Linguistic socialization and social identity Arab students in a mixed college in Israel

Abstract

The following article brings results from an error analysis of data collected from Arab students whose L1 is Arabic and L2 is Hebrew. The subjects participated in a Project of Democracy and Co-Existence between Arab and Jewish students, which took place in a teacher training college in Israel in the school year of 2001-2002. The research focused on checking the extent of the variability that occurred in the Hebrew used by the subjects because of their interaction with the Jewish students (for whom Hebrew is obviously their L1). The data is comparative and pertains to the differences found between the achievements in Hebrew of the participants in each one of the two optional groups: the Democracy group, which consisted of Arab students only, (hence referred to as ?homogeneous?), and the Co-Existence group, which consisted of both Jewish and Arab students (hence referred to as ?mixed?). All Arab participants also attended, as part of their formal requirements, a course in Hebrew throughout their studies in the college.