English and Arabic Language Teaching

J. ELABIAD

04/07/10

“I do not know why I still have problems using many grammar rules in Arabic despite the fact that I have been learning Arabic for more than a decade, and why after studying English only for four months, I have almost no problem as far as the grammar rules my teacher of English has taught us so far,” I told one of my high school friends one day. What reminded of this is one of Faisal Al Kassim’s articles I read recently on the Internet. And it was not until I became a teacher of Shakespeare’s language that I knew the why.
Faisal Al kasim is the producer and host of Al Jazeera’s controversial programme The Opposite Direction. He is also the author of several books including Politics and Literature, and Memorise and Shut Up:The Lost Dialogue in Arab Culture. I watch his popular Al Jazeera programme The Opposite Direction only when the topic under discussion is among the topics I am interested in, but I regularly read his opinion articles published in different Web sites, including his.
Faisal Al kasim was flabbergasted to know that the past teaching methods of Arabic haven’t changed to this day. For him, the majority of Arabic teachers around the Arab world have students believe learning Arabic is more difficult than ascending to the moon. He also mentioned in the article that what made him master Arabic is a book designed for non-native speakers of Arabic. Finally, he advised Arab students to learn Arabic from books that teach Arabic in foreign languages, including English simply because of the easy and up-to-date techniques they employ for Arabic language teaching (ALT).
I still vividly remember that lecturing was the sole technique most of my Arabic teachers at primary school used to teach grammar. That means seldom did they give examples of the new presented rules or ask us to give examples using them so as to check understanding. At that time, I could, for instance, give a clear definition of the passive voice, but I couldn’t extract examples of it from a reading text.
One day, my fifth grade Arabic teacher at primary school was shocked to discover that the marks I got at the grammar written tests were among the worst in class though I managed to recite all the grammar rules when asked. That simply means my Arabic teacher was ignorant of the fact that most students didn’t comprehend the grammar rules they were asked to learn by heart. As for assessment, we were obliged to recite at the beginning of each session the grammar rules we studied in the previous session. Students who failed to do that were, in addition to corporal punishment, asked to write those grammar rules a hundred times or so. The rational behind this kind of punishment was learning something by rote through writing it as many times as possible.
Rote learning is among the methods that were used in the past for teaching Arabic and are still in use today. Last year, I found out by chance that my ten-year-old nephew, though he managed to memorize the definition of a nominal sentence, was unable to write examples of nominal sentences.
There are many reasons why most teachers of Arabic around the Arab world still use outdated teaching methods. One is that they are unwilling to pay so as to attend seminars and workshops whose main objective is presenting teachers with the latest methods and techniques of Arabic language teaching. In others words, they are ready to professionally develop themselves, but for free. If this is near impossible for teachers of Arabic, it isn’t for teachers of English across the Arab world.
Among the organizations that every year organize free-of-charge seminars and conferences for Arab teachers of English, and also provide them with a number of teaching materials, including CDs and magazines are the Regional English Language Office (RELO) and the British Council (BC).
In 2005, it was the RELO that paid for transporting more than twenty teacher trainees, myself included, from Meknes to Rabat to participate in a digital video conference (DVC) on the latest methods of teaching young learners. And at the end of the conference, John Scacco, the then RELO director, promised to send us regularly and for free The English Teaching Forum soon after emailing him our home addresses. John Scacco, of course, kept his promise. In addition, I know many ELT supervisors and teachers of English who travelled to the United States at the RELO’s expense in order to attend a number of seminars and workshops whose main goal is keeping supervisors and teachers of English from the Arab world familiar with new ideas and techniques in English language teaching. Last but not least, both the RELO and BC are paymasters of multiple Arab associations for teachers of English, including META and MATE (see my post on MATE).
After ruminating on all the efforts both the RELO and BC have made to improve the teaching of English in the Arab world, I reached the conclusion that English has become a lingua-franca, not by chance, but by choice, and that most teachers of Arabic around the Arab world have reason to still employ outdated teaching methods!
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