The Pilot Model for Teaching Written Presentation: Writing of the Imaginary Text as a Sample

Arabic is considered one of the most important components that constitute the national, cultural, individual, and collective identity of the Arab pupil. On the one hand, it has a fundamental role in the pupil’s life because through it, he expresses his thoughts, his feelings, and his needs. On the other hand, through it, he acquires and creates knowledge. However, this language is facing a lot of challenges that make the mission of teaching Arabic a complex one due to the phenomenon of diglossia, of colloquial Arabic ('Ammiyya/Darija) and Standard Arabic (Fusha). People throughout the Arab world communicate in their local dialects of colloquial Arabic while standard (fusha) Arabic is used only on formal occasions, in official correspondence, and at governmental offices. The challenges of the era and the development of technology and sciences, and people’s resort to teaching courses of distant learning, especially during the recent period of the Corona pandemic, created a need to develop new teaching methods that help the pupils master all the aspects and the four language skills: reading, listening, speaking and writing. Since writing is the ultimate result that the pupil has to acquire and control perfectly, he also has to acquire a lot of skills and make a lot of follow-up. Due to this new development, I chose to focus in this research on a pilot model in teaching written presentation, which I have developed in response to the new circumstances and the need to provide Arabic teachers with new, systematic, gradual methods of teaching the writing skills that are based on the pupils’ needs, on the one hand, and the needs of the environment and the modern era, on the other. This study is an article in a series of forthcoming articles that will deal with teaching various literary genres through a pilot model of teaching written presentation. I chose to start here with the genre of imaginary fictional writing that is based on the existence of events of fantasy weaving, which cannot take place in reality due to the challenges and aesthetics that exists in this kind of fictional art.

Codeswitching between Modern Standard and Colloquial Arabic as L2 sociolinguistic competence

Multidialectal use of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Colloquial Arabic (CA) has become standard practice among Arabic speakers. Therefore, a question facing Arabic instructors and curriculum planners is what methods to adopt to raise learners’ awareness of this sociolinguistic reality. Some programs introduce MSA and one variety of CA from the beginning of Arabic instruction. However, the question of how learners who receive multidialectal training use MSA and CA simultaneously in their speech productions and how their MSA–CA use evolves over their years of Arabic study remains under-researched. The current study addressed these questions by studying the speech productions of 51 second language (L2) Arabic learners enrolled in three years of Arabic instruction. The data show that the participants consistently code-switched between MSA and CA, and seemed to conform to sociocultural norms designating MSA as more formal and CA as more personal and intimate. As learners’ proficiency levels increased, a wider range of sociolinguistic functions was observed. The study reinforces the importance of L2 Arabic curricula decisions that embrace the multidialectal use of Arabic in the L2 Arabic classroom and asserts learners’ ability to use MSA and CA simultaneously.

MEDIA ARABIC LANGUAGE

Over time with the development of human society, besides communication, language started being used in other domains, the media being one of them. Language, as the main means of the media, and the media through which language is spread and popularized among people are closely related and complementary. Media Arabic, which appeared with the foundation of the first print media in the Arabic world, was additionally popularized with the foundation of the first radio and TV stations in that area. All the conditions and circumstances following the foundation and development of Arabic media affected the formation of media Arabic, so its three sources are: literary Arabic, colloquial Arabic and foreign languages. Literary Arabic gives it authenticity and currency, from colloquial language it has inherited simplicity, clarity, and preciseness, while the foreign element secures its actuality and modernity. Media Arabic constantly develops and, in that way, contributes to the development and update of language in general.

Negation Handling in Machine Learning-Based Sentiment Classification for Colloquial Arabic

One crucial aspect of sentiment analysis is negation handling, where the occurrence of negation can flip the sentiment of a review and negatively affects the machine learning-based sentiment classification. The role of negation in Arabic sentiment analysis has been explored only to a limited extent, especially for colloquial Arabic. In this paper, the authors address the negation problem in colloquial Arabic sentiment classification using the machine learning approach. To this end, they propose a simple rule-based algorithm for handling the problem that affects the performance of a machine learning classifier. The rules were crafted based on observing many cases of negation, simple linguistic knowledge, and sentiment lexicon. They also examine the impact of the proposed algorithm on the performance of different machine learning algorithms. Furthermore, they compare the performance of the classifiers when their algorithm is used against three baselines. The experimental results show that there is a positive impact on the classifiers when the proposed algorithm is used compared to the baselines.

Geschichte des östlichen zagal

Unlike stanzaic poetry in colloquial Arabic (zaǧal) from al-Andalus the very rich and diverse zaǧal tradition of the Arab East from its rise in the 12th century to the end of the Mamluk era has remained almost completely unexplored. The present volume closes this lacuna. Hakan Özkan shows how important this literary form was throughout that period, how it built a bridge between illiterates and elite poets, and finally, how one can draw a line from its beginnings in al-Andalus up to the zaǧals of the present. In addition to text-based analyses of exemplary poems, the study draws on poetics, linguistics, historical dialectology, literary history, and other approaches, that transcend the individual poems, including the exploration of their musical and performative aspects, their "Sitz im Leben", and their economic, political, and social backgrounds.