Early Language Education in the United Arab Emirates

This chapter examines early language education in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a vibrant plurilingual context that has two dominant languages, Arabic and English. Arabic is the UAE’s official language, and speakers of Arabic include Emirati citizens who form a minority of the overall population, as well as expatriate residents from across the Arab world. However, English is used as the contemporary lingua franca, due to the superdiversity of the majority multinational expatriate population. Given the volume of global immigration to the UAE, other languages are widely spoken, including Farsi, Hindi, Malayalam, Sinhalese, Tagalog, and Urdu.For the national population, free, state-sponsored Arabic-medium kindergarten education is offered from 4 years of age, while both national and expatriate parents must pay for private prekindergarten education which is offered mostly in English. The focus of this chapter is primarily on early language education in nursery (birth to 4 years) and kindergarten (4 and 5 years) settings, with some reference to the early elementary years (6–8 years). Little research attention is paid to languages other than Arabic and English in early childhood education in the UAE. In light of recent moves to develop Arabic-English bilingualism and emergent biliteracy from an early age through the state education system, the chapter pays particular attention to issues and challenges surrounding early dual-language education. In addition, some recent, although limited, developments in multilingual provision in the early years are discussed. Home language and literacy factors outside formal educational settings are also addressed. Although early childhood language education in the UAE is not yet well researched, key studies published in English are referenced, critical issues are addressed, and future development and research directions are outlined

Student voice: perceptions of fair treatment in a Foundations program

© 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate why beginning university Emirati students might believe they are unfairly treated by their instructors. By understanding student perceptions, the learning needs of such students can be better catered for, and learning outcomes enhanced. Design/methodology/approach: An interpretivist approach was taken to investigate a finding from a standardized survey of student satisfaction which showed that students felt they were treated unfairly by their instructors. Focus group interviews were used to uncover the possible reasons why students believed they received unfair treatment. Findings: Interpersonal or interactional unfairness is the type of unfair treatment most often cited by the Foundation students who participated in this study, indicative of the importance of interpersonal relations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) higher education teaching and learning environment. Research limitations/implications: Although the study is situated within one Foundations program in the UAE, the imperative for instructors to build positive interpersonal relationships with beginning students is highlighted, as well as the need for curricular transparency and ongoing moderation of grading practices, and the importance of informing students about these practices. Practical implications: The imperative of building positive pedagogical relationships with beginning university Arab Gulf students is highlighted, as well as the need for transparent practices such as moderation of grades, and explicitly informing students about fair practices. Social implications: Drawing on data from faculty instructors, the paper suggests that a deeper, macrosystemic level of educational unfairness may also be at play: that is, the unfairness inherent in the hegemony of English, and the disconnect between the quality of the state school system and the demands of university. Until these educational issues are addressed, perceptions of unfair treatment in Foundations programs in the Gulf are likely to continue. Originality/value: As higher education continues to undergo expansion and transformation in the UAE, increasing numbers of academic staff from around the world migrate there, and thousands of Gulf students continue to emigrate to study overseas. This paper contributes important insights into Gulf students’ perceptions

An investigation into the linguistic landscape of translingual storybooks for Arabic-English bilingual children

© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This study investigates the linguistic landscape of eight culturally-responsive, translingual picture storybooks written by bilingual Arabic-English teacher candidates for young emergent bilingual children. Drawing on linguistic content analysis methodology, the study analyses the cross-linguistic challenges teacher candidates faced in creating translingual children’s story books for young Emirati children wherein Arabic and English are meshed, and examines the strategies they used to integrate the two linguistic systems. The study also examines what the storybooks convey, explicitly or implicitly, about culture and language in the UAE where the storybooks were created. The findings of the paper indicate that meshing Arabic and English is not a simple undertaking and that directionality, linguistic balance, page layout, name selections, environmental print and cultural content are impacted by this process of meshing. As prototypes, however, these storybooks have yielded valuable educational lessons

The experience of co-teaching for emergent Arabic-English literacy

© 2019: Anna M. Dillon, Kay Gallagher, and Nova Southeastern University. In this paper we explore teachers\u27 experiences of co-teaching within a new bilingual (Arabic/English) model in public Kindergarten schools in the United Arab Emirates. The main objective was to understand teachers\u27 experiences with intercultural teaching for biliteracy in this context. We interviewed six pairs of co-teachers. These co-teachers represent six of the nationalities of teachers working in public Kindergartens in Abu Dhabi, thereby representing a cross-section of the cultural context of teaching in the reformed public schools. The data highlight teachers\u27 varied co-teaching practices and point to aspects such as classroom management and translanguaging as aspects of classroom practice which are enhanced by co-teaching. Teachers\u27 experience of co-teaching and well-formed co-teaching relationships can contribute to the development of sound pedagogical practices while a lack of administrative support can create conditions which are not conducive to co-teaching. The data also show that supportive bilingual scaffolding and flexible translanguaging are seen as effective components of co-teaching to support emergent biliteracy

Attitudes towards translanguaging: how future teachers perceive the meshing of Arabic and English in children’s storybooks

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This paper seeks to identify the attitudes of bilingual future teachers towards translanguaging when writing stories for bilingual young learners, and to understand the various forces that shape their attitudes. Translanguaging, in the context of this study, refers to the dynamic and intended shuttling between languages or dialects. An assignment in a Children’s Literature course in a bilingual university in the United Arab Emirates required participants to move across Modern Standard Arabic, their native Emirati Arabic, and English both between and within sentences, and to allocate equal weight to these languages/varieties in the meaning-making process. As an ethnographic study, participants’ attitudes were elicited at various stages of the research project. The findings indicate that they held paradoxical and ambivalent attitudes towards translanguaging, and that language ideology played a crucial role in determining their attitudes, as well as the degree to which translanguaging in writing was accepted or rejected

Does size really matter in university preparatory english language classrooms?

© 2020, Western Australian Institute for Educational Research Inc.. All rights reserved. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of class size on the learning and teaching of English in an intensive pre-university program. Four ‘larger’ and four ‘smaller’ sized classes were created, and each class was populated with a mix of students in terms of achievement and motivation. Tutors were assigned to both large and small classes, and tutor quality was controlled for qualifications, experience, and demonstrated effectiveness. When student grades were analysed at the end of the course, no significant differences in student achievement were found in overall, end-of-course grades. However, for students at the elementary language level, class size had an impact on their success. In addition, it was found that tutors as well as students indicated a strong preference for smaller-sized classes at both elementary and intermediate language levels. The study adds insights from a rapidly evolving international higher education context to the existing body of research into the impact of class size on students and teachers

Experimental verification of minima in excited long-range Rydberg states of Rb_2

Recent theoretical studies with alkali atoms A$^{\ast}$ excited to high Rydberg states predicted the existence of ultra long-range molecular bound states. Such excited dimers have large electric dipole moments which, in combination with their long radiative lifetimes, make them excellent candidates for manipulation in applications. This letter reports on experimental investigations of the self-broadening of Rb principal series lines, which revealed multiple satellites in the line wings. The positions of the satellites agree quantitatively with theoretically-predicted minima in the excited long-range Rydberg states of Rb$_2$.Comment: 3 figures, 5 pages in two-column forma

English Medium Instruction and the potential of translanguaging practices in higher education

Abstract In the UAE, although Arabic is the first and official language (L1), English has become the medium of instruction and the language of discourse in higher education in most subject domains. The pedagogical implications of English Medium Instruction (EMI) in the specific context of higher education in the UAE are not well understood, and research is needed to establish what kinds of support speakers of English as a second or additional language (L2) might need to fully access content knowledge in English without burdening learning. Our empirical work hypothesizes that learning content through L2 may lead to more favourable results if the L1 is explicitly drawn upon as a resource in addition to the L2. This study provided undergraduate students with learning materials in three experimental conditions (Arabic-only, English-only, and dual language). Students’ performance was then assessed in three areas of linguistic competence, namely translation into Arabic of a list of English words and phrases, comprehension of an English written text, and translation into Arabic of English words and phrases in context. A series of one way ANOVAs and post-hoc comparisons were carried out to determine differences between the three conditions. The study confirms that overall, for students with an intermediate language level, the presentation of dual language reading materials has a greater impact on their outcomes in comparison with the presentation of reading materials in the L1 or L2 only. This highlights the critical need for raising awareness of translanguaging practices in EMI contexts

The secret language of flowers: insights from an outdoor, arts-based intervention designed to connect primary school children to locally accessible nature.

This paper uses ethnography to explore an outdoor, arts-based intervention run by Urban Wilderness, in partnership with an English primary school. Urban Wilderness are a not-for-profit organisation which aims to connect children and young people from disadvantaged areas to locally accessible nature. Over the course of three afternoon workshops, Urban Wilderness facilitators, a professional artist and teaching staff explored a local park with ten 9–10-year-old children and co-created a sculpture which was exhibited in the park as part of a family festival. Analysis of audio recordings and photographs taken during the workshops explored the ways in which a youth led approach and arts-based methods (i) fostered a sense of connection to the park and (ii) deepened the children’s knowledge about the plants they observed. It is argued that arts-based methods created a sense of presence in nature which fostered close attention to the surrounding environment and reflection upon the children’s relationship with it. The creation of art also facilitated the development of multi-levelled understandings of nature which encompassed identification, folk law and symbolism. As such analysis highlighted the relevance of outdoor learning and a Froebelian approach for older primary school children who are traditionally taught in classroom environments.N/