LLRC Faculty Spotlight

Students from Diverse Cultures Mix, Learn, and Break Down Cultural Barriers  

Professor Honaida Ahyad began teaching Arabic at SBU in 2022. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from SBU in 2019 and has three years of experience teaching Arabic and its culture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) before joining  SBU.

Professor Ahyad has engaged in multiple creative grant-funded research and educational projects that help students and the general public overcome cultural barriers at both UIUC and SBU. For example, she has translated an Arabic novel written in the Makkah dialect into English, where she encountered numerous sociolinguistic, sociocultural, and sociopolitical challenges in translation. She presented her research results at a colloquium and now plans to publish her translation. Collaborating with Prince Sultan University (PSU) in Saudi Arabia, she has organized a student exchange program for UIUC students as well as virtual cultural exchange programs for UIUC and SBU students. She has also organized on-campus Arabic cultural events and Arabic Brown Bag meetings, where SBU students can openly discuss their concerns about their language skills and various topics related to their cultural identities with fellow students. This program has been empowering students to gain confidence to learn standard Arabic.

Each of her classes at SBU typically consists of heritage speakers of Arabic (15%), students without any Arabic background (15%), and Muslim students (70%). The Muslim students in her class primarily speak Urdu, Bengali, Afghani, Chinese, and other languages and come from diverse ethnic backgrounds. They have the ability to read Arabic script but have limited reading comprehension skills. Professor Ahyad says:

“My students work collaboratively in my class. Arabic heritage language speakers bring Arabic cultural traditions to class and share  them with others. Muslim students help other students connect script characters to read Arabic texts. Students without any Arabic background ask insightful questions, helping themselves and others learn about Arabic culture more deeply.”

Through such in-depth collaboration to understand the diverse cultures surrounding the Arabic language, one of her students successfully earned the prestigious Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) and traveled to Oman this year.

What she needs for her Arabic program the most now is a physical space for her students to gather and practice Arabic and converse outside of class time on campus. Her message to SBU students and the public is:

“Learn both Arabic and Hebrew. It is a very critical time. Learn to read both languages instead of relying on the media.”

 

Interviewed and written by Eriko Sato

November 3, 2023