I learn Arabic- The Treasure of the Letters
The teaching of the Arabic language will be activated with the inscription of the first students.
The “I Learn Arabic – The Treasure of the Letters” course includes 150 videolessons and 4 texts related to the subjects treated by the videolessons. The authors of this course are Maria Amata Garito and Rachid Benhadj.
The course is designed to contribute to the struggle against illiteracy in Morocco, and for those people who for the first time start to learn Arabic.
The psycho-pedagogical model
The psycho-pedagogic model, designed by Prof. Maria Amata Garito, adopts a model that matches the synthetic method to the analytical global one.
The video teacher, Dalila Hiaoui, leads the learner into the Arabic language and illustrates the alphabet, its writing modes, explains the grammar structure.
The videolessons are focused on words that are represented by the relative objects, the single letters that form them, the sentences that are built with these words, the grammar that connects the words and builds its communication meaning, its sense.
The teacher from television studio structured as it were the interior of a Moroccan house, presents the objects that begin with letter treated in the lesson; she stops on the picture, on the object shape, on its use in everyday life.
The teacher writes the word, she pronounces it correctly and makes the learner link the words to the pictures in order to strengthen memory and develop the visual and auditory channels.
Second Life
To this synthetic method is matched also the global analytical one and the lessons become a narrative, the dream in the virtual world of Second Life.
On Second Life, on UNINETTUNO island of knowledge we built a three-dimensional virtual environment, that represents a Moroccan house where stories, events and tales that take place in this house are rehearsed. For the first time in the history of Second Life, the Avatars become television actors to represent the Akhdar family.
The Moroccan house becomes a three-dimensionalsetting: the theatre where the Avatar-actors tell their stories, imitate the daily activities of typical Moroccan family and lead the viewer into a dreamy dimension.
The Avatar characters create the story and represent a fact, an experience, a link between sound and picture in concrete way, supplying the tools to enhance the visual function and letters memorisation.
The course includes one hundred fifty videolessons lasting thirty minutes each.
Pre-writing
In the first part signs and forms that form the Arab language are discovered.
Lesson one Signs and forms
Lesson from two to six Explanation and illustration of the alphabet characters
Lesson seven Summary of the characters
Lesson eight Explanation of the vowels
Words animation
In the second part the letters and their positioning inside the word are explained in two ways.
The student is plunged into a virtual world especially created for this course stimulating his ability to learn by dreaming and imagination.
At the same time he is stimulated by elements and objects taken from everyday life.
Lessons from from nine to sixty-seven Explanation of the characters and their positioning inside the word (initial, middle, final). The language phonetic, orthographic, morphological, lexical rules.
The first part of the lesson proposes a visit in which the learner dives into Second Life where, following the daily adventures of virtual Moroccan family, they meet the main words treated by the videolessons.
In the second part of lesson, the teacher teaches how to write words showing the objects taken from everyday life.
Grammar and syntax
In the third part the student/user studies in depth the construction of sentences, periods and grammar rules.
From the lesson sixty-eight to the lesson one hundred and fifty each videolesson covers a specific topic. The videolessons are focused on the enlargement of the cultural section aimed at discovering the history, literature, the legends, the uses and customs of the Moroccan population.
The course was realised by a group of people coming from different countries:
Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Palestine, Cyprus, Italy: Rachid BENHADJ, Dalila HIAOUI, Hind AKKI, Abed Al Hakeem ABU JALEELA, Khalil KHALIL, Michalakis Pilavakis, Maria Amata Garito, Salvatore Micillo, Claudio Percolo, Massimiliano Lippolis, Chiara Sepede, Emanuela Maria Mafrolla, Silvia Bonacini, Antonio Benedetto, Alfredo Confessore.
“They worked all together with enthusiasm and competence to make a contribution in the struggle against illiteracy, the big problem of our so-called “global” society, which still remains a very “local” one, with huge disparities between the North and the South of the world, between the poor and the rich countries. These lessons are as magical bridge linking the illiterate adult population of Morocco with the shore of wisdom, they help to rediscover their roots, their past, the richness of their traditions, without forgetting the present. They are a true resource to face the future in a new light: the light of language.” Maria Amata Garito
Topics of the videolessons: