, I will highlight and critique trends prevalent across the book, with reference to specific chapters only when warranted.

Contributors to this edited volume include scholars and practitioners with experience in teaching Arabic at various settings, mostly universities but also military institutions where Arabic is taught for academic as well as practical purposes. Many of these authors are up-and-coming scholars, some still in the midst of their doctoral training, others more experienced. Upon reading even just a handful of chapters, let alone the entire collection, the reader will have absorbed a solid consensus among the authors that IA is the way to go. As I myself strongly believe that they are correct, I do not mind that the book is ideologically, and to some degree practically, skewed. What I am not convinced of, however, is that skeptics of the authors’ approach are likely to be persuaded to abandon their more traditional, some would say Orientalist, approach to teaching Arabic. The existence of skepticism in the field is by no means ignored in the book. Almost every chapter begins with an introduction of the controversy and continues with arguments and data to support the adoption of the IA, each according to their preferred nuanced implementation thereof. As a proponent of the IA myself, I often felt that the book was preaching to the members of my choir.

Virtually all of the chapters discuss some of the counterarguments to integrating, and in some cases even including, dialect tuition. The main perceived hindrance, debunked in the book, is one of ‘confusion:’ it is feared that students will not be able to master more than one variety of Arabic at once and will be dumbfounded by the linguistic decisions they will have to make. The other is that of ‘choice,’ that is, which dialect or dialects should be taught alongside MSA. The book is chock full of solutions for these two proposed conundrums. The ‘confusion’ problem is circumvented through training students not just as to what lexical items and grammatical constructions each variety uses, but also when it is culturally and pragmatically appropriate to use one or the other. This is done through active practice of the different modalities. For instance, in Younes’s approach, texts are read in MSA, but class discussions of these same texts are done in a spoken variety—in his case Jordanian/Palestinian Arabic.

As for the choice of dialect(s), most authors argue for sticking to one dialect per multi-year curriculum. These can be made based on the availability of teaching materials (currently most textbooks focus on Egyptian and/or Levantine dialects, though as Mike Turner elaborates in his chapter, Moroccan Arabic is gaining traction both in terms of material availability and prospects for study abroad); they can also depend on the native dialects spoken by the teachers employed—though in these times of professionalization of language instruction, it is argued that many well-trained teachers of Arabic are, or should be, able to teach a dialect other than their own. This is a step up from times when speaking Arabic natively was a sufficient requisite for employment as an Arabic teacher in the West.

Jonathan Featherstone’s chapter, which lays out the Edinburgh Model of teaching Arabic through the IA, is, in my view, particularly important, as it does something that most other chapters seem hesitant to do, namely, to explicitly lament and express frustration over the reluctance of teachers of Arabic and program administrators in higher education to deviate from the pedagogical norms of yesteryear. Featherstone refers specifically to universities in the UK. He presents his own institution, the University of Edinburgh, as virtually the sole academic venue in Britain where one can, and is encouraged to, study an Arabic dialect alongside MSA, in an environment that aims to emulate what a student is likely to encounter upon interacting with native speakers of Arabic in the Middle East or North Africa.

But such frustration exists in the American context as well. None of the authors dare name names, but the elephant in the room is clear to those familiar with the field. Many of the most prestigious universities in the USA, including, but not limited to, members of the Ivy League, view the study of Arabic as a scholarly endeavor which by definition (their definition, I must add) does not lend itself to exposing students to ‘colloquial’ varieties of language. Quite a few of the authors represented in this volume have extensive training in linguistics, and in particular sociolinguistics. They are in no way devoid of scholarly rigor, and as a result, I believe, have an obligation to leverage this rigor, which involves empirical research on language variation and its theoretical implications to counter such dated approaches to language pedagogy. The first section of the book is devoted primarily to theoretical considerations favoring integrating dialectal and formal varieties of Arabic in TAFL. It is my impression that the crucial scholarly argument is missing from these otherwise astute theoretical observations.

The rest of the book is very informative, as it presents the reader with practical data and advice regarding the feasibility of administering programs based on the IA. These chapters use empirical studies whose analysis presents an overall positive outlook for implementing this approach. This includes combinations of quantitative data and qualitative evaluations of teaching efficacy when dialects and MSA are combined into one cohesive curriculum. Both students and faculty are given voice (especially in Part 4 of the book, which is devoted to these perspectives), but again, what I think is lacking are data and points of view from learners and teachers of Arabic in contexts where dialects are either taught as a discrete object of study, separated from MSA, or ignored altogether. The purpose of including these would be (i) to serve as control groups of sorts, as these non-integrating curricula have been until recently—and perhaps still are—the norm worldwide, (ii) to enhance the argumentation in favor of integration, basing it on a broader, more diverse, pool of data.

Reading the book, it occurred to me that it may have a diverse readership. The most obvious reader of this book would be a teacher of Arabic, a student of the language, or an administrator or policymaker interested in charting out what an Arabic curriculum ought to look like, what purposes it might serve, and how to fulfill the goals of such a curriculum. Scholars interested in various disciplines involving the study of Arabic, that is, linguists and anthropologists, may find these texts useful, as they build upon contemporary notions of language variation and population diversity and highlight aspects of these disciplines often ignored in the non-pedagogical research on Arabic. Scholars and teachers of language pedagogy, applied linguistics and SLA, either from a theoretical perspective or in relation to specific languages other than Arabic, can benefit here from a high-quality, theoretically and empirically informed, collection of essays, which may have interesting implications beyond TAFL. Quite a few studies in the book refer to developments in the teaching of other languages (Emma Trentman, for example, relies on Heidi Byrnes’s work on teaching German at Georgetown University), and a similar contribution can be made in the opposite direction, namely, from these studies of Arabic to language pedagogy and applied linguistics in general.

The book is accompanied by appendices, audiovisual materials, tables, and graphs, which are only available online through the Georgetown University Press website: http://press.georgetown.edu/sites/default/files/Al-Batal_AllResources.zip

Some of these files are more useful than others, and in general, they would have been more useful had they been unified in terms of file format, and, if possible, integrated into a coherent website, rather than the rudimentary zipped folder in which they are currently stored.