Leveled books and read-aloud strategies: Addressing the diglossia challenges in the teaching and learning of the Arabic language

• In Event: Using Data for Language in Education Decisions: Part 2: Programming in the Multilingual Context

Proposal

World Learning, through its global education programs, aims to ensure that children and youth develop the knowledge and skills necessary to thrive in school, and in their personal and professional lives. Ensuring that primary school children, especially the most vulnerable, learn to read with expression and effectively express themselves in writing is central to achieving this aim. According to reading experts and educators in many countries, diglossia, or the situation in which two languages (or two varieties of the same language) are used under different conditions within a community, constitutes a major challenge in learning to read and write in the primary grades. In Arabic-speaking countries, diglossia is frequently cited as the main reason for students’ low performance in reading comprehension in national and international assessments. To tackle this diglossia challenge, World Learning, through its USAID-funded QITABI Early Grade Reading Project in Lebanon, has created tools that support school communities. Based on research in the field of read-aloud and text readability, these tools include criteria for selecting classroom library leveled books in Modern Standard Arabic, and read-aloud strategies that help children make meaningful connections between Modern Standard Arabic and colloquial varieties of Arabic used at home and on the playgrounds. Strategies and enriched exposure to MSA have resulted in increases in children’s abilities to make connections between familiar words, in their phonemic awareness of the MSA phonemic system, and the ability to read and comprehend simple familiar sentences. Together, the appropriate books and read-aloud strategies play a central role in connecting children to their prior knowledge of the local vernacular, and ultimately open up their minds to the learning of MSA as it becomes easier and more meaningful. The presenter will showcase the tools created, and explore potential for use across multiple language contexts where diglossia is a challenge to improving reading outcomes among children.

Author

• Eva Kozma, World Learning