I libri di Ca’ Foscari

The Importance of Being Diglottic

Colloquial Arabic Teaching at Ca’ Foscari

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Abstract

Since the ’70s Ca’ Foscari teachers have been facing the challenge of diglossia that typifies the Arab world where the oral use of Standard Arabic is reserved to specific situations, while colloquial varieties of the same language are used for ordinary conversations. Thus, learning Colloquial Arabic is a paramount need to communicate with native Arabic speakers. Moreover, diglottic proficiency is necessary to access several contemporary cultural outputs of the Arab world. This article describes the features of Arabic diglossia and instructional approaches meant to cope with the phenomenon. It then offers a brief account of Colloquial Arabic teaching at Ca’ Foscari, which has been a European vanguard in the field.


Open access

Published Oct. 21, 2018 | Language: en

Keywords Colloquial Arabic • Diglossia • Ca’ Foscari • Teaching approaches • Learning needs

Copyright © 2018 Patrizia Zanelli. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-252-9/007


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