אלון פרגמן - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by אלון פרגמן
alppi.eu, 2008
This research investigates the absorption process of native-born Arab teachers as teachers of spo... more This research investigates the absorption process of native-born Arab teachers as teachers of spoken Arabic in Israel's elementary schools, and how much of this initiative is the fruit of intended planning policy. In the 1980s, several efforts were made to integrate Arab teachers into the Hebrew school system, but in most cases, these efforts were failures. Up to 2005, no effort of similar dimensions was made to train Arab teachers to teach Arabic in Hebrew-speaking schools, claiming that the cultural gap does not permit the Arab teacher to be absorbed into this system (Brosh, 1995). This is in contrast to the teaching of foreign languages around the world, in which the integration of native teachers is frequent. This subject requires new analysis, especially in light of the results of studies done at the end of the 1990s, which tested local initiatives to teach spoken Arabic, and found a definite positive influence of the teaching of spoken Arabic in the lower classes on the children's opinion of the Arabic language, its spokespeople and its culture – in some cases, the teachers were Arabs.
This study is an interpretive, phenomenological one. It attempts to examine the perception of the Arab teachers regarding their absorption into Hebrew-speaking schools, what are the interactions they face in the Hebrew-speaking school with different bodies (the administration, colleagues, students and their parents) and their feelings in the Hebrew educational system within the framework of school activities, holidays, nationalistic texts, and what can be concluded from all of this concerning the policy of the Ministry of Education on training native Arab teachers to teach the Arabic language in Israel.
The Arabic Language and Literature, 2017
This article seeks to examine the image of women as reflected in the short stories by the importa... more This article seeks to examine the image of women as reflected in the short stories by the important Syrian author Zakaria Tāmer, which were written in the second half of the twentieth century. In light of the theoretical debate on the extent to which men can faithfully represent the female experience, this article seeks to present Tāmer’s work as writing that is by and large free of the chauvinistic male perceptions that were prevalent in Syria at the time, and as writing in which feminist perceptions are expressed with regard to the woman’s place and status at a time when “the female voice” had not yet been formulated in writing in Syria. In many of his stories Tāmer positions the woman as a central figure and creates a new (fictional) world, wherein men and women possess equal rights and status; in other stories in which the motif of the woman’s oppression is manifested, she surprises with her resourcefulness and by “breaking the rules” in protest. These perceptions are expressed ...
ATHENS JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY, 2014
International Journal of Linguistics, 2015
Literacy Studies, 2014
This chapter addresses the development of grapho-phonemic representations in Arabic as a foreign ... more This chapter addresses the development of grapho-phonemic representations in Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) among native Hebrew-speaking pupils (HL1) based on two studies. The first study employed both quantitative and qualitative analyses of spelling errors among eighth graders during the second year of formal exposure to Standard Arabic. Findings indicated that pupils made errors in 80 % of the words they spelled. Qualitative analyses showed that orthographic representation of novel phonemes, of phonemes with similarly sounding neighbors, and of phonemes with allographic variants proved to be the most challenging. These difficulties were argued to be attributed, inter alia, to the linguistic distance between HL1 and AFL. The second study examined the developmental trajectory of grapho-phonemic knowledge among eighth, ninth, and tenth grade HL1 pupils by targeting novel phonemes. Findings showed that there was no significant improvement in spelling accuracy over time. Possible causes for such slow growth in spelling accuracy despite increased exposure over the years and the transparent nature of the voweled orthography of Arabic are discussed.
World Journal of Education, 2014
and /ðҐ, and dental: /ṯ/) in the written form of Arabic among native Bedouin Arabic speakers from... more and /ðҐ, and dental: /ṯ/) in the written form of Arabic among native Bedouin Arabic speakers from north and southern Israel (N=666), versus native Arabic pupils from the triangle (N=153), learning in second, fourth, and sixth grades. Three tasks were constructed for this study: real word dictation, pseudo-word dictation, and real word recognition. The results show significantly higher scores for spelling among pupils from the triangle versus Bedouin pupils from southern and north Israel in the second grade. Also, Bedouin males from southern Israel scored significantly less than their female counterparts in the group and from all other male pupils who participated in this study at all ages. It is suggested that the gap is unnecessarily gender-oriented, but mainly affected by socioeconomic aspects and by the lack of appropriate teacher training for this community.
Reading and Writing, 2013
It has been suggested that linguistic proximity affects the ease of acquisition between typologic... more It has been suggested that linguistic proximity affects the ease of acquisition between typologically similar languages, due to the fact that the languages have shared phonological and orthographic properties (Koda, 2008). Thus, a native Hebrew speaker learning Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) would be expected to easily develop linguistic proficiency. This study examined the developmental trajectory for spelling in Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) among native Hebrew speaking adolescents, with specific attention to the development of accurate representations for four novel phonemes and their graphic symbols (ع, ح, ق, ص). The sample included eighth (N = 119), ninth (N = 125), and tenth graders (N = 91). We were further interested in examining the contribution of orthographic as opposed to phonological knowledge to spelling in AFL. Five experimental tasks were created for the study: real word recognition, orthographic sensitivity, and auditory discrimination, and dictation of real and pseudo words. Findings for the eighth grade replicated earlier findings for real word spelling (Fragman & Russak, 2010) showing 20% accuracy scores. While spelling accuracy improved by tenth grade, scores remained extremely low (25%). Lexical representations for the four novel phonemes tested were also generally low, with different levels of accuracy for each phoneme. It is possible that the difficulties were the result of interference from shared linguistic elements. Finally, it was found that both orthographic as well as phonological knowledge contribute to real and pseudo word spelling. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to language teaching policy and pedagogy.
Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 2013
Reading and Writing, 2014
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +B... more Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
This article seeks to examine the image of women as reflected in the short stories by the importa... more This article seeks to examine the image of women as reflected in the short stories by the important Syrian author Zakaria Tāmer, which were written in the second half of the twentieth century. In light of the theoretical debate on the extent to which men can faithfully represent the female experience, this article seeks to present Tāmer’s work as writing that is by and large free of the chauvinistic male perceptions that were prevalent in Syria at the time, and as writing in which feminist perceptions are expressed with regard to the woman’s place and status at a time when “the female voice” had not yet been formulated in writing in Syria. In many of his stories Tāmer positions the woman as a central figure and creates a new (fictional) world, wherein men and women possess equal rights and status; in other stories in which the motif of the woman’s oppression is manifested, she surprises with her resourcefulness and by “breaking the rules” in protest. These perceptions are expressed even in Tāmer’s early stories. Given that the writing prevailing in Syria up to the mid-twentieth century, and to a considerable degree later as well, writing that ignores female endeavor and creativity on the one hand, and mainly presents women as maidservants or mistresses on the other, Tāmer’s work can be viewed as writing that extracts “the female voice” and accords it unique weight even in his first stories. As a writer who presents a high degree of feminist awareness in his writing, he conducts a literary-social-historical reform that embodies a challenge to intellectual and literary writing in the Arab world.
Being the second formal language of Israel, after Hebrew, Arabic is obligatory taught as an addit... more Being the second formal language of Israel, after Hebrew, Arabic is obligatory taught as an additional (foreign) language in most junior high schools for native Hebrew speakers. Yet, Arabic studies are still strongly debated in Israel, not only for political reasons, but also for poor linguistic results of Arabic studies in the Hebrew Educational System; Recent studies found lack of sufficient proficiency among native Hebrew speakers, even after several years of exposure and practice, which put into question the added value of Arabic studies for the Hebrew learners.
This paper seeks to present the political as well as the linguistic challenges which the Israeli society faces now-a-days. It seems that only when substantial steps are taken, on both political and linguistic spheres, Arabic studies may become fruitful for the native Hebrew learners, and for the Israeli society of our time.
This study compared spelling development of consonants (guttural: /ḥ/, uvular-velar: /q/ and /ġ/,... more This study compared spelling development of consonants (guttural: /ḥ/, uvular-velar: /q/ and /ġ/, emphatic: /ḏḍ/, /ṯṭ/, and /ðҐ, and dental: /ṯ/) in the written form of Arabic among native Bedouin Arabic speakers from north and southern Israel (N=666), versus native Arabic pupils from the triangle (N=153), learning in second, fourth, and sixth grades. Three tasks were constructed for this study: real word dictation, pseudo-word dictation, and real word recognition. The results show significantly higher scores for spelling among pupils from the triangle versus Bedouin pupils from southern and north Israel in the second grade. Also, Bedouin males from southern Israel scored significantly less than their female counterparts in the group and from all other male pupils who participated in this study at all ages. It is suggested that the gap is unnecessarily gender-oriented, but mainly affected by socioeconomic aspects and by the lack of appropriate teacher training for this community.
Studies explored spelling errors of consonants in the written form of Arabic among the Bedouin pu... more Studies explored spelling errors of consonants in the written form of Arabic among the Bedouin pupils of the Negev in elementary school found significantly lower scores for these pupils in comparison with triangle pupils for real word task and for real word recognition task, mainly in the second grade. Also, pupils from the Bedouin sector found difficulty with the representation of emphatic phonemes, and represented them by a similar soft phoneme. In order to better understand the sources of difficulty found in the former studies, this study focused on spelling errors of consonants among Negev Bedouin children through two writing tasks. The results indicate that most of the spelling errors among 2 nd graders seem to be primarily phonetic in nature, as a result of confusion between similar sounding phonemes in Arabic. Another source of error seems to be attracted to the diglossic nature of Arabic: native Bedouin speakers are exposed to the Negev vernaculars from birth (L1), and are systematically exposed to the written form of Arabic at school. It is therefore suggested that the effect of colloquial phonology on spelling among diglossic children should be taken into consideration by language teachers as well as by teacher training institutions.
This study explored spelling development of the written form of Arabic among native Bedouin Arabi... more This study explored spelling development of the written form of Arabic among native Bedouin Arabic (BA) speakers in second, fourth, and sixth grades (N=347) from two recognized authorities in south Israel. Specifically, this study focused on guttural (/ḥ/), uvular-velar (/q/ and /ġ/), emphatic (/ḏḍ/, /ṯṭ/, and /ð̠/̄), and dental (/ṯ/) consonants. Three tasks were constructed for this study: real word dictation, pseudo-word dictation, and real word recognition. The results for the real word task, pseudo-word task, and the word recognition task indicated significant improvement in spelling ac-curacy of the consonants targeted among fourth graders, however there was no additional improvement among the students in the sixth grade. It was al-so found that with emphatic phonemes accuracy is significantly lower than with all other phonemic groups at all elementary grades. In addition, gender differences were observed with significantly higher scores for girls in all grades targeted for all tasks. Pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed
This study examined spelling proficiency in Arabic among native Hebrew speaking students (n=50) l... more This study examined spelling proficiency in Arabic among native Hebrew speaking students (n=50) learning the written form of Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) in the Middle Eastern Studies department at one of the largest Universities in south Israel. Specifically, this study focused on ten novel phonemes (guttural, velar-uvular, dental, and emphatic). Three tasks were performed through the computer: a visual task, an auditory task and an audiovisual task. The results support previous studies which found that native Hebrew speakers learning AFL cope with extra linguistic burden, due to the fact that several Arabic phonemes visually resemble other Arabic graphemes while simultaneously corresponding with an Arabic phoneme that is similar to a familiar phoneme from the Hebrew phonemic inventory. The results also indicated that the students had difficulties representing novel phonemes which do not exist in their mother tongue, especially emphatic and dental phonemes. In addition, lower scores were achieved in the auditory task vs. the visual task and the audio-visual task. The students performed significantly better on the auditory task after two years of AFL learning, yet the scores still remained lower than the scores for the other tasks. This may be explained by the AFL curriculum and instruction, which mainly focuses on the development of reading and writing skills, while at the same time neglecting aural-oral skills in Arabic teaching. Thus, it is highly recommended to use aural-oral skills alongside the practice of other aspects of the language in order to establish successful and meaningful learning of Arabic.
It has been suggested that linguistic proximity affects the ease of acquisition between typologic... more It has been suggested that linguistic proximity affects the ease of acquisition between typologically similar languages, due to the fact that the languages have shared phonological and orthographic properties (Koda, 2008). Thus, a native Hebrew speaker learning Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) would be expected to easily develop linguistic proficiency. This study examined the developmental trajectory for spelling in Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) among native Hebrew speaking adolescents, with specific attention to the development of accurate representations for four novel phonemes and their graphic symbols (ع, ح, ق, ص). The sample included eighth (N = 119), ninth (N = 125), and tenth graders (N = 91). We were further interested in examining the contribution of orthographic as opposed to phonological knowledge to spelling in AFL. Five experimental tasks were created for the study: real word recognition, orthographic sensitivity, and auditory discrimination, and dictation of real and pseudo words. Findings for the eighth grade replicated earlier findings for real word spelling (Fragman & Russak, 2010) showing 20% accuracy scores. While spelling accuracy improved by tenth grade, scores remained extremely low (25%). Lexical representations for the four novel phonemes tested were also generally low, with different levels of accuracy for each phoneme. It is possible that the difficulties were the result of interference from shared linguistic elements. Finally, it was found that both orthographic as well as phonological knowledge contribute to real and pseudo word spelling. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to language teaching policy and pedagogy.
This paper discusses the development of grapho-phonemic representations in Arabic as a foreign la... more This paper discusses the development of grapho-phonemic representations in Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) among native Hebrew speaking pupils (HL1) based on two studies. The first study involved both quantitative and qualitative analyses of spelling errors among eighth graders (N=34) during the second year of exposure to the written form of Arabic. Findings indicated that pupils made errors in 80% of the words they spelled. Qualitative analyses showed that representation of novel phonemes, representation of phonemes with similarly sounding neighbors, and the orthographic representation of phonemes with allographic variants proved to be the most challenging. These difficulties were attributed to the complex nature of the relationship between HL1 and AFL. In order to better understand the effect of exposure and practice on grapho-phonemic knowledge in AFL, the second study examined the developmental trajectory of grapho-phonemic knowledge among eighth, ninth, and tenth grade HL1 pupils (N=335). Four novel phonemes were targeted: /, ṣ , , /. Findings showed that there was no significant improvement in spelling accuracy for these novel phonemes over time. With regards to overall spelling accuracy, there was a small though significant improvement between ninth (19%) and tenth grade (25%) These results indicate that HL1 pupils spell in AFL with very low accuracy rates, and this is true even in the case of words that they have been exposed to for several years. Possible causes for such slow growth in spelling accuracy despite increased exposure over the years and the transparent nature of the voweled orthography of Arabic are discussed.
The present study set out to examine the most common types of errors made by native Hebrew speake... more The present study set out to examine the most common types of errors made by native Hebrew speakers learning Arabic as a foreign language after one year of learning written Arabic through qualitative error analysis.
This research investigates the absorption process of native-born Arab teachers as teachers of spo... more This research investigates the absorption process of native-born Arab teachers as teachers of spoken Arabic in Israel's elementary schools, and how much of this initiative is the fruit of intended planning policy. In the 1980s, several efforts were made to integrate Arab teachers into the Hebrew school system, but in most cases, these efforts were failures. Up to 2005, no effort of similar dimensions was made to train Arab teachers to teach Arabic in Hebrew-speaking schools, claiming that the cultural gap does not permit the Arab teacher to be absorbed into this system (Brosh, 1995). This is in contrast to the teaching of foreign languages around the world, in which the integration of native teachers is frequent. This subject requires new analysis, especially in light of the results of studies done at the end of the 1990s, which tested local initiatives to teach spoken Arabic, and found a definite positive influence of the teaching of spoken Arabic in the lower classes on the children's opinion of the Arabic language, its spokespeople and its culture – in some cases, the teachers were Arabs.
This study is an interpretive, phenomenological one. It attempts to examine the perception of the Arab teachers regarding their absorption into Hebrew-speaking schools, what are the interactions they face in the Hebrew-speaking school with different bodies (the administration, colleagues, students and their parents) and their feelings in the Hebrew educational system within the framework of school activities, holidays, nationalistic texts, and what can be concluded from all of this concerning the policy of the Ministry of Education on training native Arab teachers to teach the Arabic language in Israel.
This chapter addresses the development of grapho-phonemic representations in Arabic as a foreign ... more This chapter addresses the development of grapho-phonemic representations in Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) among native Hebrew-speaking pupils (HL1) based on two studies. The first study employed both quantitative and qualitative analyses of spelling errors among 8th graders during the second year of formal exposure to Standard Arabic. Findings indicated that pupils made errors in 80 % of the words they spelled. Qualitative analyses showed that orthographic representation of novel phonemes, of phonemes with similarly sounding neighbors, and of phonemes with allographic variants proved to be the most challenging. These difficulties were argued to be attributed, inter alia, to the linguistic distance between HL1 and AFL. The second study examined the developmental trajectory of grapho-phonemic knowledge among 8th, 9th, and 10th grade HL1 pupils by targeting novel phonemes. Findings showed that there was no significant improvement in spelling accuracy over time. Possible causes for such slow growth in spelling accuracy despite increased exposure over the years and the transparent nature of the voweled orthography of Arabic are discussed. Keywords Arabic · Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) · grapho-phonemic knowledge · Hebrew · Letters · Novel phoneme spelling
alppi.eu, 2008
This research investigates the absorption process of native-born Arab teachers as teachers of spo... more This research investigates the absorption process of native-born Arab teachers as teachers of spoken Arabic in Israel's elementary schools, and how much of this initiative is the fruit of intended planning policy. In the 1980s, several efforts were made to integrate Arab teachers into the Hebrew school system, but in most cases, these efforts were failures. Up to 2005, no effort of similar dimensions was made to train Arab teachers to teach Arabic in Hebrew-speaking schools, claiming that the cultural gap does not permit the Arab teacher to be absorbed into this system (Brosh, 1995). This is in contrast to the teaching of foreign languages around the world, in which the integration of native teachers is frequent. This subject requires new analysis, especially in light of the results of studies done at the end of the 1990s, which tested local initiatives to teach spoken Arabic, and found a definite positive influence of the teaching of spoken Arabic in the lower classes on the children's opinion of the Arabic language, its spokespeople and its culture – in some cases, the teachers were Arabs.
This study is an interpretive, phenomenological one. It attempts to examine the perception of the Arab teachers regarding their absorption into Hebrew-speaking schools, what are the interactions they face in the Hebrew-speaking school with different bodies (the administration, colleagues, students and their parents) and their feelings in the Hebrew educational system within the framework of school activities, holidays, nationalistic texts, and what can be concluded from all of this concerning the policy of the Ministry of Education on training native Arab teachers to teach the Arabic language in Israel.
The Arabic Language and Literature, 2017
This article seeks to examine the image of women as reflected in the short stories by the importa... more This article seeks to examine the image of women as reflected in the short stories by the important Syrian author Zakaria Tāmer, which were written in the second half of the twentieth century. In light of the theoretical debate on the extent to which men can faithfully represent the female experience, this article seeks to present Tāmer’s work as writing that is by and large free of the chauvinistic male perceptions that were prevalent in Syria at the time, and as writing in which feminist perceptions are expressed with regard to the woman’s place and status at a time when “the female voice” had not yet been formulated in writing in Syria. In many of his stories Tāmer positions the woman as a central figure and creates a new (fictional) world, wherein men and women possess equal rights and status; in other stories in which the motif of the woman’s oppression is manifested, she surprises with her resourcefulness and by “breaking the rules” in protest. These perceptions are expressed ...
ATHENS JOURNAL OF PHILOLOGY, 2014
International Journal of Linguistics, 2015
Literacy Studies, 2014
This chapter addresses the development of grapho-phonemic representations in Arabic as a foreign ... more This chapter addresses the development of grapho-phonemic representations in Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) among native Hebrew-speaking pupils (HL1) based on two studies. The first study employed both quantitative and qualitative analyses of spelling errors among eighth graders during the second year of formal exposure to Standard Arabic. Findings indicated that pupils made errors in 80 % of the words they spelled. Qualitative analyses showed that orthographic representation of novel phonemes, of phonemes with similarly sounding neighbors, and of phonemes with allographic variants proved to be the most challenging. These difficulties were argued to be attributed, inter alia, to the linguistic distance between HL1 and AFL. The second study examined the developmental trajectory of grapho-phonemic knowledge among eighth, ninth, and tenth grade HL1 pupils by targeting novel phonemes. Findings showed that there was no significant improvement in spelling accuracy over time. Possible causes for such slow growth in spelling accuracy despite increased exposure over the years and the transparent nature of the voweled orthography of Arabic are discussed.
World Journal of Education, 2014
and /ðҐ, and dental: /ṯ/) in the written form of Arabic among native Bedouin Arabic speakers from... more and /ðҐ, and dental: /ṯ/) in the written form of Arabic among native Bedouin Arabic speakers from north and southern Israel (N=666), versus native Arabic pupils from the triangle (N=153), learning in second, fourth, and sixth grades. Three tasks were constructed for this study: real word dictation, pseudo-word dictation, and real word recognition. The results show significantly higher scores for spelling among pupils from the triangle versus Bedouin pupils from southern and north Israel in the second grade. Also, Bedouin males from southern Israel scored significantly less than their female counterparts in the group and from all other male pupils who participated in this study at all ages. It is suggested that the gap is unnecessarily gender-oriented, but mainly affected by socioeconomic aspects and by the lack of appropriate teacher training for this community.
Reading and Writing, 2013
It has been suggested that linguistic proximity affects the ease of acquisition between typologic... more It has been suggested that linguistic proximity affects the ease of acquisition between typologically similar languages, due to the fact that the languages have shared phonological and orthographic properties (Koda, 2008). Thus, a native Hebrew speaker learning Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) would be expected to easily develop linguistic proficiency. This study examined the developmental trajectory for spelling in Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) among native Hebrew speaking adolescents, with specific attention to the development of accurate representations for four novel phonemes and their graphic symbols (ع, ح, ق, ص). The sample included eighth (N = 119), ninth (N = 125), and tenth graders (N = 91). We were further interested in examining the contribution of orthographic as opposed to phonological knowledge to spelling in AFL. Five experimental tasks were created for the study: real word recognition, orthographic sensitivity, and auditory discrimination, and dictation of real and pseudo words. Findings for the eighth grade replicated earlier findings for real word spelling (Fragman & Russak, 2010) showing 20% accuracy scores. While spelling accuracy improved by tenth grade, scores remained extremely low (25%). Lexical representations for the four novel phonemes tested were also generally low, with different levels of accuracy for each phoneme. It is possible that the difficulties were the result of interference from shared linguistic elements. Finally, it was found that both orthographic as well as phonological knowledge contribute to real and pseudo word spelling. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to language teaching policy and pedagogy.
Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 2013
Reading and Writing, 2014
Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +B... more Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".
This article seeks to examine the image of women as reflected in the short stories by the importa... more This article seeks to examine the image of women as reflected in the short stories by the important Syrian author Zakaria Tāmer, which were written in the second half of the twentieth century. In light of the theoretical debate on the extent to which men can faithfully represent the female experience, this article seeks to present Tāmer’s work as writing that is by and large free of the chauvinistic male perceptions that were prevalent in Syria at the time, and as writing in which feminist perceptions are expressed with regard to the woman’s place and status at a time when “the female voice” had not yet been formulated in writing in Syria. In many of his stories Tāmer positions the woman as a central figure and creates a new (fictional) world, wherein men and women possess equal rights and status; in other stories in which the motif of the woman’s oppression is manifested, she surprises with her resourcefulness and by “breaking the rules” in protest. These perceptions are expressed even in Tāmer’s early stories. Given that the writing prevailing in Syria up to the mid-twentieth century, and to a considerable degree later as well, writing that ignores female endeavor and creativity on the one hand, and mainly presents women as maidservants or mistresses on the other, Tāmer’s work can be viewed as writing that extracts “the female voice” and accords it unique weight even in his first stories. As a writer who presents a high degree of feminist awareness in his writing, he conducts a literary-social-historical reform that embodies a challenge to intellectual and literary writing in the Arab world.
Being the second formal language of Israel, after Hebrew, Arabic is obligatory taught as an addit... more Being the second formal language of Israel, after Hebrew, Arabic is obligatory taught as an additional (foreign) language in most junior high schools for native Hebrew speakers. Yet, Arabic studies are still strongly debated in Israel, not only for political reasons, but also for poor linguistic results of Arabic studies in the Hebrew Educational System; Recent studies found lack of sufficient proficiency among native Hebrew speakers, even after several years of exposure and practice, which put into question the added value of Arabic studies for the Hebrew learners.
This paper seeks to present the political as well as the linguistic challenges which the Israeli society faces now-a-days. It seems that only when substantial steps are taken, on both political and linguistic spheres, Arabic studies may become fruitful for the native Hebrew learners, and for the Israeli society of our time.
This study compared spelling development of consonants (guttural: /ḥ/, uvular-velar: /q/ and /ġ/,... more This study compared spelling development of consonants (guttural: /ḥ/, uvular-velar: /q/ and /ġ/, emphatic: /ḏḍ/, /ṯṭ/, and /ðҐ, and dental: /ṯ/) in the written form of Arabic among native Bedouin Arabic speakers from north and southern Israel (N=666), versus native Arabic pupils from the triangle (N=153), learning in second, fourth, and sixth grades. Three tasks were constructed for this study: real word dictation, pseudo-word dictation, and real word recognition. The results show significantly higher scores for spelling among pupils from the triangle versus Bedouin pupils from southern and north Israel in the second grade. Also, Bedouin males from southern Israel scored significantly less than their female counterparts in the group and from all other male pupils who participated in this study at all ages. It is suggested that the gap is unnecessarily gender-oriented, but mainly affected by socioeconomic aspects and by the lack of appropriate teacher training for this community.
Studies explored spelling errors of consonants in the written form of Arabic among the Bedouin pu... more Studies explored spelling errors of consonants in the written form of Arabic among the Bedouin pupils of the Negev in elementary school found significantly lower scores for these pupils in comparison with triangle pupils for real word task and for real word recognition task, mainly in the second grade. Also, pupils from the Bedouin sector found difficulty with the representation of emphatic phonemes, and represented them by a similar soft phoneme. In order to better understand the sources of difficulty found in the former studies, this study focused on spelling errors of consonants among Negev Bedouin children through two writing tasks. The results indicate that most of the spelling errors among 2 nd graders seem to be primarily phonetic in nature, as a result of confusion between similar sounding phonemes in Arabic. Another source of error seems to be attracted to the diglossic nature of Arabic: native Bedouin speakers are exposed to the Negev vernaculars from birth (L1), and are systematically exposed to the written form of Arabic at school. It is therefore suggested that the effect of colloquial phonology on spelling among diglossic children should be taken into consideration by language teachers as well as by teacher training institutions.
This study explored spelling development of the written form of Arabic among native Bedouin Arabi... more This study explored spelling development of the written form of Arabic among native Bedouin Arabic (BA) speakers in second, fourth, and sixth grades (N=347) from two recognized authorities in south Israel. Specifically, this study focused on guttural (/ḥ/), uvular-velar (/q/ and /ġ/), emphatic (/ḏḍ/, /ṯṭ/, and /ð̠/̄), and dental (/ṯ/) consonants. Three tasks were constructed for this study: real word dictation, pseudo-word dictation, and real word recognition. The results for the real word task, pseudo-word task, and the word recognition task indicated significant improvement in spelling ac-curacy of the consonants targeted among fourth graders, however there was no additional improvement among the students in the sixth grade. It was al-so found that with emphatic phonemes accuracy is significantly lower than with all other phonemic groups at all elementary grades. In addition, gender differences were observed with significantly higher scores for girls in all grades targeted for all tasks. Pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed
This study examined spelling proficiency in Arabic among native Hebrew speaking students (n=50) l... more This study examined spelling proficiency in Arabic among native Hebrew speaking students (n=50) learning the written form of Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) in the Middle Eastern Studies department at one of the largest Universities in south Israel. Specifically, this study focused on ten novel phonemes (guttural, velar-uvular, dental, and emphatic). Three tasks were performed through the computer: a visual task, an auditory task and an audiovisual task. The results support previous studies which found that native Hebrew speakers learning AFL cope with extra linguistic burden, due to the fact that several Arabic phonemes visually resemble other Arabic graphemes while simultaneously corresponding with an Arabic phoneme that is similar to a familiar phoneme from the Hebrew phonemic inventory. The results also indicated that the students had difficulties representing novel phonemes which do not exist in their mother tongue, especially emphatic and dental phonemes. In addition, lower scores were achieved in the auditory task vs. the visual task and the audio-visual task. The students performed significantly better on the auditory task after two years of AFL learning, yet the scores still remained lower than the scores for the other tasks. This may be explained by the AFL curriculum and instruction, which mainly focuses on the development of reading and writing skills, while at the same time neglecting aural-oral skills in Arabic teaching. Thus, it is highly recommended to use aural-oral skills alongside the practice of other aspects of the language in order to establish successful and meaningful learning of Arabic.
It has been suggested that linguistic proximity affects the ease of acquisition between typologic... more It has been suggested that linguistic proximity affects the ease of acquisition between typologically similar languages, due to the fact that the languages have shared phonological and orthographic properties (Koda, 2008). Thus, a native Hebrew speaker learning Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) would be expected to easily develop linguistic proficiency. This study examined the developmental trajectory for spelling in Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) among native Hebrew speaking adolescents, with specific attention to the development of accurate representations for four novel phonemes and their graphic symbols (ع, ح, ق, ص). The sample included eighth (N = 119), ninth (N = 125), and tenth graders (N = 91). We were further interested in examining the contribution of orthographic as opposed to phonological knowledge to spelling in AFL. Five experimental tasks were created for the study: real word recognition, orthographic sensitivity, and auditory discrimination, and dictation of real and pseudo words. Findings for the eighth grade replicated earlier findings for real word spelling (Fragman & Russak, 2010) showing 20% accuracy scores. While spelling accuracy improved by tenth grade, scores remained extremely low (25%). Lexical representations for the four novel phonemes tested were also generally low, with different levels of accuracy for each phoneme. It is possible that the difficulties were the result of interference from shared linguistic elements. Finally, it was found that both orthographic as well as phonological knowledge contribute to real and pseudo word spelling. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to language teaching policy and pedagogy.
This paper discusses the development of grapho-phonemic representations in Arabic as a foreign la... more This paper discusses the development of grapho-phonemic representations in Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) among native Hebrew speaking pupils (HL1) based on two studies. The first study involved both quantitative and qualitative analyses of spelling errors among eighth graders (N=34) during the second year of exposure to the written form of Arabic. Findings indicated that pupils made errors in 80% of the words they spelled. Qualitative analyses showed that representation of novel phonemes, representation of phonemes with similarly sounding neighbors, and the orthographic representation of phonemes with allographic variants proved to be the most challenging. These difficulties were attributed to the complex nature of the relationship between HL1 and AFL. In order to better understand the effect of exposure and practice on grapho-phonemic knowledge in AFL, the second study examined the developmental trajectory of grapho-phonemic knowledge among eighth, ninth, and tenth grade HL1 pupils (N=335). Four novel phonemes were targeted: /, ṣ , , /. Findings showed that there was no significant improvement in spelling accuracy for these novel phonemes over time. With regards to overall spelling accuracy, there was a small though significant improvement between ninth (19%) and tenth grade (25%) These results indicate that HL1 pupils spell in AFL with very low accuracy rates, and this is true even in the case of words that they have been exposed to for several years. Possible causes for such slow growth in spelling accuracy despite increased exposure over the years and the transparent nature of the voweled orthography of Arabic are discussed.
The present study set out to examine the most common types of errors made by native Hebrew speake... more The present study set out to examine the most common types of errors made by native Hebrew speakers learning Arabic as a foreign language after one year of learning written Arabic through qualitative error analysis.
This research investigates the absorption process of native-born Arab teachers as teachers of spo... more This research investigates the absorption process of native-born Arab teachers as teachers of spoken Arabic in Israel's elementary schools, and how much of this initiative is the fruit of intended planning policy. In the 1980s, several efforts were made to integrate Arab teachers into the Hebrew school system, but in most cases, these efforts were failures. Up to 2005, no effort of similar dimensions was made to train Arab teachers to teach Arabic in Hebrew-speaking schools, claiming that the cultural gap does not permit the Arab teacher to be absorbed into this system (Brosh, 1995). This is in contrast to the teaching of foreign languages around the world, in which the integration of native teachers is frequent. This subject requires new analysis, especially in light of the results of studies done at the end of the 1990s, which tested local initiatives to teach spoken Arabic, and found a definite positive influence of the teaching of spoken Arabic in the lower classes on the children's opinion of the Arabic language, its spokespeople and its culture – in some cases, the teachers were Arabs.
This study is an interpretive, phenomenological one. It attempts to examine the perception of the Arab teachers regarding their absorption into Hebrew-speaking schools, what are the interactions they face in the Hebrew-speaking school with different bodies (the administration, colleagues, students and their parents) and their feelings in the Hebrew educational system within the framework of school activities, holidays, nationalistic texts, and what can be concluded from all of this concerning the policy of the Ministry of Education on training native Arab teachers to teach the Arabic language in Israel.
This chapter addresses the development of grapho-phonemic representations in Arabic as a foreign ... more This chapter addresses the development of grapho-phonemic representations in Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) among native Hebrew-speaking pupils (HL1) based on two studies. The first study employed both quantitative and qualitative analyses of spelling errors among 8th graders during the second year of formal exposure to Standard Arabic. Findings indicated that pupils made errors in 80 % of the words they spelled. Qualitative analyses showed that orthographic representation of novel phonemes, of phonemes with similarly sounding neighbors, and of phonemes with allographic variants proved to be the most challenging. These difficulties were argued to be attributed, inter alia, to the linguistic distance between HL1 and AFL. The second study examined the developmental trajectory of grapho-phonemic knowledge among 8th, 9th, and 10th grade HL1 pupils by targeting novel phonemes. Findings showed that there was no significant improvement in spelling accuracy over time. Possible causes for such slow growth in spelling accuracy despite increased exposure over the years and the transparent nature of the voweled orthography of Arabic are discussed. Keywords Arabic · Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) · grapho-phonemic knowledge · Hebrew · Letters · Novel phoneme spelling