Enseñanza del árabe hacía la competencia funcional

Interaction, listening, and comprehension are identified as key skills, as well as basics for building the competence in foreign languages of non-native speakers. Listening and comprehension constitute the first steps in replicating speech, and interacting with other speakers becomes the basis on which we build communication and succeed in achieving the goals posed by the European Council, for example, in term of “performance” and “know how”. For what Arabic is concerned, the mastery of one colloquial register (or spoken or informal) is required by daily practice, for interacting effectively with others. Neglecting all the above considerations, the majority of Arabic teachers introduce early on the study of the classical variety (or standard or formal), starting from elementary levels. They likely without notice commit a procedural and pragmatic mistake. Ryding (Ryding in Wahba 2013:16) claimed that Arabic studies have been giving preference to a ‘reverse privileging’ in the variety of Arabic to teach. Priority has been given to the standard variety, which is used for the secondary functions of the language. We rather need to accord a privileged place to Spoken Arabic, for it is useful in familiar primary functions. Alosh (1997: 137) invited to help students in achieving “minimum performance standards”. This “minimum” can be reached through precise planning, setting in advance a specific sequence to cover all the required aspects for skill development. Phonology, morphology, and syntax are addressed according to a different approach, the functional one, which requires commitment and creativity from instructors. Grammar is not addressed directly, but constitutes organizational criteria for the linguistic elements of informal Arabic (and standard Arabic in part) more useful for daily communication.