Ghazi Abuhakema, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Arabic

Ghazi Abuhakema is an Associate Professor and has served as the Director of Asian Studies at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. He has a Ph.D. in Foreign Language Education specializing in Applied Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin.

He has taught Arabic language and culture, as well as Middle Eastern Studies, at several universities and colleges. Ghazi Abuhakema is highly skilled in language assessment, a certified tester and trainer, has mentored language proficiency testers and raters and serves as a consultant for ACTFL.

He is also a certified online instructor and works as a consultant for the Distance Education Accrediting Agency. He has received teaching awards and has developed instructional materials for various institutions. Ghazi Abuhakema has co-authored a textbook series on teaching Arabic as a foreign language. He has published papers in reputable journals and serves as a reviewer for Foreign Language Annals and other journals.

Education

University of Texas at Austin (UT) 
Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics

Saint Michael’s College, Vermont 
M.A., Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL)

Bir-Zeit University, West Bank. - Arabic and English combination
High Diploma in Translation

Al-Yarmouk University, Jordan 
B.A. in English Language and Literature

Certifications:

  • 2014-2018 American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Assessment of Performance toward Proficiency in Languages (AAPPL), Full Certification
  • 2014-2018 American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Writing Proficiency Test (WPT), Modern Standard Arabic, Full Certification
  • 2012 - Present Interagency Language Review (ILR) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), Full Certification (testing all proficiency levels)
  • 2011 - Present Defense Language Proficiency Test 5 (DLPT5) External Reviewer Certification (Listening and reading)
  • 2002 - Present American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), Modern Standard Arabic, Full Certification
  • 2002 - Present Translation Certification, Association of Arabic Translators - Beirut

 

Research Interests

Ghazi is an applied linguist and his main interests include heritage learners, learner corpora, discourse analysis, the teaching of culture in foreign language classroom settings, and the use of technology in the classroom.

 

Courses Taught


Honors and Awards

Honors and Awards

Spring, 2011, 2012, and 2013 — Nominated for College of Charleston Distinguished Teacher Award

Spring, 2010—  College of Charleston Teaching Excel Award

1997-1999 — Fulbright Scholarship (MA in TESL)

Fellowships and Grants

Spring, 2013 —  College of Charleston, creating audio material for a language textbook ($2,500)

Spring 2011 —  OPI/ILR Full Certification, funded by ACTFL

Summer, 2011 — College of Charleston, Research Grant ($2,000)

Fall, 2010—  College of Charleston LCWA Murray Grant, developing a study abroad program in Arabic ($2,000+).

2009 —  College of Charleston LCWA Murray Grant (organizing a Middle Eastern film festival in collaboration with Jewish Studies, ($2,000)

1999 - 200 —  Full teaching assistantship, Department of Middle Eastern Studies at UT-Austin.

2001 - 2004 —  Full assistant instructorship, Department of Middle Eastern Studies at UT-Austin

1997 - 1999 —  Fulbright (MA in TESL), St. Michael’s College, Colchester, VT.

1985 - 1989 —  Assistantship from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for the Palestinian People (U.N.R.W.A.) to study at al-Yarmouk University in Jordan and to obtain a B. A. in English Language and Literature.

 

Publications

Books and Textbooks

  •  Hakini Arabi: Palestinian and Jordanian Colloquial Arabic for Beginners, (textbook), The University of Texas Press (Under Review).
  • Kalima wa Nagham: Learning Arabic as a Foreign Language, Incorporating Music with Methodology. (Arabic language textbook series). University of Texas Press. (Forthcoming, August 2014)
  • Arabic Vitamins: Arabic Language Instructional Aids for Self Study. Language Resource Center, Augusta, GA, 2010. Co-written with Ramin Sarraf and Michael Hillman.
  • Arabic Guaranteed: A Beginning Course in Modern Standard Arabic (an audio textbook). Berlitz Publishing, 2007.

Articles in Refereed Journals and Chapters in Edited Volumes

  •  “Teaching of Arabic as a Foreign Language: Current status, best practices and immediate challenges,” in K. Abu Amsha, (Ed.), Best Practices of Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language by the Most Prominent Theoreticians and Educators of Arabic in the East and the West. (Forthcoming, 2014)
  •  “Code switching in Arabic written advertisements: Patterns, aspects, and the question of prestige and standardization,” The Internet Journal of Language, Culture and Discourse, 38, 173-186, 2013.
  •  “Heritage and non-heritage language learners in Arabic classrooms: Inter and Intra-group beliefs, attitudes and perceptions,” Journal of the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (JNCOLCTL), 12, 73-106, 2012.
  •  “Rhetorical properties and generic structure analysis of Christian and Muslim obituaries: The case of Egyptian daily newspaper Al-Ahram,” Al-Arabiyya, 44-45, (pp. 65-86). Published by Georgetown University Press, 2011-2012. Co-written with Sadam Issa.
  •  “The Somali Youth League constitution: a handwritten Arabic copy (c. 1947?) from the Ethiopian security forces archives in Harär,” Journal of Eastern African Studies, 4, 3: 450-66, 2010. Co-written with Tim Carmichael.
  •  “ARIDA: An Arabic interlanguage database and its applications: A pilot study,” Journal of the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (JNCOLCTL), 7, 161-184, 2009. Co-written with Anna Feldman and Eileen Fitzpatrick.
  •   “The cultural component of Middlebury Arabic program: Students’ needs assessment.” Texas Papers on Foreign Language Education, Vol. 10 (pp. 1-17), 2005.

Articles in Peer-Reviewed Conference Proceedings

  •  “Error annotation of the Arabic learner corpus: A new error tagset,” in the Proceedings of the International Conference of the German Society for Computational Linguistics and Language Technology.” (pp. 14-22). Springer, September 2013.
  •  “Al-WaHa: A virtual study-abroad program in studying Arabic,” in N. Akhtarkhavari and M. Alosh (Eds.), Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language (pp. 197-210). DePaul University, 2009.
  •  “A new Arabic interlanguage database: Collection, annotation, analysis. In the Proceedings of CALICO on Automatic Analysis of Learner Language: Bridging Foreign Language Teaching Needs and NLP Possibilities.” March 18-19, 2008. San Francisco, CA, 2008. Co-written with Anna Feldman and Eileen Fitzpatrick.
  •  “ARIDA: An Arabic interlanguage database and its Applications: A pilot study,” The Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society. Coconut Grove, Florida, 2008. Co-written with Anna Feldman and Eileen Fitzpatrick. http://chss.montclair.edu/~feldmana/publications/flairs-2008.pdf
  •  “Annotating an Arabic learner corpus for errors,” The 6th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC). Marrakech, Morocco.2008. Co-written with Anna Feldman and Eileen Fitzpatrick.  http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2008/.

 Published Book Reviews

  •  Modern Arabic: Structures, Functions, and Varieties by Clive Holes, Middle Eastern Studies Association Bulletin, Volume 39(1), 2005, (pp. 131-133).
  • Dictionary of Syrian Arabic: English-Arabic. By Karl Stowasser & Moukhtar Ani, MESA Bulletin, Volume 39(2), 2005 (pp. 285-286).
  • Formal Spoken Arabic: FAST Course with MP3 Files. Karin Ryding and Abdelnour Zaiback, MESA Bulletin, Volume 40(2), 2006, (145-146).