Class

Reading the letters from Iraq.

Daily Herald covers the Palestinian Exchange

Friday, 02 May 2008

To the Mideast, with love

Brittani Lusk - DAILY HERALD

Students at Provo High have friends in diverse places. International Baccalaureate students studying Arabic have friends in the Middle East and they've found that they're a lot like themselves. "At first they are different, but not as different as we thought," said senior Allison Erickson. In order to give her students experience speaking the language with native students and a way to learn first-hand about the culture, teacher Audrey Bastian has students write letters to native speakers and video tape skits they write using vocabulary words and post them on a State Department-sponsored Web portal called the Youth Connect Worldwide Arabic Exchange. Then they receive comments from students in Palestine, and they can watch videos posted by Arabic students learning English as well. Until recently Provo was the only American School using the site. They have been joined by a school in Boston. In one video posted by the Palestinian students, a girl with her head covered used a yellow ruler to point to the words on a giant screen that say "Most people like to hear music," followed by the words in Arabic written in the English alphabet - "Mo'tham annas yoheboon sma' al moseeqa." Provo students use vocabulary about school and daily life they had been given by the Palestinian students and wrote a skit about studying. "Since we're at school we decided to do school vocabulary," said junior Jorgena Miller. Another group made up a skit about their daily activities including getting out of bed, brushing teeth and playing soccer. Reactions to the students learning Arabic have been positive and negative. Students said people have reacted to the sweatshirts they all have that feature Arabic writing. Senior Angela Ford said people sometimes ask questions like "Does your sweatshirt say 'terrorist' or 'I have a bomb' or something?" Bastian said other people are excited that the students are getting the exposure, which she said they need. "Because we are at war with Iraq it's important for students to have an understanding of that part of the world," Bastian said. Ford said she likes learning what Arab-speaking people are really like, not just how they are portrayed. "It's good to see the real culture," she said. "It's nice to break that stereotype that they're all terrorists." To the U.S. Department of State, languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Farsi (Persian), Russian and Turkish are important for national security, and the government is increasing funding to get programs that teach these languages into schools. Gregg Roberts, world language specialist for the Utah State Office of Education, said those languages aren't replacing other languages taught in schools like Spanish, French and German, but that there needs to be more options available to students. In addition to national security, language skills are needed in the world's economy. "We don't want to be left behind as far as the world. The world has global economy," Roberts said. Freshman Jared Ludlow said he enjoys learning to speak Arabic because he thinks it's more entertaining than other languages. "I think it's interesting, and it's funner than I would think other languages would be," Miller said. Ludlow's father is a professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University and his grandfather just returned from teaching at BYU's Jerusalem Center. Ludlow said he sometimes cross references his Arabic with his grandfather's Hebrew. "There's some similar words," Ludlow said. "Some words are very different." In addition to Arabic, Provo high also offers Spanish, Latin, French, Chinese, German and American Sign Language. Lori Rich, Provo's IB coordinator, said the school is thinking about adding Russian. • Brittani Lusk can be reached at 344-2549 or at blusk@heraldextra.com.

Our class meets the governor.

Yesterday we were invited to see Governor Huntsman sign the bill to fund Arabic, Chinese, and dual emersion programs in Utah. Our class is pictured above with the governor. One of the students was interviewed for radio. To the left we are pictured with the director and assistant director of the National Middle East Language Resource Center who made this all possible, Kirk Belnap and Maggie Nassif.

Our Arabic class makes headlines

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_8509194w.sltrib.com/ci_8509194

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Audrey Bastian teaches Arabic at Provo High School on Friday… (Al Hartmann/Salt Lake Tribune )”,”The only map in Audrey Bastian’s Arabic language class at… (Al Hartmann/Salt Lake Tribune
PROVO - It’s an accepted truth that speaking a new language requires that you first must listen. For the Western ear learning Arabic, that maxim reveals itself with almost every syllable. Whether she’s running through a list of plural nouns, or placing her hand on her lower throat to help students locate a particular sound, Audrey Bastian is accustomed to asking her Provo High School Arabic students the same question time and again: “Can you hear the difference?” To the layperson unfamiliar with Arabic, those differences are many, not to mention difficult. Where do you want to start? Arabic reads and writes from right to left. Whole canyons exist between its written form and spoken practice. Its dialects are so bewildering that both the CIA and the American Council For Teaching Foreign Languages rate it, along with Russian and Finnish, at the very top of languages taking the longest time and most effort to learn. The running joke about Arabic is that it becomes far easier to learn after your first 10 years of instruction. Why, then, spend hours learning the finer points of Arabic script on erasable pads when you could be learning Spanish or French, languages requiring four times less the effort for proficiency? As far as the 12 students in Bastian’s class are concerned, Arabic is where it’s at. Two were turned on to it by a family member in the military. One
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hopes to visit Egypt one day with her sister. Another became so swept up learning the language that his father ordered books and decided to study along with his son. For all of them, however, it’s Arabic’s exotic appeal that beckons. “I may understand only half the words in songs we hear in class, but it’s still beautiful,” said 17-year-old Aaron Holloway. For Utah lawmakers, who allocated $480,000 toward the study of “critical languages” in a surprise bill that passed the Legislature last week, beauty is beside the point. For them, the number of Utah students studying Arabic, along with Russian and Chinese, is crucial to the nation’s economic and national security. In prying open the state’s wallet to such an initiative, they’re also following the advice of the federal National Security Language Initiative, which also includes Farsi, Hindi and Korean on the list. That money could translate into more Utah students versed in Arabic, and more opportunities for teachers such as Bastian. Utah boasts a number of high schools offering Chinese, but only two high schools - Provo and Lone Peak in Highland, plus Lehi’s charter middle school Renaissance Academy - offer Arabic. Even by those numbers, Utah far outpaces other states. Brigham Young University Arabic professor Kirk Belnap estimates that fewer than 1 percent of high schools nationally offer Arabic instruction, while 10 percent of universities and colleges do so. More than six years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, those figures either surprise or appall. As director of the National Middle East Language Resource Center, created and funded by the U.S. Department of Education in 2002, and based at BYU, Belnap would like to see the number and quality of Arabic-language programs everywhere improve. His efforts, along with those of Maggie Nassif, the center’s assistant director, have been central to Arabic’s early start in Utah classrooms, said Bastian, who will finish her first full year of Arabic instruction at Provo High School this spring. In the pipeline for a launch this fall is the center’s “Arabic Without Walls,” distance-learning program allowing anyone, high school student or not, to start study of the language. “Arabs believe deeply that Arabic is the hardest language to learn in the world,” Belnap said. “But if you believe that as a teacher, you have a way of making that come true for students. One of our biggest challenges is helping students and teachers realize that students can learn a lot of the language if you believe in them. A lot of teachers tend to coddle students learning Arabic.” The prospect of more Arabic in schools appeals both to those in government, who feel it serves national security interests, and those in education interested in bridging cultures. “There’s a serious need to open kids’ eyes to the fact that people are people. A lot of people outside the U.S. think America is this awful place where people get shot in schools or restaurants, so it’s important for us to overcome the stereotype that all Arabs are terrorists,” Belnap said. Gregg Roberts, world language specialist with the Utah State Office of Education, welcomed last week’s last-minute shot of foreign language funding, regardless of what Utah high schools choose among the federal government’s menu of “critical” languages. At the moment, he noted, Arabic has more foreign policy consequences than other choices, however. “When the U.S. arrived in Baghdad, out of 1,000 embassy personnel only 33 spoke Arabic,” Roberts said. “And of that 33, only six were proficient.” bfulton@sltrib.com SB41 * If signed by Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., SB41 would provide $750,000 toward dual-immersion language programs, which includes $480,000 toward the study of “critical languages.” * Twenty Utah high schools and junior highs already offer either Chinese and/or Arabic. The bill would enable another 40 schools to also offer Chinese, Arabic and Russian. * In addition, it would help create 15 elementary school dual-immersion programs in Chinese, Spanish, French and Navajo. Beginning in kindergarten or first grade, students in the programs would spend half their time learning in English and the other half learning in the other language.

Relief International

Youth Connect Worldwide (YCW) is the international discussion and debate forum of Relief International - Schools Online’s Global Citizenship & Youth Philanthropy Program, connecting students in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Palestine, Tajikistan and the United States in virtual online communities.
The Program has been made possible with major funding from the United States State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Global Catalyst Foundation. Currently more than 70 schools around the world participate in the program.
If you are currently participating in our program, please log in using the form at the left of this page. If you would like to participate, please contact us.

We've had a lot of fun working with Relief International. We made web cam videos of all our students introducing themselves in Arabic. Palestinian students from Hebron have responded. It's been really exciting for us to learn Arabic with students across the world.

America Loves Iraqis | Bringing true change to Iraq

America Loves Iraqis Bringing true change to Iraq

This is our new project. We wanted to make learning to read and write a real experience for us. We are writing to the students and sending them supplies to help build bonds of friendship in a war torn country.

Arabic in public schools??

What do you think? Read the article from ABC News.com which aired Sep 4, 2007 at the start of New York City's public school year.

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=3558134&page=1