The Impact ofArabic Diglossia on Algerian Children’s Primary Education

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to address the impact of Arabic diglossia on children in primary education by examining the language difficulties that they face in the first phase of the primary stage. In order to achieve this goal, a questionnaire was directed to thirty primary school teachers, as well as observation in kindergartens specialized in teaching languages, Arabic, French but also English, and primary schools. The results showed that a high percentage of the children at this stage face difficulties at the lexical level of the standard form of the language (MSA), as it was found that kindergartens and preparatory schools do not contribute to a large extent in preparing children for the school language. In fact, we find that the majority of children who received some the standard language in the aforementioned environment face the same language difficulties as those whose language skills were not developed in pre-school age.