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Online course: How to teach Spanish to Syrian and Palestinian refugees

From February 14, 2023 until March 05, 2023The workshops will be held on Sundays, March 12 and 26, 2023, from 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. (with a two-hour lunch break).
ONLINE
On Zoom. The workshops will be held on Sundays, March 12 and 26, 2023, from 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. (with a two-hour lunch break). 120 euros (14 course hours).
In Spanish.

A new online edition of these workshops to learn how to teach Spanish as a foreign language (ELE) to Syrian and Palestinian asylum seekers will be taking place on Sundays, March 12 and 26. You can register from now until March 5.

With the cooperation of teachers Victoria Khraiche Ruiz-Zorrilla and Nadia Jallad, who specialize in humanitarian action and mediation, Casa Árabe is hosting this eleventh online edition of the series of four workshops on teaching Spanish as a foreign language (Spanish/LE or ELE) for Syrian and Palestinian asylum seekers.

The workshops will discuss the process to apply for asylum in Spain and the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language (Spanish/LE, or ELE) at official intake centers and charitable non-governmental organizations, while also introducing basic concepts about the Levantine dialectal variety of Arabic and useful sociocultural information to promote empathy with the students that Spanish-language teachers will come across in this field of activity.

Contents
The workshops will cover three main subject areas:

(1) They will take an in-depth look at the cognitive and emotional implications which the asylum application procedure itself has on the applicants’ learning process, and the main features of these types of classrooms for Spanish as a foreign language, with students who are extremely heterogeneous in terms of skill level and origins. Along these lines, specific strategies will also be developed, which the Spanish/LE teacher can put into practice in such contexts, and a series of the most common linguistic and pragmalinguistic errors among Arabic-speaking students of Syrian and Palestinian origin when communicating in Spanish will be discussed, assessing the potential for transference from Arabic and second languages such as English and French;

(2) introduction to the environments from which these students arrive, examining the origin and development of the conflicts that have led to the situations of the refugee and displaced persons from Syria and Palestine;

(3) elementary expressions in Levantine Arabic, as well as sociocultural contents, which enables teachers, humanitarian workers and mediators to receive and care for the intended beneficiaries of the information learned in the course.

General objectives
By the end of the course, those attending:

• Will know what the asylum application procedure consists of in Spain.
• Will get a general overview of the nature of teaching Spanish as a foreign language to asylum applicants.
• Will be able to foresee specific learning difficulties among their Arabic-speaking students and take the resulting action to remedy them.
• Will be able to understand and effectively use basic expressions in the Levantine dialect of Arabic, which will help them promote empathy in the classroom.
• Will have developed their intercultural skills.

Target profile
Teachers of Spanish as a foreign language, aid workers, staff and volunteers of humanitarian organizations, officials of refugee reception centers and those interested in teaching Spanish as a foreign language and Spanish as a foreign language to immigrants and refugees in general.

Sessions
The workshops will be given on two Sundays, March 12 and 26, from 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. with a two-hour lunch break, and a total duration of 14 hours.

Registration
Registration until March 5 using this form. Places are limited to no more than 25 attendees.

Once the course is confirmed, you will be sent an email message with the information needed to make payment by bank transfer, which you must completed by March 10.

On March 10, once the payment has been made, you will be sent the link with the online connection, course materials and initially needed documents. You will be given a certificate of attendance at the end of the course
Online course: How to teach Spanish to Syrian and Palestinian refugees
Sunday, March, 12, 2023
· Workshop 1, from 10:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
What is a refugee?: The right of asylum and subsidiary protection. The Syrian and Palestinian cases (Victoria Khraiche Ruiz-Zorrilla)

· Workshop 2, from 3:30 to 7:00 p.m.
Introduction the Levantine dialect of Arabic. Language and Culture I (Nadia Jallad)

Sunday, March 26, 2023
Workshop 3, from 10:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Teaching Spanish to Arabic speakers from Syria and Palestine in a heterogeneous classroom environment (Victoria Khraiche Ruiz-Zorrilla)

· Workshop 4, from 3:30 to 7:00 p.m.
Introduction the Levantine dialect of Arabic. Language and Culture II. (Nadia Jallad)
Victoria Khraiche Ruiz-Zorrilla has a PhD in Semitic Studies from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Arabic Philology and has a Master’s degree in Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language. She has been a lecturer of Spanish at the University of Damascus and a contributing educator at the Cervantes Institutes in that capital city and Cairo. Moreover, she was a teacher of Spanish as a foreign language in the programs given by Asilim (Association for the Linguistic Integration of Immigrants in Madrid) at the Refugee Reception Center (CAR) in Alcobendas, at La Casa Encendida and at its own headquarters. At present, she is an associate Arabic Literature professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) and a Spanish language teacher at the Fundación Ortega-Marañón in Toledo, activities which she combines with translation and teacher training for Spanish as a foreign language (ELE).

Nadia Jallad has a bachelor’s degree in Management and Business Administration from the European University in Damascus and is a graduate in Asia and Africa Studies with a Master’s degree in Contemporary Arab and Islamic Studies from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Jallad worked in Syria as a project director within several international oil companies, and as a teacher and trainer of adults and children for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Since she arrived in Spain in 2011, she has received training on teaching the Arabic language, having specialized in teaching Levantine Arabic and Arabic for business. She has taught courses in the Levantine dialect and Standard Arabic at various centers of learning and at Asilim, where she is responsible for their Arabic teaching programs. Since 2015, she has been teaching Arabic classes at Casa Árabe’s Arabic Language Center and has given various workshops on Levantine Arabic culture.

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