Dr Ghada Khattab
Lecturer
- Email: ghada.khattab@ncl.ac.uk
- Telephone: 0191 222 6583
- Fax: 0191 222 6518
- Website: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/linguistics
- Address: Room 1.05 KGVI
School of ECLS
King George VI Building
University of Newcastle
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
UK
Research Interests
Monolingual and bilingual phonological acquisition; phonetics/phonology and sociolinguistics; foreign accent
Other Expertise
Second language phonology
Current Work
2007-2010: I have been awarded funding under the ESRC First Grant Scheme to investigate the phonological development of Arabic by monolingual and multilingual children in Lebanon and the UK. There are few studies of the monolingual acquisition of Arabic, and fewer still on the multilingual acquisition of Arabic together with English and/or French. There are, furthermore, few instrumental phonetic studies of Arabic. The current study constitutes a first step towards filling these gaps and will include fieldwork in London and in Beirut.
2006-2008: over the next couple of year, Carolyn Letts and I will be running an ESRC-funded research seminar series entitled "Assessment and Management of Children with English as an Additional Language who have Communication Impairments: Finding a New Way Forward". The aim of this seminar series is to bring together professionals from different disciplines to discuss the needs of children with English as an Additional Language (EAL), ways to assess their language(s), and optimal plans for managing any potential speech and language impairment that they may present with.
Selected Publications
- Khattab, G. Phonetic accommodation in children’s code-switching. In: Barbara E. Bullock and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio, ed. The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Code-switching. Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 142-160.
- Docherty, G.J. & Khattab, G. Sociophonetics and Clinical Linguistics. In: Howard, S. & Ball, M, ed. Handbook of Clinical Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008, pp. 603-625.
- Khattab, G. (forthcoming). Variation in vowel production by English-Arabic bilinguals. In: Jennifer Cole, Jose Ignaco Hualde, ed. Laboratory Phonology 9. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2007, pp. 383-410.
- Khattab, G. A phonetic study of gemination in Lebanese Arabic. Special session on ‘Arabic at the beginning of the 2nd Millenium’ at the the 16th International Congress of the Phonetic Sciences 2007. Saarbruecken, Germany: Universitaet des Saarlandes.
- Khattab, G. Lebanese speech acquisition. In: S. McLeod, ed. The International Guide to Speech Acquisition. USA: Thomson Delmar Learning, 2007.
- Khattab, G, Al-Tamimi, F, and Heselwood, B. Acoustic and auditory differences in the /t/-/t/ opposition in male and female speakers of Jordanian Arabic. In: Sami Boudelaa, ed. Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XVI: Papers from the sixteenth annual symposium on Arabic linguistics, Cambridge, March 2002. Cambridge, UK: John Benjamins, 2006, pp. 131-160.
Projects
- Assessment and Management of Children with English as an Additional Language Children who have Communication Impairments: Finding a new way forward
Project Leaders: Dr Carolyn Letts, Dr Ghada Khattab
This is a funded seminar series. - Phonological acquisition in multilingual settings: the case of Lebanese Arabic
Project Leaders: Ghada Khattab
This is a 3-year ESRC-funded research project under the First Grant Scheme
Future Research
My work with English-Arabic bilinguals has made me aware of the need for more work on Arabic phonetics/phonology, so my future research will concentrate on the phonetics and phonology of Lebanese Arabic and on the monolingual acquisition of Arabic. But I also intend to pursue more work on bilingual phonological acquisition because a lot more needs to be done in this area as well.
Research Roles
Member of the College of Peer Reviewers for the Humanities and Arts and Sciences Faculty
Postgraduate Supervision
I would be happy to supervise work on monolingual and bilingual phonological acquisition, sociolinguistics (particularly issues related to bilingual development, but also accent and dialect acquisition), and foreign accent.
Current PhD students:
1. Hussin Kriba: Perception and production of pharygealized consonants in Libyan Arabic
2. Reenu Punnoose: A phonetic and phonological investigation of Rhotics in Malaylam
3. Hanan Taqi: Two dialects, three generations: dialect contact in Kuwait.
4. Wasan AlSiraih: Voice Quality in Iraqi Arabic.
5. Nadine Awde: Phonological acquisition in Lebanese Arabic.
6. Oudha Alenazi: Perception of foreign-accented English.
Previous PhD students:
1. Faisal Al Jasser (2008). Phonotactic probability and phonotactic constraints: processing and lexical segmentation by Arabic learners of English as a foreign language.(co-supervised with Martha Young-Scholten).
2. Albashir Ahmed (2008): Production and Perception of Libyan Arabic Vowels.
External examiner:
Ruba Moawad (2006). The Acquisition of the Arabic Gender and Number Systems. PhD, University of Wales, Bangor.
Internal examiner:
Yu-Lin Cheng (2007). A Study on Time Costs of Processing Mixed-Language Speech. (with Jean-Marc Dewaele as external examiner)
Thora Masdottir (2008). Phonological development and disorders in Icelandic-speaking children.
Funding
2007-2010:
ESRC First Grant: Phonological acquisition in multilingual settings: the case of Lebanese Arabic, £363,525.96
2007-2010:
Agence Nationale de la Recherche, France. 'Construction des connaissances langagières, diversité des usages, contextes sociolinguistiques'. Named UK co-investigator with Paul Foulkes (University of York), Gerry Docherty (University of Newcastle upon Tyne), James Scobbie (Queen Margaret University), Jennifer Smith (University of Glasgow), and Dominic Watt (University of York). Award: 48,170 euro.
2006-2008:
ESRC seminar series (with Carolyn Letts): Assessment and Management of Children with English as an Additional Language who have Communication Impairments: Finding a New Way Forward, £15,325.98
2003-2005: Arts and Humanities Research Fund 10: Acquisition of geminate consonants by Arabic children, £920
British Academy Travel grants: 15th ICPhS 2003; 75th ASA Meeting, 2004, 11th ICPLA conference
Background
I received my first degree in English Language from the American University in Beirut in 1994. I then studied for a Diploma in Teaching English as a Foreign Language and taught in a secondary school in Beirut for three years. In 1997, I came over to the UK to study for my MA in Linguistics and English Language Teaching at the University of Leeds. During that year, I gained an interest in more theoretical aspects of linguistics and in bilingual acquisition, particularly the acquisition of phonetics and phonology. So I went on to study speech production by English-Arabic bilingual children for my PhD, which I obtained from Leeds in 2003. Since then I have been working at Newcastle as a phonetics lecturer.
Roles and Responsibilities
- Personal tutor for the MSc in Language Pathology students
- Organiser of the Speech and Language Sciences Research Seminars Programme
- Fire Warden for King George VI building
Qualifications
Faculty of Arts and Sciences, American University of Beirut, Lebanon
1991-1994 BA English Language, English Department
1994-1995 Teaching Diploma in TEFL, Education Department
Department of Linguistics and Phonetics, University of Leeds, UK
1997-1998 MA Linguistics and ELT: Distinction
1998-2003 PhD Linguistics
Previous Positions
1995-1997 Hariri High School II, Beirut, Lebanon
English teacher, primary and secondary level.
1998-2002 Department of Linguistics and Phonetics, University of Leeds
Tutor for the following modules offered at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels: Linguistics, General Phonetics, Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology, Instrumental Phonetics, Psycholinguistics, Morphology.
2000-2002 Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York.
Part-time lecturer for the following modules: Research in Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Psycholinguistics, Phonetics and Phonology of Second Language Acquisition.
2002- Speech & Language Section, University of Newcastle.
Phonetics Lecturer
Memberships
British Association of Academic Phoneticians (BAAP)
International Phonetic Association
Linguistic Association of Great Britain (LAGB)
Honours and Awards
UTLC (University Teaching and Learning Committee) INNOVATION FUND 2006: Online resource for practical phonetics (with Gerry Docherty)
Languages
Arabic, English and French
Informal Interests
I am very interested in sports. Basketball is my long-standing hobby and I have played it both at a professional level (I played for a club in the Lebanon for 5 years ) and at a more leisurely level at the University of Leeds (I played for the women's basketball team for 4 years). Swimming is another hobby of mine which I also competed in between the ages of 12 and 18. Since 2001, I've taken up long distance running and I regularly participate in two main events in Newcastle: Bladon and The Great North Run.
Undergraduate Teaching
SPE1024/SPE8103: Phonetics I: Speaker, Speech and Language
SPE2024/SPE8210: Phonetics II: Gesture, Segment, Prosody
SPE206: Speech Perception and Production
Postgraduate Teaching
SPE8016/SPE8020: Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology
SPE2025: Linguistics II: Sociolinguistics and Bilingualism