Learning to Read Around the World: Morocco

Former Kindergarten teacher and world traveler Launa Hall is back with us at Book Life to share part three in her special guest series “Learning to Read Around the World.” 

Marhaba! Welcome to Morocco!

Learning to Read in Morocco by Launa Hall

I found the cheerfully painted elementary school on a bustling street, near the curving Sebou River where storks make their enormous twig nests — including at the top of a light pole right outside the school. The school’s sign, like all government building signs in Morocco, gave its name in three languages: first Arabic, second Tamazight, and third French. Under the sign, a mother paused to have a brief conversation with a teacher. So, which of the three languages did they speak together? 

Answer: none of the above. They spoke in Darija.  

An example of a school sign in three languages in Rabat, Morocco. 

Moroccans are accustomed to astonishing complexity in their language landscape. The teachers here in Kenitra, about an hour north of the capital city of Rabat, explained to me that the majority of Moroccans speak to each other in oral-only Darija, which is sometimes called a dialectRule-governed linguistic systems that compose a language and highlight the variation of its speakers. of Arabic and sometimes called its own language, depending on how you measure. Classic Arabic, meanwhile, is generally heard only in mosques and on TV broadcasts, but it is written everywhere throughout Morocco. 

Arabic writing is what linguists call an abjad –– a style of alphabet in which consonants are spelled out and vowel sounds come along for the ride, an efficient system for consonant–focused Arabic. Like languages written in the Latin alphabet (such as English), Arabic is written — and designed to be read –– phonetically. 

Classic Arabic is the language of the Quran and an essential cultural connection across the Maghreb (the African countries along the Mediterranean). This creates the core challenge for teachers in Morocco; they must teach kids to read a language different from what they speak. 

As class began that morning in Kenitra, the classroom doors swung open to the sunlit courtyard filled with fruit trees, I saw teachers meet that challenge head on: they surrounded their young students with written Arabic. Their texts (not a national curriculum, but one commonly used in Morocco) launched into teaching both Arabic letters and Arabic vocabularyKnowledge of the meaning and pronunciation of words. from the beginning. And painted on the courtyard walls –– in Arabic, of course –– were the Moroccan Pledge of Allegiance next to a photo of King Mohammed the VI, and the words of poet Ahmed Shawqi: Nations remain strong with their morals, so if these morals are gone, the nations are gone. 

Sitting in neat rows of desks, children were not only learning to read Arabic, but also learning the vocabulary and grammarThe set of rules in a language that governs the forms of words used in context (morphology) and how words can be combined in sentences (syntax). structures that differ from the Darija they speak at home. Every child in the class, I realized, was essentially a second language learner. 

Public school courtyard in Kenitra, Morocco.

But the distance between classic Arabic and Darija is just one of the complexities in this language-rich country. A third or more of Moroccans speak that second language on the school’s sign: Tamazight, a family of ancient languages spoken for centuries by Amazigh people (also known as Berber). Very few kids at the school in Kenitra were Tamazight speakers, but at another school I saw in a tiny village high in the Atlas Mountains, every child was. The two schools were vastly different from each other, but they faced the same challenge: the kids were learning to read a language they did not speak.

Village school high in the Atlas Mountains, Morocco. 

Like many minority languages throughout the world, Amazigh people once struggled for the right to speak their native Tamazight. But in a powerful demonstration of linguistic inclusion, King Mohammed the VI decreed that Tamazight is to be written on all government signage. Amazigh people today see their language publicly written for the first time in living memory. 

It’s a meaningful change, even if few people actually read it. Tamazight has been written down in its own historic alphabet for centuries, but most Amazigh people grow up speaking but not reading it. Asking around, I found few who could read the Tamazight on government signs. That being said, advocates for Tamazight literacyThe ability to understand oral language, read fluently, and write well. are making some headway, and a growing number of children are offered the chance to study it in school. I met a university professor who felt that every Moroccan child should learn to read Tamazight. “Tamazight is Morocco’s linguistic heritage,” he said. I thought of those children in the arid Atlas Mountains, whose school is right next to the communal bread oven, near the crops their ancestors have been laboriously irrigating for centuries. Perhaps that day is coming when all Amazigh children can read their first language, and their fellow Moroccans can read it, too.

And what about French, the third language on the school’s sign? 

Children in public schools, like the one I visited in Kenitra, begin learning French a couple of years after Arabic, although children in elite private schools often learn French first. Morocco has been an independent nation for many decades, but French is still on every menu, billboard, train schedule, and product for sale. Even handwritten signs (“wet paint,” or “door broken”), those true indicators of brass-tacks communication in a culture, are written in both Arabic and French, and sometimes just French.

I understood more about how deep French goes when I met a sophisticated, multilingual young Marrakesh couple for dinner. I asked them what language they usually spoke together. Definitely French, they said. In French they could really express themselves. 

I asked, “but aren’t Moroccan news broadcasts in classic Arabic? And the King’s speeches?”

 “Yes,” the man confirmed. “But we read Arabic a lot better than we speak it.” He said they both often forget Arabic words.

I wasn’t sure how seriously to take this. Were they kidding? Could two highly educated, successful professionals be less than fluent in the language of the country where they were born and raised, the language all children are taught to read and write in school? The woman playfully picked up a fork on the table. The two of them reeled off the word for it in French, Darija, English, Spanish, and Italian. But they paused, looked at each other, and burst into laughter when they tried to come up with the word in Arabic. “I can’t remember!” they both cried, and whipped out their cell phones to look it up. 

Back in the urban public school in Kenitra, I climbed the stairs to the school’s second story. There I found a teacher, with infinite kindness and patience, working one-on-one with a student who needed extra help (opens in a new window). They sat side by side, repeatedly going over letters together. To read Arabic, a child needs to recognize each letter in three forms; it looks different depending on whether it appears at the beginning, middle, or end of a word. The letters posted in cheerful colors in the classroom windows were all in the initial form; this is where Moroccan children start with Arabic, and what this child was working hard to remember. 

The 28 Arabic letters on a classroom wall in Kenitra, Morocco. 

I encountered more serious attention to learning when I turned into the open-air hallway and met the transportation coordinator. She explained that her school had found a way to address some local families’ attendance issues. “We have a bus,” she said with a quiet pride, “so if the mama is working, no problem. If they cannot come to school, we bring them.” I understood from her tone that this was something innovative in her community, a brand-new solution. 

As we walked down the stairs and through the courtyard, the children I saw were all working with that same seriousness of purpose. They were gaining the language of literacy. 

Key features of a commonly used curriculum in Morocco

• Each letter is anchored to a vocabulary word that starts with that letter’s sound. That keyword’s illustration is used repeatedly to help children remember it; they are likely learning the Arabic vocabulary at the same time they are learning to read it.
• The three forms of each letter –– beginning, middle, and end of a word –– are introduced together. The text gives additional illustrated vocabulary words to show how letters look in all three positions.
• The text builds vocabulary by using scenes from children’s everyday lives in Morocco: in living rooms, kitchens, classrooms, and mosques. 

Page from a commonly used reading curriculum in Morocco. This letter, /h/, is shown in all three positions. Children practice writing the three forms in the accompanying workbook.

Resources

• Launa at Large (opens in a new window)
• Launa Hall’s Field Trip Notebook (opens in a new window)
• Colorín Colorado: Who Are Multilingual Learners? (opens in a new window)
• Colorín Colorado: Multilingual Tips for Families (opens in a new window)
• Nature: Factors Influencing Students’ Reading Literacy in Morocco: A Multilevel Analysis (opens in a new window)

Additional posts from this series

• Learning to Read Around the World: Bulgaria
• Learning to Read Around the World: Greece
• Learning to Read Around the World: Italy