The Common European Framework of

Reference for Arabic Language Teaching

and Learning: Implementation and
Challenges

17th Association of University Language Centres Conference –

January 2016

Dr. Rasha Soliman

Arabic, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies
University of Leeds
 This talk
• Background
• About the CEFR
• CEFR for non-European languages
• Examples of Successful implementation
• About Arabic
• CEFR for Arabic
• Challenges and ways forward
• Conclusions
 About the CEFR
• History: The first stages to develop the CEFR started in the
60th and 70th and became established in the 90th (Guide to
CEFR for English Language Teachers). It offers a standardised
framework of proficiency levels, assists in designing
curriculums and assessing language proficiency.

• Significance: It is getting an increasing popularity

internationally. The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher
Education (QAA) uses the CEFR to benchmark the academic
standards expected in learning all/any languages as a
subject in Undergraduate studies. C1 level is current
minimal expectation at graduation.
 About the CEFR
• Can the CEFR be applied to any language? Non-European,
Signed language, Latin, Diglossic Languages e.g. Arabic?

A language learning program based on the CEFR can be:

– global, bringing a learner forward in all dimensions of language
proficiency and communicative competence;
– modular, improving the learner’s proficiency in a restricted area
for a particular purpose;
– weighted, emphasising learning in certain directions and
producing a ‘profile’ in which a higher level is attained in some
areas of knowledge and skill than others;
– partial, taking responsibility only for certain activities and skills
(e.g. reception) and leaving others aside.
 About the CEFR

• What to teach and assess in each level in terms of language

and skills?

– The answer for this depends on the context in which the CEFR is
to be applied. The CEFR Guide gives two examples of different
contexts (learning a language for tourism and a child learning a
language as a part of school curriculum). The skills and tasks for
each context differ considerably yet each can be scaled
according to the CEFR 6 levels. The CEFR stresses that the
language use and the language user are to be specified in the
framework including the domains and the contexts for which
the language is learnt and taught.
 Examples of successful
implementation
• EAQUALS British Council Core Curriculum –
Using expert judgement, content of English
language course-books and surveys of
teachers.
• The English Profile: Learner-based corpus
• St Giles International: http://www.stgiles-
international.com/student-services/level-
descriptors/
 About Arabic
• Semitic
• Non-Romance script
• Diglossic: Classical/Standard Arabic versus spoken
dialects
• Variations: many dialects that share mostly
syntactic features and differ mainly morpho-
phonologically (Rosenhause, 2007).
• Inter-dialectal skills: An average educated NS can
communicate with other dialect speakers (Abu-
Melhim, 1992; Soliman, 2015)
 About Arabic
• Why is it taught?

• Why is it learned?

• What is it used for?

• Approaches to curriculum and proficiency

level description
 About Arabic
• Why is it taught?

– The teaching of Arabic in Britain started in 1632 at

the University of Cambridge as a Classical subject.

– In the latter part of the 20th century, the Modern

Standard Arabic (MSA) became more established
and more attention was given to the
communicative aspects of language learning (Dickins,
2006).
 About Arabic
• Why is it learned?
1 To interact with people who speak Arabic
2 To travel to the Arab world
3 To read the modern Arabic press
4 To better understand Arabic culture
5 To understand Arabic radio or TV broadcasts
6 To better understand and appreciate its art and literature
7 To read historical texts and literature
8 To write personal correspondence
9 To read modern Arabic literature
10 To write formal correspondence or documents

(Belnap, 2006, p. 173)

 About Arabic
• What is it used for?

– Not much research investigated how much and in

what context the graduates of Arabic have made
use of their language skills (whether it is for
academic, career or social purposes).
– Information about employers’ expectations are
also scarce.
 About Arabic
• Approaches to curriculum and proficiency level
description

– Based mainly on textbooks

– Arabic programs at some Universities and Language

Centres state in their courses description that their
Arabic curriculum corresponds to the CEFR; however,
no scholarly work is presented as evidence of how the
benchmarking and the curriculum has been assigned
according to the Framework.
 CEFR for Arabic – what has been done
and work in progress
• Al-Bujayra books published in 2008: Written by Arabic teachers and linguists in Spain. An attempt
to benchmark a syllabus with the CEFR levels focusing mainly on Standard Arabic with some
presentation of North African dialectal elements

• MESA Annual Meeting, 2010 Defining Learning Outcomes for a ‘Core’ Arabic Curriculum B1/B2
level. Contributors: Steve Robertson, Kevin Burnham and Summer Loomis.

• Dr Andrea Facchin: 2014 University of Venice. Working paper on the importance of applying the
CEFR to the teaching of Arabic.

• Dr Mehmet Hakki Sucin: Presented a paper in the First International Conference on the Teaching
of Arabic to Speakers of other Languages – in Istanbul April 2015. Through funding from the
(Islamic, Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation in Morocco). Dr Mehmet worked on
writing a syllabus for Arabic based on the CEFR for levels A1 and A2. The syllabus was based on his
intuition and experience of what should be a systematic way of presenting the language elements.
The syllabus put focus on the importance of communicative skills and the integration of different
topics using the four language skills. The syllabus is yet to be approved and piloted before
dissemination.

• Arabic Profile: CEFR for Arabic—a learner corpus approach Bjorn Norrbom, National Center for
Assessment in Higher Education, Saudi Arabia - 2014
 CEFR for Arabic – limitations &
Challenges
• Subjectivity: attempts to implement the CEFR to
Arabic have been based on individual efforts
mainly from Language Teaching Professionals.

• The efforts made do not seem to include views

from the learners of what they expect to know
and be able to do with the language at each of
the 6 levels. Attempts do not also include views
from employers and what they require the Arabic
graduates to be able to do.
 CEFR for Arabic – limitations &
Challenges
• Language variation and diglossia: How to
efficiently apply the CEFR taking the diglossic
nature of Arabic into account? Is it better to
develop CEFR-based curriculums for each
variety of Arabic separately? And if so, where
would the inter-dialectal skills fit in the
framework?
 CEFR for Arabic – limitations &
Challenges
• How practical and feasible it is to reach a C1
level at graduation when the same number of
contact teaching hours and course credits are
given to all languages taught at several
universities regardless of their complexity and
linguistic distance from European languages?
 CEFR for Arabic – ways forward and
tools
• Investigating expectations by employers (including PG programs). Surveys and
interviews.

• Investigating expectations and needs by Arabic learners (past and new). Surveys
and interviews of alumni, current and potential learners.

• Investigating experts’ judgement regarding the language themes, the linguistic

elements and variations to be included in each level and the estimated learning
hours for each level.

• There is a need for research measuring the linguistic affinity between the different
varieties of Arabic.

• Investigating real language use objectively through tools such as the Arabic
Learner Corpus , the Arabic Language Corpus , the Quranic Corpus and the
Frequency Dictionary of Arabic.

• Using existing tools for other languages e.g. The English Profile to help in selecting
lexis, syntactic structures and functional topics for each level.
 CEFR for Arabic – work in progress
• Developing A1 and A2 syllabus for UG Arabic students at the
University of Leeds using a holistic approach:

1. Listing the top reasons for learning Arabic (Belnap, 2006; Soliman, 2015)
2. Creating a topic-based list accordingly.
3. Using a lexical approach listing the most frequently used words in
each topic using corpora (Buckwalter & Parkinson, 2011). These included MSA and
Classical Arabic.
4. Comparing the Arabic lexis with the search results using tools for
English language CEFR profiles i.e. EAQUALS and the English Profile
database.
5. Using teachers’ judgement in assigning the syntactic structures for
each topic in MSA.
6. Making a list of essential linguistic comparisons between MSA and
the urban spoken dialects.
7. Piloting the syllabus.
 Conclusions
• The CEFR is gaining more popularity and importance in and
outside Europe.

• The teaching and learning of Arabic as L2 would

significantly benefit from a CEFR-based curriculum.

• There is a need for collective efforts in applying the CEFR to

the teaching of Arabic as L2.

• It is important to make use of objective tools and research

findings in Arabic Linguistics i.e. corpora in order to support
a more robust approach in applying the CEFR.
 References
• Belnap, R. K. (2006). A Profile of Students of Arabic in U.S. Universities. In K. M. Wahba, Taha, Z. A., & England, L. (Ed.), Handbook for Arabic
language teaching professionals in the 21st century. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.

• Brustad, K., Al-Batal, M., & Tunisi, A. (2004). Al-Kitaab Fii Ta'allum Al-'Arabiyya: A Textbook for Beginning Arabic : with DVDs: Georgetown
University Press.

• Dickins, J., & Watson, J. C. E. (2006). Arabic Teaching in Britain and Ireland. In K. M. Wahba, Taha, Z. A., & England, L. (Ed.), Handbook for
Arabic language teaching professionals in the 21st century. Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum.

• English Profile: The CEFR for English. (2015). from Cambridge University Press: http://www.englishprofile.org/

• North, B., Ortega, A., & Sheehan, S. (2010). British Council – EAQUALS Core Inventory for General English. Retrieved from
http://clients.squareeye.net/uploads/eaquals/EAQUALS_British_Council_Core_Curriculum_April2011.pdf

• QAA. (2015). Subject Benchmark Statement - Languages, Cultures and Societies: QAA. Retrieved from
http://www.qaa.ac.uk/en/Publications/Documents/SBS-consultation-Languages-Cultures-Societies-15.pdf

• Rosenhouse, J. (2007). Some Aspects of Diglossia as reflected in the Vocabulary of Literary and Colloquial Arabic. In C. H. M. Versteegh,
Ditters, E., & Motzki, H. (Ed.), Approaches to Arabic linguistics : presented to Kees Versteegh on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday (pp. 653-
674). Amsterdam ; Boston: Brill.

• Soliman, R. (2015). Arabic Cross-dialectal Conversations with Implications for the Teaching of Arabic as a Second Language. University of
Leeds, Leeds.

• Suçin, M. H. (2015). Arabic language Curriculum based on the Common European Framework of Reference: a model curriculum. Paper
presented at The First International Conference of the Arabic Language Teaching to Speakers of Other Languages: visions and experiences
Istanbul.

• The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. (1971). from http://www.coe.int/lang-CEFR