Parents with children whose speech development is impaired have to spend a lot of money on speech therapy in Jordan - and so only a fraction of children with speech disorders receive the necessary interventions. Jordanian KAAD alumna Dr Saada Bader wants to work to change this. As a clinical linguist, she has been working intensively on therapeutic approaches. "Currently, only three state universities in Jordan offer clinical linguistics as a subject. Yet the need for speech therapy is huge. There are also no systematic screenings here."
Saada Bader pursued her own specialisation in clinical linguistics in Germany. A KAAD scholarship gave her the opportunity to research language disorders and delayed language acquisition in Arabic-speaking children at Bielefeld University from 2006 to 2010. Under the supervision of Professor Dr Dafydd Gibbon, she wrote her dissertation at the Faculty of Linguistics and Literary Studies. The dissertation entitled ''The Phonology of Typical and Atypical Language Acquisition: A Study of Jordanian Arabic Speaking Children" was accepted summa cum laude in 2010.
Saada Bader had already laid solid foundations for this success in Jordan. She completed her Bachelor's degree in "English for Specific Purposes" at the renowned Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST) in her home town of Irbid in 2002. In 2005, Saada Bader obtained a Master's degree in "Applied Linguistics" at JUST and gained her first academic experience there as a lecturer. The decision to focus on language disorders as an academic subject was made in 2006. "Bielefeld University was the ideal place for this," summarises the KAAD alumna today. "I was able to combine theoretical work with field research there. In Jordan, I advised treatment centres on diagnosis and the development of treatment plans. That was a crucial step on my career path." Saada Bader returned to Jordan in 2011 and has since worked as Assistant Professor of Phonetics, Phonology and Early Language Acquisition at the Department of English Language and Literature at Jadara University in the north of the country. "Studying in Germany was a great experience for me, which broadened my academic horizons and opened up motivating goals for me," says the Jordanian lecturer. "It was also an enriching experience from a cultural and social point of view, which helped me a lot with my first career steps in Jordan. My time in Germany taught me a lot: to work with discipline and precision and to believe in my goals and dreams."
The fact that she had to find her feet in a new linguistic environment was particularly fruitful for Saada Bader . As a professional linguist, she was confronted with the experience of how difficult it is to learn a new foreign language. The linguist still benefits from this today in her work at the German-Jordanian University (GJU), where she is a lecturer in the field of first and second language acquisition.
Of course, the path to this point was anything but easy: "In Germany, I always had to fight homesickness," recalls the KAAD alumna. "But returning to my home country after finishing my studies was much harder. You're constantly making automatic comparisons between everyday life in Germany and Jordan, and that makes it anything but easy given the current political and economic situation in the Middle East." Dr Saada Bader looks back with gratitude on what she was able to experience in Germany: "Great hospitality, the support of the KAAD family - and the fantastic experience of making friends with people from all over the world."
