In recent years FLE researchers and instructors have become increasingly interested in devising theoretical frameworks and pedagogical materials that prepare learners for the realities of today’s globalized world. Current FLE research suggests that equipping learners with intercultural communicative competence (ICC) is the best approach to achieve this goal. As a result of this, administrators and instructors of foreign language programs are reassessing their curricula to ensure that the cultural content is effective and sufficient for enabling learners to successfully function in a culturally diverse world. This thesis aims to reassess the cultural component of the beginner Arabic curriculum at the University of Texas at Austin by serving two objectives. The first objective is to present the results of a survey that examines the impact of the cultural content in the current beginner Arabic course at the University of Texas at Austin on learners’ ICC development. The second objective is to incorporate these results in a pedagogical framework to further enhance the development of ICC in the beginner Arabic classroom setting. The results were gathered from two student surveys, conducted at the beginning and end of the academic year, and from follow-up interviews administered half way through the study’s duration. The findings indicate that the majority of Arabic learners at the beginner level are predisposed with good general knowledge and positive perceptions with regard to the Arab world, suggesting that they are primed to develop ICC before commencing their study of Arabic. In addition to this, the findings show that the current Arabic curriculum did help to further develop ICC in learners to a certain extent. However, there are some areas for improvement, mainly regarding the organization and selection of topics. These observations were taken into consideration in designing the pedagogical framework that presents learning outcomes specific to the beginner Arabic curriculum. The intention is that such a framework will align curricular goals that will in turn result in learners becoming informed global citizens of the world. / text

Since Joan Rubin opened the discussion of the existence of techniques of memorization, recall, and production that marked the performance of successful learners of foreign languages, the study of Language Learning Strategies (LLS) has expanded into innumerable directions. Such studies have attempted to establish a link between LLS use and improved student performance in the classroom and beyond, determine what drives students to select particular strategies for use, and analyzed the effectiveness of LLS instruction. Few studies have examined the relationship between LLS and the study of Arabic as a foreign language. The present study identifies, among university-level students of Arabic, the LLS whose use is associated with student language success. Using a combination of survey response analysis and classroom observation, the study highlights the benefits of 17 separate strategies and recommends a phased introduction of those strategies to students in order to maximize their potential effect. The study then moves on to explore the role of the Arabic instructor in student strategy use, determining the effectiveness of current methods of strategy instruction and provides recommendations to the Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language (TAFL) field that may improve the techniques used to impart strategic learning competence to students of the language. In the final section of analysis, the study turns toward the Arabic textbooks that most commonly used in American colleges and universities and examines the level of support that these texts provide to the development of strategic learning methods within students, providing advice to instructors and learning materials developers intended to enhance presentation of strategies. The ultimate goal of these suggestions is improving the overall strategic capability of students of Arabic so that they can become more independent learners, capable of continuing study of the language beyond the boundaries of the university classroom. / text

This study proposes two models for exploring the lexical contents of Part One of the most popular Arabic as a Foreign Language textbook series, Al-Kitaab fii Ta'allum Al-'Arabiyya. Through the lens of a word families framework, this study hypothesizes on the contents and arrangement of the L2 Arabic mental lexicon after completing the textbook. Through counting lexemes, lemmas, and word family members, it is possible to gain insight into the quantity of vocabulary items present within the textbook outside of traditional measures like the triconsonantal root. Through a frequency-based framework, this study analyzes textbook vocabulary items in light of the 5,000 most frequent lemmas in the language from a corpus of 30 million tokens from A Frequency Dictionary of Arabic (Buckwalter and Parkinson: 2011). A comparison between textbook vocabulary and frequency data points to the relationship between the vocabulary studied by AFL learners and the most widely used forms in the language as a whole. While this study gives special consideration to frequency data up to the 3,000 word level, the sheer amount of lexical knowledge necessary for reading Arabic newspapers and novels necessitates integration of frequency-derived data at even the novice level. A lexical and frequency-based approach to AFL instruction and curriculum design may prove helpful in decreasing the decidedly large vocabulary burden (Nation: 1990, cited in Young: 2011) for learners of Arabic as a Foreign Language.

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This study examines the beliefs of foreign language teachers regarding the relative positions of native and nonnative speakers in foreign and second language education. In particular, I am concerned with the idealization of the native speaker in this context and the foreign language anxiety that may occur in nonnative speaker language teachers if they internalize this idealization. I collected data from 29 college-level Arabic and Hebrew teachers using four methods: (1) a questionnaire on their background and beliefs regarding native and nonnative speaker language teachers, (2) a version of the Teacher Foreign Language Anxiety Scale (Horwitz, 2007), (3) a one-on-one interview, and (4) class observation. By and large, study participants believed that native speakers, because of their nativity, have reached higher levels of linguistic and cultural proficiency with relative ease, and as a result are more readily granted credibility as teachers of their native language. Participants believed that nonnative speakers are more empathetic and understanding of their students' problems because of their own experience and efforts as students of the language. With regard to foreign language anxiety, the main sources of anxiety among the nonnative speaker participants were the fear of making mistakes (and losing credibility as a result), of not having the authority to speak on cultural issues, of not being hired when competing with native speakers, and of addressing professional audiences. Native speakers feared that they cannot anticipate or understand as easily as nonnative speaker teachers the difficulties their students have in learning their language, because they cannot relate to their experiences in the same way. Neither group, however, reported feeling particularly anxious overall. I argue that anxiety was minimal for both groups because of specific steps that participants have taken to overcome the perceived disadvantages of their group and thereby bolster their confidence. Participants reported gaining confidence through some combination of the following factors: (1) gaining experience and education, (2) improving their linguistic and cultural proficiency, (3) presenting the persona of a credible language teacher through extra preparation and language choices, (4) receiving external validation, and (5) realizing that everyone can learn from and teach others. / text

As more second-language acquisition research is published about the optimal age to begin foreign language instruction, and the best methods for teaching foreign languages, many colleges and universities are seeking to create intensive immersion programs which would prepare prospective students for the rigors of their language programs and serve as a productive language-learning environment. One such program, the Middlebury-Monterey Language Academy, is based on the highly successful summer language schools model. This research isolates the components which would help create successful, intensive Arabic immersion programs. Specifically, this thesis asks: How can an institution create a successful Arabic immersion learning environment for high school students? To answer this question, this thesis reviews current literature in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA), includes personal observations about the program and analyzes responses to surveys administered to two groups of stakeholders, namely students, and teachers/resident assistants. After the descriptive section, the thesis proposes a curricular framework which encompasses the main components of the curriculum (including goals, teacher and learner training, instructional materials, and native versus target language use). This framework is presented as a model to help teachers and other administrators as they try to set up new Arabic programs for high school students. / text