Intercultural Competence and Language Variety on Study Abroad Programs: L2 Learners of Arabic

Authors

  • Jeremy Palmer

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v22i1.319

Keywords:

Study abroad, Arabic, Intercultural competence, Tolerance

Abstract

The issue of intercultural competence among students of Arabic has not received much attention in academic literature. The ability to comfortably thrive in more than one culture and language is certainly of importance for students in this age of global contact, exchange, and even strife. At a time of wars and frequent misunderstandings, cultural and linguistic tolerance and understanding between the Arab world and the West is paramount. Fortunately, more and more American students are signing up to study Arabic. Enrollments in Arabic at institutions of higher education in the United States increased 126% - more than any other language - between 2002 and 2006 (Furman, Goldberg, & Lusin, 2007). In order to understand Arabic language and culture well, it is generally accepted that students should spend time abroad in an Arabic-speaking country. The benefits of study abroad have long been praised (Carroll, 1967; Kinginger & Farrell, 2004; Berg et al., 2008). Contradictorily, however, there are not many American students who choose to study abroad in the Arab world each year (Gutierrez et al., 2009). 

            This paper presents the results of a research project that queried over 90 research participants who spent time on study abroad programs in the Arab world. These research participants completed an online questionnaire about their cultural and linguistic experiences abroad. This paper reports results pertaining to research participant difficulty in performing certain social and linguistic functions while abroad using an adapted instrument to measure acculturation from Ward & Kennedy (1999). The research participants were also asked about the amount of interaction in which they engaged with host nationals. Finally, research participants were asked about their use of Arabic language varieties. Results show that research participants were able to perform the social and linguistic functions with greater ease at the end of their study abroad programs. Results also showed that students who had exposure to spoken colloquial Arabic before arrival felt more acculturated at the beginning of their programs. Interestingly, research participants who interacted more with host nationals tended to speak more colloquial Arabic than the more formal variety. In addition, research participants in Egypt, Syria, and Jordan (to a lesser degree) had a greater desire to speak colloquial Arabic than those in Morocco and Yemen.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Jeremy Palmer

Jeremy Palmer received his Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) from the University of Arizona in 2009. His interests include study abroad and intercultural competence, teacher training and professional development, and technology in foreign language learning. He is currently working as an assistant professor at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates.

References

Al-Batal, M. & Belnap, R. K. (2006) The teaching and learning of Arabic in the United States: Realities, needs, and future directions. In Kassem M. Wahba, Zeinab A. Taha, & Liz England (Eds.), Handbook for Arabic language teaching professionals (pp. 389-399). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Byram, M. (2000). Assessing Intercultural Competence in Teaching. Sprogforum, 18(6), 8-13. Retrieved February 24, 2010 from http://inet.dpb.dpu.dk/infodok/sprogforum/Espr18/byram.html.

Carroll, J. B. (1967). Foreign language proficiency levels attained by language majors near graduation from college. Foreign Language Annals, 1, 13-151.

Commission on the Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Fellowship Program. (2005). Global competence and national needs: One million Americans studying abroad. Retrieved July 7, 2009, from http://www.nafsa.org/public_policy.sec/public_policy_document/study_abroad_1/ lincoln_commission_report.

DuFon, M. A. & Churchill, E. (2006). Evolving threads in study abroad research. In M. A. DuFon & E. Churchill (Eds.), Language learners in study abroad contexts (pp. 1-27). Cleveland, Buffalo, Toronto: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

El-Hassan, S. A. (1977). Educated Spoken Arabic in Egypt and the Levant: A critical review of diglossia and related concepts. Archivum Linguisticum 8(2), 112–132.

El-Hassan, S. A. (1978). Variation in the demonstrative system in educated spoken Arabic. Archivum Linguisticum 9(1), 32-57.

Ferguson, C. A. (1959). Diglossia. In Thom Huebner (1996) (Ed.), Sociolinguistic Perspectives: Papers on Language in Society 1959-1994 Charles A. Ferguson (pp. 25-39).

Fishman, J. A. (1971). Societal Bilingualism: Stable and transitional. In Joshua A. Fishman, Robert L. Cooper & Roxana Ma, Bilingualism in the Barrio. In C. F. Voegelin (Ed.) Language Science Monographs, Volume 7 (pp. 539-557). Indiana University: Indiana University Publications.

Freed, B. F. (1995) Language learning and study abroad. In B.F. Freed (Ed.), Second language acquisition in a study abroad context (pp.3-33). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Freed, B. F., Dewey, D. P., Segalowitz, N., & Halter, R. (2004). The Language Contact Profile. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 26, 349-356.

Freed B., So, S. & Lazar, N. A., (2003). Language learning abroad: How do gains in written fluency compare with gains in oral fluency in French as a second language? ADFL Bulletin 34, 34-40.

Furman, N., Goldberg, D. & Lusin, N. (2007). Enrollments in languages other than English in United States institutions of higher education, Fall 2006. Modern Language Association of America. Retrieved January 11, 2010, from http://www.mla.org/homepage.

Ginsberg, R. B. & Miller, L. (2000). What do they do? Activities of students during study abroad. In Lambert, R. & Shohamy, E. (Eds.), Language policy and pedagogy: Essays in honor of A. Ronald Walton (pp. 237 - 261). Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins North America.

Gutierrez, R., Hawthorne, A., Kirk, M., & Powers, C. (2009). Expanding U.S. Study Abroad in the Arab World: Challenges and
Opportunities. Meeting America’s Global Education Challenge, 4, 1-40. Retrieved January 11, 2010, from http://www.iie.org//Template.cfm?Section=Study_abroad_white_papers.

Ibrahim, M. 1989. Communicating in Arabic: Problems and prospects. In F. Coulmas (Ed.), Language Adaptation (pp. 39-59). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Kinginger, C. (2004). Alice doesn’t live here anymore: Foreign language learning as identity (re)construction. In Pavlenko, A. & Blackledge, A. (Eds.), Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts (pp. 219-242). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Kinginger, C. (2005). Research on language learning in study abroad (1998-2005). (CALPER Professional Development Document CPDD 0507). University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University, Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research.

Kinginger, C. & Farrell, K (2004). Assessing the development of metapragmatic awareness in study abroad. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, X, 19-42.

Maamouri, M. (1998). Language education and human development: Arabic diglossia and its impact on the quality of education in the Arab region. Mediterranean Development Forum. Morocco: World Bank.

Mahmoud, Y. (1986). Arabic after Diglossia. In (Eds.) J. A. Fishman, A. Tabouret Keller, M. Clyne, B. Krishnamurti and M. Abdulaziz. The Fergusonian Impact: In honor of Charles A. Ferguson on the occasion of his 65th birthday, I: From Phonology to Society; II: Sociolinguistics and the Sociology of Language. Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter: 239-251.

Miller, L., & Ginsberg, R. (1995). Folklinguistic theories of language learning. In B. Freed (Ed.), Second language acquisition in a study abroad context (pp. 293–315). Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Palmer, J. L. (2007). Arabic Diglossia: Teaching only the standard variety is a disservice to students. Arizona Working Papers in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching, 14. Retrieved May 21, 2009 from http://w3.coh.arizona.edu/awp/Volumes.htm.

Palmer, J. L. (2008). Arabic Diglossia II: Student perceptions of spoken Arabic after living in the Arabic-speaking world. Arizona Working Papers in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching, 15. Retrieved May 21, 2009 from http://w3.coh.arizona.edu/awp/Volumes.htm.

Parkinson, D. B. (2003). Verbal features in oral Fusha performance in Cairo. Int’l J. Soc. Lang 163, 27-41.

Redden, E. (2008). Shifting winds in Arabic teaching. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/10/01/arabic.

Rifkin, B. (2005). A Ceiling Effect in Traditional Classroom Foreign Language Instruction: Data from Russian. The Modern Language Journal, 89(1), 3-18.

Ryding, K. C. (1995). Discourse competence in TAFL: Skill levels and choice of language variety in the Arabic classroom. In M. Al-Batal (Ed.), The teaching of Arabic as a foreign language: Issues and directions (pp. 223-231). Provo, Utah: American Association of Teachers of Arabic.

Schmidt, S. D., Inbar, O. & Shohamy, E. (2004). The effects of teaching spoken Arabic on students’ attitudes and motivation in Israel. The Modern Language Journal, 88 (2) 217-228. St. Mary’s College Study Abroad Survey. http://www.saintmarys.edu/~cwil/php/intercultural.learning/documents/abroadsurv__2005_final-long.pdf.

Taguchi, N. (2008). Cognition, language contact, and the development of pragmatic comprehension in a study-abroad context. Language Learning, 58(1), 33-71.

Vande Berg, M., Connor-Linton, J. & Paige, M. (2008). The Georgetown consortium project: Interventions for student learning abroad. 1-58.

Versteegh, K. (2004). The Arabic Language (Third edition. First in 1997). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Ward, C. & Kennedy, A. (1999). The measurement of sociocultural adaptation. Int. J. Intercultural Rel, 23(4), 659-677.

Whitworth, K. F. (2006). Access to language learning during study abroad: The roles of identity and subject positioning (Doctoral dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, 2006). Dissertation Abstracts International, 67/08, Feb 2007.

Downloads

Published

2013-01-15

How to Cite

Palmer, J. (2013). Intercultural Competence and Language Variety on Study Abroad Programs: L2 Learners of Arabic. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 22(1), 58–83. https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v22i1.319