Using Arabic and Arab American Literature in the Arabic Language Classroom

Описание: In this webinar, Professor Hassan will demonstrate approaches to teaching literature in the Arabic classroom to foster students’ intercultural communicative competence (ICC) (Byram 2021). In this pedagogical approach, Arabic literary texts and films serve as dual conduits for language development and cultural exploration. The curricula integrates works such as Taha Hussein’s The Days, the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, short stories, and subtitled Arabic films to build cultural insight and linguistic skills. To address some of the challenges of this approach such as balancing linguistic focus with appropriate levels, instructional design is specifically tailored to proficiency: beginners engage with short texts and film clips using intensive scaffolding; intermediate learners tackle short stories with guided discussion and creative writing; while advanced students analyze abridged or full novels and films with less direct guidance. Multimodal tiered activities such as lexical mapping, oral reflections and in-class dramatization, reinforce language skills and cultural perspective-taking. The multimodal approach acknowledges students as agentive and creative meaning-makers (Rowsell et al. 2013). Student responses demonstrated measurable growth in both vocabulary acquisition and intercultural reflection, with pre- and post-assessments based on Byram’s ICC model, students showed improvement in cultural awareness metrics and growing interest in Arabic language and literature.

Mohamed Hassan is a senior lecturer in Arabic at Amherst College and Director of the New England Arabic Teachers Council (NE ATC). His research interests include Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language, translation studies, and critical sociolinguistics. He is a contributing editor of Metamorphoses, the Five College Journal on Literary Translation. He is a co-translator of African Folklore: An Encyclopedia into Arabic. His published book chapters include: “Reshaping Social Practice in Post-Arab Spring Egypt: Expression of Identity and Affiliation in New Media.” In Cultural Production and Social Movements After the Arab Spring: Nationalism, Politics and Transnational Identity. IB Tauris, Bloomsbury, 2021, and “Religious Minority Representations in Arabic Language” in The Routledge Handbook of Language and Religion. Routledge, 2023 in addition to multiple published translations.