In cooperation with the Ministry of Culture, Qatari Forum for Authors is holding a lecture entitled “How to teach Arabic to non-native speakers”, under the slogan “Arabic Language and Civilizational Communication”.
The Speaker, Ahmed Al-Hassani, said that “the aim of the lecture is to teach Arabic to non-native speakers, developing in them the four main skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. The related classroom activities rely on traditional and electronic educational tools via a smartboard that displays images, conversations and video clips.
He added that the lecture will provide extra-curricular activities such as applying the lesson in its real-life communicative situation, such as a shopping lesson in the market, and through trips and visits to parks and entertainment places, as well as Arabic learning immersion programs. Short, medium and long-term study-abroad programs will be also organized to consolidate Arabic learning in neighboring Arab countries.
He pointed out that special advanced courses will be held in academic institutes and that the program aims to transfer students who have successfully completed the proficiency level, the eighth level in the Arabic language, to study courses in Islamic studies, or specialize in the subjects of Arabic studies such as grammar, morphology, rhetoric, and prosody. They could also specialize in media, commercial or medical studies.
Regarding the teaching methods adopted, he explained that the process starts with determining the students’ level of Arabic proficiency through a written and oral test. Subsequently, they are taught words by means of pictures, before they proceed to learning basic expressions such as self-introduction, greeting, and getting to know others.
He explained that students are taught through a set of words coupled with pictures, so that the they read these words after listening to how they are pronounced, indicating that these words are then used in a typical dialogue between the teacher and students, and between the students themselves.
He added that after the students have mastered these stages, the teacher moves to the next stage, namely writing words, and then formulating words and sentences through seen and unseen dictation.
After that, the student moves on progressively from reading comprehension to analytical reading, in which the student analyzes the text, and declarative reading, in which the student makes a decision and formulates an opinion based on the information extracted from the text. After developing the student’s skill in terms of listening and speaking, special dialogues are constructed based on specific topics. Also, after the student has mastered expressions and long sentences he/she moves on to writing essays in which he/she uses all the words and expressions learned through one of the topics previously addressed.