El Consejo Europeo y la declaración de los derechos humanos

Mária Šikolová, Nataša Mocková

Abstract: The paper deals with a newly designed Arabic course at the Faculty of Economics

and Management of the University of Defence in Brno. After the events of the Arabic Spring, the importance of teaching this language to military professionals potentially deployed in the region has significantly grown. The authors analyse their results from the implementation of the innovative Arabic course based on their systematic observations, data gathering and processing. The authors have decided for this solution because Arabic language belongs to the most difficult world languages and the original teaching approach did not fully correspond to this fact. Moreover, the number of lessons is not sufficient and cannot be inflated. For these reasons, the authors have decided to address these issues as a whole by designing a brand-new course. This article presents the initial results gathered in the course and after the first semester.

Keywords: Arabic, teaching approach, learning, military. 1. Introduction

The Faculty of Economics and Management of the University of Defence puts an emphasis on teaching foreign languages. Apart from English, the Language Training Centre, which is a part of the University, offers several other languages as the second foreign language. Since the Academic Year 2011/2012, a new language has been introduced for the students of the 1st year of Bachelors’ study. This language is Arabic and although it is rarely taught in the Czech Republic, it is increasingly used in different military missions abroad.

As the situation in the Middle East has been rather turbulent in recent decades, it is highly probable that military presence will be needed there in the future, too. Nevertheless, international troops including Czech units have already been deployed in the region for some time. The prevalent language spoken here is Arabic.

The University of Defence, as the only tertiary military educational institution in the Czech Republic, prepares its graduates for various purposes. One of the main tasks is to prepare the graduates for real military life, including military missions abroad. Apart from excellent physical condition and professional skills, the students have to acquire also language skills. While fluent communication in English is taken for granted, acquiring a basic level of Arabic can be helpful in establishing contacts between our soldiers and the local population, as it has been proved in other NATO units in the area. Therefore, the university management decided to introduce a course on basic Arabic for a group of selected 1st year Bachelors’ students at the Faculty of Economics and Management in the academic year 2011/2012.

107 2. Tradition in teaching Arabic in the

Czech military environment

As a matter of fact, teaching Arabic in the Czech military has had a long tradition. Arabic courses started to be run in the late seventies at the former Military Academy. They were designed for Czech officers who were supposed to work in Arab countries and at that time they were three-year courses organized in intensive three-week sessions, three times per academic year, altogether 513 ninety-minute lessons. The expected educational outputs were to master orthographic and phonetic systems of Modern Standard Arabic, and to be able to read, write and produce basic communication in Arabic.

The 1989 Revolution in the Czech Republic resulted in temporarily diminishing interest in teaching Arabic for military purposes. However, the consequent geopolitical development in the world brought about the comeback of Arabic to the Czech military. After the year 2000, some Arabic courses were re-introduced, albeit on an irregular basis and for selected officers only. Since the University of Defence does not provide intensive language courses for officers, the Language Training Centre (part of the University) first offered Arabic as an optional non- intensive course for students of the Faculty of Economic and Management, which became very popular. As mentioned above, Arabic obtained a new, higher status at the University of Defence in the Academic Year 2011/2012 when it started to be taught as the second foreign language for a group of selected students (with the specialization in reconnaissance). It has been run as a non-intensive course with 13 ninety-minute lessons per semester, taught for 5 semesters, which gives altogether 65 lessons.

3. Teaching methods in Arabic course 3. 1. Difficulty Level of Arabic Language

Arabic language is not an easy one, if compared with foreign languages commonly taught at the non-linguistic universities in the Czech Republic. It is unquestionably very complicated to assess the difficulty of a language, since its difficulty depends on many factors; to give an example, let us mention only the person’s mother tongue and their language aptitude. Nevertheless, the Foreign Service Institute (further FSI), which is the American Federal Government’s training institution for officers, diplomats and other personnel to serve abroad, has looked into this problem and its experts categorized the languages according to the number of lessons needed to learn a language if you are a native English speaker.

They claim that after the specified time of study, learners will reach “Speaking 3: General Professional Proficiency in Speaking (S3)” and “Reading 3: General Professional Proficiency in Reading (R3)”. However, the internet source emphasizes that this ranking presents only the view of FSI. According to this classification, Arabic is in the highest class (5), together with Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese, Japanese and Korean. According to the FSI, to learn these languages to the above-mentioned level, it is necessary to learn 88 weeks (2200 hours). Czech language is in class 4 with 44 weeks and 1100 hours of instruction needed. However, the information available on various web pages presents the difficulty of Arabic more/less consistently in the highest ranks of difficulty.

If we compare the number of hours recommended by the FSI with the length of Arabic courses in the military, we should realize that the number of lessons in the military is significantly lower – in courses in the seventies and

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eighties it was more than 500 ninety- minute lessons, while at the moment in the university environment it is only 65 ninety-minute lessons per the whole Bachelors’ course. Nonetheless, it should be taken into account that the required outcome of teaching Arabic in the Czech military was and is significantly lower than Professional Working Proficiency; in terms of the Interagency Language Roundtable, the required level is closer to either Limited Working Proficiency (L2) or even Elementary Proficiency (L1). Thus, the number of lessons needed to achieve this level is also lower.

3.2. Modern Standard Arabic

Generally speaking, there are three basic variants of Arabic language – Modern Standard Arabic, Classical (also known as Literary) and Colloquial Arabic. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is the language that is understood by all Arabic speakers. It is the language of written materials, as well as pan-Arab TV programmes, talks, films, etc. Classical Arabic is the language of Al-Qur’án and other classical literature. Modern Standard Arabic is based on Classical Arabic, but it is under constant development, as with other modern languages. Colloquial Arabic is represented by spoken language in various regions of the Arab World (regional dialects). They all are to certain extent similar to modern Standard Arabic, but they vary in both vocabulary and structure (Wightwick, Gaafar, 2007, xi). In the Czech military context, it is Modern Standard Arabic which is taught because it is considered to be the universal one.

3.3. Course design and teaching methods

Both Arabic course design and the target population were different in the eighties from the present ones. Moreover, the teaching methods have changed substantially. While in the

eighties the grammar-translation method was prevalent also in the military environment in Czechoslovakia, the situation started to

change in the nineties, which was most apparent in teaching English. However, teaching Arabic was not significantly affected by communicative approaches in the Czech military even after 2000 when Arabic was introduced as one of the optional subjects at the University of Defence. This was caused to a considerable extent by the textbook used which is based on a very traditional grammar pattern of teaching. We have realized that Arabic as a highly demanding language for Czech speakers might require a change in teaching methods. Although the motivation of students was quite high at the beginning of the course, it often diminished as soon as they realized how difficult the language is and how slow the progress in acquiring it is. Consequently, we have decided to change the essential approach to teaching Arabic. While in the past, students had to first learn all the letters of the Arabic alphabet (two 13-lesson semesters) to start learning basic words and phrases, in the new teaching model they started to learn some basic words and phrases from the very beginning of the course. This approach was partially inspired by a colleague of the authors, a linguist who started to learn Arabic and, later on, also Hebrew. And it was the Hebrew course where this method was commonly used. Even though this approach seems to be working in terms of intensifying students’ motivation, it is at the same time rather time- consuming and demanding for us. It means in practice to design a brand new course and to develop most of the teaching materials. We also have to tackle the problem that the teaching materials bought by the university cannot be fully used because of the newly-introduced method. Another

109 challenge to be addressed is providing

the teaching materials since using photocopiers has been dramatically restricted.

4. New methodological approach and initial results

4.1. Theoretical background of the new approach

The innovative approach is based on the fact that, in our opinion, language acquisition does not necessarily happen in a linear way. For instance, the linguistic specialists at the Hebrew Language Academy Charter School found that their “students can often listen to and recognize Hebrew words long before they are comfortable using them in their own writing or speaking”. Since Hebrew is typologically close to Arabic, we believe that the same pattern can be applied for teaching Arabic. Different linguistic theories perceive language acquisition in different way. On the one hand, Krashen claims that when learners are provided with comprehensible input, grammatical structures emerge in a predictable order. He claims that “structure emerges in second language performers in a more or less predictable order for adults” (Krashen, 1982, p 128). On the other hand, Menezes argues that “language learning is not a linear process, and therefore cannot be deemed as predictable as many models of SLA have hypothesized it to be”.

4.2. Implementation of new approach The rationale of the new approach was mentioned above. Now we would like to describe its novelty and to present the effects of this new approach on teaching as they were systematically observed and recorded by the teachers. All these results refer to the first semester in which the new approach was implemented.

The new approach lies in the idea that basic words and phrases can be taught from the beginning of the course with a

minimum knowledge of simplified grammar rules which is in accordance with Menez’s opinion, as stated above. Thus, the only limitation for teaching words and phrases is whether the students know the letters of the words. What this means in practice for us is to choose only the words formed by the letters that students have already learnt. After choosing the words we have to decide which of the words to use only for practising reading and writing and which of them to include into target vocabulary and phrases. It is also worth mentioning that all new teaching materials were provided in e-form only. The students downloaded them from the Arabic course in Learning Management System Moodle. Although this is not an ideal solution, it did not cause any serious problems. On the other hand, using the Internet for teaching purposes has also some advantages in comparison with a conventional teaching approach. We have particularly in mind using short videos which reinforce pronunciation, vocabulary and cultural awareness, even if they have not been used up to now. Nevertheless, they are intended to be systematically used in the next parts of the course.

4.3. Results

At the very beginning of developing the new approach the authors wanted to find the answers to the following questions:

1. Is it possible to teach not only letters, but also and at the same time vocabulary with very limited grammar rules?

2. Can the learners learn both things at the same time?

3. Is this way of learning/teaching motivating for students/teachers?

4. Does this method have any limitations? If so, what?

5. Does this method induce any unexpected outcomes?

To find the answers to these questions, we were systematically gathering and

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recording the relevant data acquired during teaching, in observations and from the end-of-course questionnaire. One of the authors taught the course and she recorded all interesting findings after each lesson. The other one observed several lessons to add a fresh view. Moreover, the authors designed a brief questionnaire to find out the students’ opinions on the course content, teaching methods and most difficult areas of Arabic. The results they have gathered are as follows: As to the first question, we have come to a conclusion that teaching letters, vocabulary and only limited grammar rules is undoubtedly possible. Similarly, the learners have proved to be able to learn all things at the same time, although not without difficulties and not all of them at the same level. If compared with the previous teaching approach, we have appreciated the new approach since they found it highly motivating from the teaching point of view. Based on the results of the end-of- semester questionnaire, the new approach has met the students’ expectations and they have all found the course interesting and motivating. Considering the fourth question, we have come to a conclusion that the most significant limitation is the number of lessons which is too low. Nevertheless, this is the limitation which can be addressed by neither the authors nor the students. To answer the fifth question, there definitely were some unexpected outcomes obviously induced by the new teaching method. The fact that the students were taught only a minimum amount of grammar has apparently led them to discover the grammar rules by themselves based on the given vocabulary and using it. On the other hand, the students have tried to apply the rules also where it was not possible. Another rather frequent mistake was missing out prepositions. There was also a problem of interference in two

different language phenomena – the first one with the verb “to have” and the second one with gender.

The questionnaire was intended to find out students’ opinions on the course and its difficulty. 15 students started the course. However, only nine of them finished the first semester. Most of them expected to learn how to write and read, as well as to communicate in most common situations. The course met the expectations of all students. The students were also asked to specify the most difficult part of the course (writing, reading, vocabulary and grammar) on a scale from 1 (the easiest) to 5 (the most difficult). On average, the most difficult skill was vocabulary (3.33), followed by grammar (3.11) and reading (3.00). The easiest one was, surprisingly, writing (2.22). In the part of the questionnaire where the students were asked for any comments, they mentioned the following: “lessons were very intensive”, “I was very satisfied with the content, practical exercises and the teacher”, “more lessons would be needed”, “lessons were demanding, funny and interesting”.

On practical grounds, we tried to include as many words needed in the military context as possible from the very beginning of the course. The vocabulary during the first semester with only 13 consonants and three vowels (all in Arabic) is very limited; however, we have included at least one military word (tank), and the names of some Arab countries and nationalities (Jordan, Libya, Libyan, Lebanon, Lebanese).

Although the students were highly motivated, they admitted that the language was extremely difficult for them, especially learning vocabulary. They asked the teacher for advice on how to learn the vocabulary more easily and effectively. Since the learning strategies are highly individual, we tried to experiment with a generally likeable

111 and acceptable method. The concrete

idea came from an Arabic self-teaching academic worker, the former Faculty of Economics and Management student. The idea was to produce a Pexeso game with pairs of cards (one card – a picture, one card – the word in Arabic). The purpose was to help reinforce the vocabulary and to intensify the motivation. The result was highly positive – the students were very excited and obviously enjoyed the activity. To make the process a bit more structured and controlled, the learners were asked to create a sentence or a phrase for each word in the game and to submit it to the teacher at the end of the lesson in writing. Here are some examples of the sentences/phrases they have created:

Where is Lebanon? This is a tank. I want cold beer. Where is my wine? I am a minister. Who is he?

Where is he from? I visited my colleague. She has got a son. I saw a cold river. I want a flat.

I have an excellent tank. I visited Libya.

I want water.

We had to make one more important decision while designing the course materials – it was whether to use non- vowelled texts in the teaching materials.

To explain this, words in Arabic are written by consonants, and vowels are then added above or under the consonants. However, common texts are written with consonants only. So, a non- native speaker is generally not able to read a word which they do not know. Contrary to the commonly accepted approach, as well as our own learning experience, non-vowelled texts are parts of each lesson from the very beginning of the course. The reason for this decision was the fact that the students might be exposed to these kinds of texts shortly after finishing their course. Moreover, the course itself consists of only a very low number of lessons, so including non-vowelled texts should be introduced as soon as possible.

5. Conclusion

The purpose of the paper was to familiarize the readers, experts in the area of economics and management, with one of the building blocks in the training and education of military