Advancing Arabic Language Teaching and Learning

Gregory, Laura; Thomure, Hanada Taha; Kazem, Amira Mohamed Ibrahim; Boni, Anna; Elsayed, Mahmoud; Taibah, Nadia

doi:10.1596/35917

Cited by 7 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…We expect the use of MSA to become less of an issue for future generations given the widespread use of MSA in the education system and the media (see literacy rates and instruction languages in Table 2). [77][78][79] Still, we acknowledge the fact that MSA is facing a soaring competition from other initiatives, which we believe are counterproductive, to expand the use of spoken dialects to the written form. 80 We believe the best way to improve cognitive testing in the region is to promote the use of MSA, which can be done gradually by increasing the lexical similarity between colloquial Arabic and MSA 81 83 For instance, some myths are still present in the general public about the idea that dementia is a normal part of aging, that memory loss is the only symptom of dementia, or that people at early stages of dementia cannot live independently.…”

Section: Recommendations For the Mena Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive decline assessment in speakers of understudied languages

Hatahet,

Roser,

Seghier

2023

A&D Transl Res & Clin Interv

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Projected trends in population aging have forecasted a massive increase in the number of people with dementia, in particular in sub‐Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Cognitive decline is a significant marker for dementia, typically assessed with standardized neuropsychological tools that have been validated in some well‐researched languages such as English. However, with the existing language diversity, current tools cannot cater to speakers of understudied languages, putting these populations at a disadvantage when it comes to access to early and accurate diagnosis of dementia. Here, we shed light on the detrimental impact of this language gap in the context of the MENA region, highlighting inadequate tools and an unacceptable lack of expertise for a MENA population of a half billion people. Our perspective calls for more research to unravel the exact impact of the language gap on the quality of cognitive decline assessment in speakers of understudied languages.Highlights Cognitive decline is a marker for dementia, assessed with neuropsychological tests. There is a lack of culturally valid tests for speakers of understudied languages. For example, suboptimal cognitive tests are used in the Middle East and North Africa region. Linguistic diversity should be considered in the development of cognitive tests.

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