Community Based Learning (CBL), An Instructional Methodology for Attaining Professional Proficiency in Arabic: The CASA Experience
Panel 172, sponsored byCenter for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA), 2017 Annual Meeting
On Monday, November 20 at 3:30 pm
Panel Description
This panel presents a model for adopting CBL to develop and foster Arabic language/culture learning at the superior/Distinguished levels. It shares the experience of the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) in integrating CBL into its curriculum and gauges students' linguistic, personal and professional benefits from this experience.
The panel comprises five presentations as follows:
1- The first paper presents the What? Why? and How? of the relatively new CBL course: K?s?wiy?n bil? ?ud?d (CASA Without Borders). It emphasizes the significance of meaningful self-directed engagement of CASA students in independent, real world tasks within the target language community in order for them to attain Superior/Distinguished proficiency.
2. The second paper discusses the learner's experience with CASA focusing on how weekly readings and cultural program prepared the presenter for secondary-source and historiographical research in Arabic. It discusses the presenters work-experience as a researcher for a prominent Egyptian historian as part of the CBL program: K?s?wiy?n bil? ?ud?d .
3- The third paper presents the speaker's experience as volunteer in an Egyptian NGO in fulfilment of the CBL requirement of the CASA program. It presents challenges met and emphasizes the cultural and linguistic benefits that could not have been acquired in the classroom. It reflects on the place of CASA without Borders as viewed from the student's perspective.
4. The fourth paper discusses the project entitled "al-Gharib fi as-Sinima" (The Strange in Cinema), which is an online platform that allows Arabic students to gain cultural knowledge and linguistic proficiency through the study of lesser-known Egyptian films. The paper highlights how this project prepared the student for future research on the history of Cold War cultural imperialism and its effect on the development of national cinemas in Egypt and Syria.
5. The fifth paper presents the speaker's experience of volunteering as a geography teacher in a school in the underprivileged area of Establ Antar in Egypt. It shows how his work exposed him to different levels of language variation and exposed him to the culture of the underprivileged. It underscores the role of CBL in developing Professional Arabic/culture proficiency.
A now integral component of the CASA curriculum, CASA without Borders offers students an opportunity to design their own Arabic-intensive research or volunteer experience beyond the classroom walls. My presentation focuses on my experience volunteering with a small Egyptian NGO during my time as a 2012-13 CASA fellow. Now a PhD student in modern Egyptian history, I will discuss how using Arabic outside the classroom complemented formal instruction and informed my career trajectory after CASA. I will begin by surveying the political and social context that shaped the opportunities available to CASA fellows in the summer/fall of 2012, particularly those factors that influenced nonprofit work. The increasing constraints on small, local NGOs receiving foreign funding, for instance, created anxiety in the workplace – including at the renowned women’s development organization where I worked. My firsthand experience, however, informed my understanding of the Egyptian NGO landscape when I took a job with an international organization operating in Egypt immediately after completing the CASA program. In addition to the cultural education provided by the CASA without Borders experience, I will address the linguistic benefits and challenges particular to my project and those more broadly applicable to the initiative. For example, I will discuss the bilingualism or code-switching common in the NGO environment: in order to win grants and implement projects on the community level, staff had to function equally comfortably in international spheres and win the trust of local women with minimal education. Focusing on skills I could not have learned in the classroom, I will discuss my role – expected and actual – as the only foreigner within the organization at the time. My presentation will conclude with reflections on the place of CASA without Borders within the larger CASA program, as viewed from the student’s perspective, and the benefits of CASA as a whole to academic and professional development.
Before arriving to Cairo to study Arabic at the Centre for Advanced Arabic Study In Cairo (CAASIC), I was aware that classes are only part of language education. My goal was to develop my language and culture proficiency level to professional functional proficiency through practicing my language in the target environment. Hence, “CASA without borders”, a community based learning component of the CAASIC curriculum, was the course I was most excited for in the Spring of 2015.
This paper will present my experience volunteering as a geography teacher in a school in the underprivileged area of Establ Antar. During the course of CAASIC, I became ever more comfortable with Arabic that is spoken and written by adult educated Egyptians but, before my experience in Establ Antar, I could not not understand the lisps of children and the elderly, nor the accent of the very poor. I was embarrassed to acknowledge that I could read a report about poverty in Arabic, but I couldn’t communicate with the people it was written about.
I will discuss aspects of the culture of the poor in Egypt in relation to the young students' lives and education. In doing so, I will talk from firsthand experience about early marriages that took place in the community, the inspiring teachers I met, the children that dropped out of school to drive tok-toks, and the amount of geography that the students were aware of. I will also detail a field trip I took with the students to an officers’ club in Nasr City.
However counterintuitive it may sound, this experience developed and enhanced my language skills such that I could communicate with people who had dropped out of grade school.
Over the past fifty years, the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad (CASA) has proven to be a model of nuanced Arabic language pedagogy that has equipped generations of American students with the tools required to be both successful researchers and talented Arabic speakers. CASA’s year-long intensive immersion program is one of the few remaining opportunities for students to study Arabic abroad for an extended period of time with financial support. Beyond the limitations of a conventional classroom-based approach to learning, CASA’s numerous extracurricular components—such as weekly Culture Program excursions—and the community-based learning initiative “K?s?wiy?n bil? ?ud?d” provide students with unique opportunities to activate their knowledge of Arabic in real time through direct engagement with journalists, writers, historians, cultural figures, and even politicians. In this presentation, I will discuss my own experience as a 2015-2016 Center for Arabic Study Abroad Fellow at the American University in Cairo. First I will focus my comments on the cultural excursions organized for students in the program, highlighting how a meeting we had with a local newspaper’s editorial staff prepared me to undertake an independent project in the spring semester. Second, I will discuss the project I undertook for the spring semester course “K?s?wiy?n bil? ?ud?d,” entitled “al-Gharib fi as-Sinima” (The Strange in Cinema), which is an online platform designed to allow Arabic students to simultaneously gain cultural knowledge and linguistic proficiency through the study of lesser-known Egyptian films. In conclusion, I will discuss how CASA’s attention to my own motivations as a student of Arabic, especially through the K?s?wiy?n bil? ?ud?d spring semester elective, have prepared me for my future career in academia. Whether it was while undertaking my first archival research project at Dar al-Kutub for a class on Modern Arabic literature or visiting with filmmakers to track down screenplays I needed for my blog, CASA has prepared me unlike any other program to carry out my current research on the history of Cold War cultural imperialism and its effect on the development of national cinemas in Egypt and Syria.
