Saudi Cultural Missions Theses & Dissertations
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Item Restricted Teaching Arabic in the Diaspora(Saudi Digital Library, 2023) Bahhari, Abdulwdood Hassan; Manns, Howard; Willoughy, LouisaAs a pluricentric language with strong religious connection, teaching Arabic in the diaspora comes with unique challenges. This thesis explores the teaching and learning of Arabic in Australia and how schoolteachers and parents negotiate the competing imperatives to teach Fus-ha (the HV) and Ammiyya (the LV), to balance the need to teach religious literacy skills and secular conversational skills to Muslim learners. These learners encompass both traditional heritage language learners but also students from non-Arabic backgrounds, who learn Arabic for religious purposes. As such, this thesis challenges and extends our understanding of “heritage language learning” in Australia, and interrogates how different school settings approach these mixed ability cohorts. The thesis is underpinned by and extends Woods’ (2004) Language-Religion- Ideology (LRI) framework. The special status of Arabic and Islam means that in the Islamic context, the two linguistic ends of the continuum are not English vs the religious language, but rather is Fus-ha vs both varieties. Drawing on this, I explore how parents and teachers in four school contexts view this relationship. These contexts are Islamic schools, government after-hours schools, community language schools, and Quranic schools. Drawing on survey and interviews from 31 Arabic teachers and 84 parents who have school-aged children learning Arabic in Australia, I address the following research questions. Firstly, what are the similarities and differences in the approach taken to Arabic teaching in each school sector? Secondly, how do teachers in different sectors approach variety choice, and the teaching of Arabic more generally? Thirdly, what are parents' views about variety/choice and the purpose of Arabic teaching? Fourthly and finally, to what extent are parents and teachers in each sector aligned in their views on how and why Arabic should be taught? As one might expect, a major finding from the thesis is that schools in different sectors differ in their approach to teaching Arabic and variety of choice, according to their religious orientation. The more religiously-oriented the school is, the more focus on Fus-ha there will be, while the more secular the school is, the more focus on both varieties is evident. For example, Quranic schools were found to be at one end of Woods’ (2004) continuum with the strongest link to the religion and the highest teaching of Fus-ha. On the other side of the continuum comes government after-hours schools with the weakest link to the religion and Abstract 3 the highest emphasis on both varieties. In between fall Islamic schools and community language schools, with Islamic schools showing a stronger link to the religion and greater use of Fus-ha than community language schools. Perhaps surprisingly, however, parents showed a more complex LRI relationship. While a minority of parents shared the focus on Fus-ha in Quranic and Islamic schools, the majority strongly advocated for the teaching of both varieties – regardless of the school context, in which their children were enrolled – or whether their family are heritage speakers. As well, teachers and parents in all settings discussed the tensions between desire to teach the language for religious or communicative purposes, but findings show parents often wanted a greater emphasis on Ammiyya and communication than the school was offering. When taken together, these findings suggest that Arabic schools in Australia would benefit from rebalancing their curricula to better meet the needs and expectation of their parent community.62 0