IntroductionArabic Language: History, Usage and Evolution

History and Origin

In terms of language typology, Arabic belongs to the Semitic family of languages. Some of the members of this language family that are spoken today include Arabic, Aramaic (relatively small communities mostly in Iraq and Syria), Amharic, Tigre, and Hebrew.

The Semitic languages first came to light in the Arabian Peninsula. Over the course of millennia these languages spread as different groups left the Arabian Peninsula, carrying their languages with them, into various parts of the Middle East and neighboring areas. Today, it is the most widely used Semitic tongue, surpassing all the others in its wealth of synonyms, harmonious patterns, concision, clarity and eloquence. It has succeeded in bringing out the potentialities of the Semitic family of speech to a higher stage of development than any other Semitic languages - most of which are now dead or almost dead.

Modern Arabic has not undergone significant phonological or syntactical change in its literary form. Even though there are a myriad of dialects in the Arab-speaking world, Fusha, a simplified version of Qur'anic Arabic, unites the Arab population. It is the written language of all Arab lands, used in newspapers, schools, television and radio.Arabic depends on the root system for the generation of vocabulary. As for the Arabic alphabet, it has 28 letters, all consonants - with the exception of three used for long vowels. The other vowels are

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supplied by three diacritical marks which also serve as noun and verb modifiers. These are placed above or below the consonants to bring out the correct pronunciation of the words.

Beginning in the 7th century CE, the Arab Conquests (also known as Islamic or Muslim Conquests) carried speakers of various Arabic dialects, with their religion of Islam and their language of Arabic, out of the Arabian Peninsula into almost all of the Middle East and North Africa, west into the Iberian Peninsula and all the way east to China. Over time, as the incoming Arabs intermarried with indigenous peoples mostly in the Middle East and North Africa, the Arabic language became the prominent language of these regions. While some of the native languages such as Kurdish (Iraq and Syria), Berber (Algeria and Morocco), Mahri (Yemen), and Jebali (Oman) are still spoken in this area, some languages have gradually shrunk. Aramaic, for example, the language that was spoken most widely in the Middle East before the Conquests, is still spoken in pockets in today's Syria and Iraq. In Egypt, the language that was spoken before the Muslims came was Coptic, a direct descendant of the Anciant Egyptian language. Today it only survives as a liturgical language of the Coptic Church.

As a result of the contact Arabic has had with other languages over the past 15 centuries, many languages of the world have borrowed words from Arabic.

Usage

The Arabic language is spoken today by over 250 million people in the Middle East and North Africa. A number of other native

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languages are also spoken in this part of the world such as Kurdish, Berber, and Mahri. Arabic is also used as a religious language by the world's Muslims, who total around one billion people.

The language that is spoken by the native speakers of Arabic is usually referred to as "dialect" لـَهجْة. The numerous dialects are purely spoken and are used in parallel to another form of the language that is primarily written but is also spoken in the media today. This co-existence of two forms of the same language to serve different purposes is known as diglossia. This form of Arabic goes back to pre-Islamic poetry and is commonly referred to as fuSHa

الفصحى in Arabic. In English, it is (elegant or clear language)  العربيةcalled Modern Standard Arabic, Classical Arabic and sometimes literary Arabic or Qur'anic Arabic. While these multiple designations in English seem to offer a breakdown of the different kinds of fuSHa that co-exist today, the Arabic designation sees the different types within a large continuum. This Standard Arabic is standard in that it remains almost exclusively the only recognized language of literacy across the Arabic speaking world. It also enjoys a special position for Arabic speakers because of the large body of texts that has been produced in this form of the language particularly around the golden age of the Islamic civilization. In addition to the Islamic religious texts and the classical Arabic literary texts, major scholarly contributions to the fields of science, medicine, astronomy, mathematics, and sociology for instance were written in the middle ages in this standard Arabic language. Most students learning Arabic as a foreign language tend to get exposure to this standard written language first before they learn a dialect.

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MSA is more akin to the classical Arabic spoken in Arabia from the 5th till the 15th century, and was spoken by Arabs before the advent of Islam. It was the official language of all the areas conquered by Islam until the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258. Until then, there had been no such thing as diaglossia - people communicated in classical Arabic whether in the court or in the marketplace. Despite its obscure grammatical structure, people took it as a challenge upon themselves to maintain the highest standards of Arabic, which they could employ for the most mundane activities in their life.

Fuss-ha was maintained and developed after the emergence of Islam and the influence exercised by the Koran over the public and private lives of the expanding Muslim community. Even Christian and Jewish Arabs were exposed directly or indirectly to the eloquent language of the Koran and the many sciences which evolved from it, such as the science of jurisprudence, logic, discourse and the more practical science of language and grammar. After all, the Arabs and Muslims view the Koran as the most sublime form of literary composition and is still regarded as the highest level of Arabic eloquence and expression.

Educated speakers of Arabic do mix the standard language and their own dialects to varying degrees depending on the situation. While roughly four major regional dialects of Arabic spoken in the Arab world today have been identified, a multitude of dialectic variations can be noted even within one single country. The four regional dialects are divided into the following general categories: Arabic of the Maghreb (North Africa), Egyptian Arabic (Egypt and the Sudan), Levantine Arabic (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine/Palestinians

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in Israel), and Iraqi/Gulf Arabic. These dialects can differ greatly from one another to the point of mutual unintelligibility.

Evolution

As previously mentioned, Arabic was anciently spoken in its original form- the Koranic language. It then developed to be spoken in its standard form, which was a simpler form of the latter. Modern standard Arabic is used today by intellectuals and educated people, in works of literature, press, official occasions and religious practices.

MSA and dialectal forms quietly differ in both linguistic and lexical aspects. In other words, MSA encircles the original features of the languages, unlike the dialect that has a totally different system of words, grammar and vocabulary. The former is only spoken, and referred to as the vernacular language. It is obvious that Arabic witnessed a drastic evolutional development, which was accompanied with changes perceived by many as events that “worsened” the language rather than ameliorated it. This is an argumentative viewpoint that became known along with the increased development of Arabic. Some believe that the Koranic language is the only language that encircle the real features of Arabic. Others state that despite its eloquence and richness, it is somehow hard to use nowadays, comparable to the Arab Peninsula population who were its original speakers. MSA is believed to be the “simpler” and more practical version of Arabic. Consequently, it possesses a simpler lexical field compared to Classical Arabic (Koranic) that comprehensible by nearly all Arabic native speakers,

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added to its looser syntax. Language of press differ than that used in literature works by having a differentiated style, including the high usage rate of derivations (Masāder) along with starting with verbal phrases. Nowadays, Arabic witnesses the phenomenon of code switching and borrowing from other languages due to the technological progress. This has previously leaded to adding a new list of lexical terms originated from Latin and German languages. Moreover, the phenomenon is clearly noticed even in dialectal language especially when communicating via social media networks.

Arabic in the USA

Issues in the field of language learning and teaching have changed tremendously since Arabic was introduced in this country almost fifty years ago. Recent years have witnessed a movement for change spearheaded by university students, their instructors, and decision-makers. A new generation of professors, who are professionally trained in linguistics and language acquisition and pedagogy, have been arguing openly for supplementing, if not replacing, the traditional philological programs where Arabic is taught either as a means for reading text or as a linguistic system per se. They believe that not only does this approach prevent students from realizing their full potentials in achieving communicative skills, it also goes against the results of the substantial amount of research in foreign language acquisition that has been conducted since the seventies. The demand is for more communicative programs where focus is not on reading but also on the rest of the four skills plus culture.

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Furthermore, these professors seem to maintain Chomsky's theory and distinction between competence and performance. Competence, according to Chomsky, refers to the individual's knowledge of grammar and other aspects of language, while performance refers to actual use, i.e., realization of this knowledge. In his view, a theory of competence is equivalent to a theory of grammar and is concerned with linguistic rules that can generate and describe the grammatical sentences of a language. A theory of performance, on the other hand, focuses on the acceptability of sentences in speech production and is a theory of interaction between the theory of grammar and non-grammatical psychological factors that influence the individual language user.

The number of universities teaching Arabic as a second language in the US exceeds 85.

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Teaching Foreign Language Methodologies

Overview

The educational world is said to be influenced by the development that has reached all life aspects. Teaching a foreign language is considered a domain that included so many methods and strategies ever since cultural exchange between civilizations and people has begun. Some of those methods succeeded and others did not reveal a remarkable result. All in all, the main methodologies adopted in teaching a foreign language are briefly presented as follows.

A teaching method is a way of teaching a language, based on systematic principles and procedures, i.e. an application of views on how a language is best taught and learned.

1. The Grammar-Translation Method: BackgroundThe grammar-translation method of language teaching is one of the most traditional methods, dating back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was originally used to teach “dead” languages (and literatures) such as Latin and Greek, and this may account for its heavy bias towards written work to the virtual exclusion of oral production.Principal Characteristics- Classes are taught in the students’ mother tongue.- Vocabulary is taught in the form of isolated word lists.- Elaborate explanations of grammar are always provided.- Reading of difficult texts is begun in the early course of

study.

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- Little attention is paid to the content of text.- Often the only drills are exercises in translating disconnected

sentences.- Little or no attention is given to pronunciation.

Drawbacks

- No class time is allocated to allow students to produce their own sentences.

- There is often little contextualization of the grammar.- The type of error correction can be harmful to the students’

learning process.2. The Direct Method:

BackgroundA reaction to the grammar-translation approach in an attempt to integrate more use of the target language in instruction.Principal characteristics- Only uses the target language in class.- The learner should be actively involved in using the language

in realistic everyday situations.- Students are encouraged to think in the target language.- First speaking is taught and then only reading and writing.

Drawbacks

- The second language should be learned in a way in which L1 was acquired- by total immersion technique.

- It rejects the use of printed words- this objection is illogical since the second language learner has already mastered his reading skills.

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- Later disciplines of Direct Method took it to extreme and refused to speak a single word of the learners’ mother tongue (or any language they know).

- Direct Methodists failed to grade and structure their materials adequately – no selection, grading or controlled presentation of vocabulary and structures.

Strategies Using Direct Method

- Question and answer: the teacher asks questions of any nature and the students answer.

- Dictation: the teacher chooses a grade appropriate passage and reads the text aloud.

- Reading aloud: students take turn reading sections of a passage, play or dialogue out loud.

- Getting students to self-correct: the teacher should have the students self-correct by offering them a choice between what they said and the proper pronunciation.

3. Audio-lingual method:

Background

This method is based on the principles of behavior psychology. It adapted many of the principles and procedures of the direct method, in part as a reaction to the lack of speaking skill of the Reading Approach.

Characteristics

- Dependence on mimicry and memorization of phrases.- Teaching structural patterns by means of repetitive drills.- No grammatical explanation.

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- Learning vocabulary in context.- Use of audio-visual aids.- Focus is on pronunciation.- Immediate reinforcement of correct responses.

Strategies

- Dialogue memorization- Backward build up- Transformation drill- Complete the dialogue- Dictation- Flashcards

4. Communicative Language Teaching BackgroundThe communicative approach is said to be the product of educators and linguists who had grown dissatisfied with audio-lingual and grammar-translation methods of foreign language instruction. The origins to the communicative language instruction are to be found in the changes in the British languages teaching tradition dating from the late 1960s. Interest in and development of communicative-style teaching mushroomed in the 1970s; authentic language use and classroom exchanges where students engaged in real communication with one another became quite popular.Principal characteristics- Learner-centered: the role of the instructor is quite

different from traditional teaching methods. In the traditional classroom, the teacher is in charge and controls the learning.

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However, the teacher here serves as more of a facilitator, allowing students to be in charge of their own learning.

- Communication: language is used for communication. For this reason, the communicative method makes use of communication to teach a foreign language. It emphasizes on real-life situations and communication in context. While grammar is still important, the emphasis in on communicating a message.

- Social context: the communicative method stresses on social and situational contexts of communication. Students learn language in social contexts, such as the difference between speaking in formal occasions and in familiar conversations.

Multimedia

Multimedia is an ideal way to teach language by the communicative method. It allows realistic simulations of communicative situations. Some games for example place the learner in a situation in which understanding basic communication, and social and cultural contexts are vital to advancing in the game.

5. Task-based teaching: Task-based teaching has become a subject of keen contemporary interest, and different task-based approaches exist today. One underlying principle holds for all the approaches – to place the emphasis firmly on activities or tasks that learners do in class. One thing should be mentioned is that, there are a number of features that will make tasks more or less

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difficult. We can progressively give our learners tasks where there are more and more things to think about, and consequently less and less attention available for form.

Why Attend the Training Course

The current report presents the training course held in the Center for Languages and Translation, on teaching Arabic as a foreign language – level A 1.1 to a group of Chinese students. It studies the course from a pedagogic point of view , and portrays the overall adopted methods in teaching Arabic as a foreign language. It also includes theoretical evidences used to criticize and assess the teaching process, along with the description of the process’ elements.

The advantage that lies behind attending the training course and assessing the teaching process is to view the course from both theoretical and practical points, in order to gain from what was correctly applied and be aware of difficulties and errors in such a work. The idea is to work on reforming the wrongdoings when we, fourth year students, would be responsible for handling the course and teaching it to a new group of foreigners. Thus, it is a must that we observe how the teaching process takes place, how objectives are set and how a AFL course is built to serve the wanted objectives. We attended to observe how teaching AFL is conducted, starting from material usage, to working on competence acquisition and setting the suitable exercises, as well as maintaining interaction to break all sorts of barriers.

Training Course PresentationPage 13 of 32

Place: Center for Languages and Translation, Lebanese University, New Rawda

Period: March – July 2015 Number of sessions: 25 (= 50 hours) Schedule: two days per week Level: A 1.1 Course: Arabic as a foreign language Language: Modern standard Arabic Teachers in charge: Carine Elia and Hala Majed (fifth year

students).

Choice

The best choice was to pursue attending the training course in CLT for several reasons. The first is to observe how graduates of the same center prepare and plan their AFL courses based on what they learned in the major (Arabic as a Foreign and Applied Language). This would help illustrate a similar strategy to what we have to adopt the following year. Secondly, CLT opens its doors for its students to attend the training course, providing a practical choice comparable to other institutions or universities who give AFL courses. Some refuse outsiders to attend their classes due to the “secret recipes” they use. Others need a whole lot of so-called logical reasons to accept someone attending their classes. A third reason is that, CLT has its firm structure when it comes to teaching foreign languages. It is a center that conjoins experienced professors and coordinators, who are qualified to “teach how to teach” a foreign language. As a result, working under their direct supervision will definitely come up with positive results. Besides, the center is considered to be a

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milestone in the process of establishing relationships with foreign authorities and embassies on an international level. Hence this is an extra point for the sake of meeting foreigners, teaching them and establishing professional relationships.

Competences Expected To Be Acquired After Attending the Training Course

As previously mentioned, the main reason behind attending the training course is to observe the elements that construct the whole teaching process of AFL. The idea is to inspect all learned principles and their application in a classroom attended by foreigners. We are responsible of assessing the process and remark the main positive/negative aspects based on theoretical explanations. How competences are worked to suit the specified objectives, how exercises are made and given with a particular lesson, and how the teacher chooses the teaching method and posture are among the features we intend to observe. Hence, our main task as fourth year students was to observe and note what is previously discussed, in order to come up with the present report.

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Students

The questionnaire attached in the Annex section was supposed to be handed for students for the purpose of obtaining some detailed information about them. However, due to urgent reasons, the session allotted to hand the questionnaire was cancelled. I tried to obtain some basic information through asking the teachers, who had the information prior the course (when students applied to enroll):

Number of students registered: 15 Number of students remaining till the end of the course: 5 Gender: 14 females, 1 male Age: thirties – forties Nationality: Chinese Arabic level: beginner Languages: Chinese, English Professions: housewives, 1 language teacher, 1 company

employee

The most common motive that led the majority to learn Arabic was to communicate with their families in Lebanon (married to Lebanese men). Others were curious about learning a new language and studying the strategy adopted to teach it (one was a language teacher who was eager to compare language teaching methodologies).

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Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language The teaching language was mainly English. It included some

dialectal Arabic when students who speak Lebanese tried to compare words of similar pronuncation in MSA to dialect.

Using modern standard Arabic was limited to the teaching material, i.e. used to read exercises, texts, audio sounds, etc…

Each session was planned to ensure the acquisition of four competences; oral and written comprehension, and oral and written composition.

Each session included a cultural principle relevant to the theme of the lesson.

Resource material weren’t taken from a single reference, but rather collected from several textbooks / teaching websites and rearranged to suit the pedagogic plan. Both teachers worked on composing audio sounds, as well as setting diverse exercises in an organized way to deliver the lessons’ objectives.

The mostly adopted method was the task-based method. Sessions were based on achieving tasks to fulfill the acquisition of linguistic, communicative and cultural competences. Most tasks were applicable in real life situations.

The mostly adopted posture was a mixture of “teach” and “train” postures. The first is when the teacher presents organized knowledge pieces to students, and prepared the course following a strict plan, willing to achieve the set objectives. The second however, is when the teacher is skillful at exchanging and interacting with students. This was mainly demonstrated when solving exercises and performing activities.

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Teaching tools mainly included the board, LCD projector, PowerPoint presentations, handed worksheets and audible documents composed by teachers (cellphones and speakers).

Grammar lessons were presented by the means of the communicative method; i.e. following the pattern of sensitization, comprehension, imitation and systematization.

Sequence Model

The following is an example of the material used in one session: Lesson 10 ( السينما .(Found in the Annex section) (في

The session, as many other sessions, started with a dictation. The purpose was to remember previously learned vocabulary and practice writing skills. Almost every session started with a dictation exercise, because of the problems faced in reading and writing up until the 18th session.

The following activity was also focused on fulfilling writing skills. It included playing a dialogue, related to a theme taken the previous session (directions and places). Students were supposed to fill in the blanks with the missing word after listening to the dialogue.

The dialogue then was used for fulfilling the oral comprehension competence. They were supposed to draw the directions on a map according to what they understood from the dialogue.

The approach to the grammatical concept was next. The lesson components “ الإشارة were repeated several times ”أسماءin the dialogue. The rule was directly stated (lecturing class –

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cours magistral), followed by two exercises to apply the rule (circle the demonstrative pronoun + filling in the blanks with Explaining the rule included translation (this), and .(هذه or هذاthen pointing to objects in class.

The following activity concentrated on mastering vocabulary (match the word to the corresponding picture).

A written text was then given to fulfill the written comprehension competence. Comprehension questions (choose the best answer + answer by true or false) proceeded.

The last activity’s purpose was achieve the oral composition competence. Students were supposed to imagine an event / story based on three pictures. They were provided with vocabulary list and a group of useful phrases. Vocabulary terms were classified by the lexical field, along with including antonyms of some terms, as well as the singular, plural and feminine forms where necessary. The teacher would read the lists, explain them in English, and give some time for students to prepare their oral composition.

In general, the teacher would depend on translation to explain a text or a word. The same applied for the grammar lesson. As for reading the written text (dialogue), the teacher asked one of the students to read, but then proceeded by herself for the latter could hardly read and pronounce letters.

The cultural concept was presenting the movie’s title لوين وهلأand talking about Lebanese movie world.

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One problem faced by students when introducing the singular demonstrative pronouns was questioning the pronunciation of .(هاذا pronounced as) هذا

The teacher giving the session, deciding to be as formal as possible, showed some carelessness towards those who had difficulties whether in understanding a concept or in writing. Her purpose was to give the course.

She explained the questions (of exercises) in English since they’re written in Arabic.

She read vocabulary words and they repeated after her (more like a pronunciation exercise). This aids in checking out spelling capabilities and filling gaps. Words contained similarly uttered letters ( - , - , ز- ذ أ ع س .(ث

While reading she also explained الوصل when reading همزةcertain terms such as العمل .طاقم

A great advantage of presenting the useful phrases was enabling students to practice the phrases without having to explain a whole grammatical lesson. That was a communicative approach. For instance, phrases included هل

الرعب؟ أفلام الرعب؟ and تحب فيلم أحببتَ Instead of explaining .هلthe difference between the present and past tenses, students will be able to use such phrases and try to do so with other verbs without even knowing the grammatical rule.

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Instruction

Preparation

The program was divided in shifts between two teachers; Carine Elia and Hala Majed. Both worked on setting up the program to meet the required objectives, following a logical sequence. Each was responsible for giving one course a week (successive pattern). While planning the program based on a methodological sequence, the content of each session depended on the previous one, speaking about grammatical an linguistic approach.

Interaction

Interaction was somewhat limited from the side of the teachers. Many factors led to this effect, of which was the somehow the negative response seen from the learners. It was clear that they lacked perseverance and enthusiasm to learn the way lessons were set. Due to such reasons, one of the teacher decided to have a formal attitude, her role being solely giving the course. Communication via WhatsApp was limited for the purpose of correcting mistakes and speaking about attendance and absence issues, rather than building personal conversations or strengthening teachers-students relationships. The formal medium led to neglecting so many gaps and weak points of students, resulting in minimizing the number of students and achieving a barely remarkable success when it comes to meeting the criteria of level A1.1.

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Success and Failure

One of the teachers suffered the problem of speaking with a high speed. Another had the problem of a monotonous tonality, and mispronunciation when it comes to short and long vowels (stressing on sounds more than needed).

Horizontal interaction was relatively high compared to vertical interaction. The reason was that many students encountered problems and needed remediation. Another reason was the difference and variation of students’ levels. Hence they discussed issues and explained to each other using their mother tongue.

On many occasions the objective of the question (when solving exercises) was vague for some and very clear for others. The example of that is demonstrated in the first sessions, in some exercises where students were supposed to locate a letter in a certain word (without knowing what the word means). When the teacher read the word loudly, many were confused and didn’t know whether they were supposed to read and repeat to practice the letter or just look at the word and spot the letter.

Competences were perfectly distributed on 120 minutes each session, along with including the appropriate exercises and activities that well serve the educational objective.

Not enough attention was given to students with learning disabilities, which resulted in many leaving the course or fearing to enter the class.

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The same pattern was followed every session, which made students sort of expect how will the class go on.

The majority aren’t up to date able to read and write properly. Some aren’t able to read without writing a Latin transcription.

Audio sounds used in the course were monotonous and unclear. That was a sign of poor resources (teachers cannot be blamed for they can’t afford high-tech devices to ensure high quality recordings). It didn’t as well aid students in acquiring competences through the means of tonality, rhythm and intonation.

Grammar concepts were successfully embedded in every lesson, for the grammatical elements were previously seen and used. No complex rules were presented.

Two main problems arose concerning grammar. At one level, students weren’t able to differentiate a verb from a noun when they were supposed to classify الفعلية and الجمل

الاسمية .الجمل No systematic method was given to enable them distinguish a noun from a verb. On another level, they had a problem classifying nouns in feminine and masculine forms if the noun didn’t end with مربوطة ,For instance .تاءthey though was فستان feminine since it is worn by a woman. The teacher here explained the concept that a feminine or masculine property is not relevant to the noun’s belonging.

The classes were mainly teacher centered. Spelling mistakes committed by teachers were seldom

seen, and sometimes in exercises. (lesson Page 23 of 32

Cultural approaches were interesting, as beginning from the text / dialogue they worked on (lesson 22), where a phrase from the text is taken and made as a cultural part of the lesson.

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Students

Presentation and attendance

Attendance did not occur on an organized pattern. Many new students would come in the middle of the course and leave (some were seen only once). Few managed to attend classes regularly. Those who lost interest dropped out of the course.

Interaction

They rarely interacted with the teacher but were always ready to speak with each other using their mother tongue, whether to criticize or explain to each other a certain concept or exercise (smart students would play the role of the teacher).

Level and Progression

The majority spoke Lebanese Arabic due to their marriage to Lebanese men. Throughout the course, many showed great abilities to comprehend fast and be able to guess the following concepts while solving a particular exercise for example. Others showed a significant weakness, being unable to read up until the last session. The main reason that was their attendance that started mid-course. The variation in levels created an inconsistent medium that required special attention and individualized remediation. The objectives of A1.1 level were not completely accomplished despite following a consistent didactic plan. The reason might be the irresponsibility and negligence shown towards taking homework and extra activities seriously.

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When asked about using Arabic, it seemed that it was limited within the boundaries of the classroom. No evident usage was recorded outside the class (according to them). They solely used Arabic in class. They only use dialectal Arabic in their daily life activities.

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Conclusion and Recommendations

The training course result described above remains a factor that is linked to several aspects. These include the type of audience, the teacher responsible for giving the class, the level of perseverance to achieve the highest level of success from both members involves in the teaching process (student and teacher). Besides, the amount of available resources plays a vital role in conducting the teaching process. I note a great work done by the teachers who exerted an effort to collect material and plan their courses in a didactic manner, making sure all competences are fulfilled in each session. However, many handbooks and available material that could have helped in planning the lessons were not used for unknown reasons. Furthermore, the usage of ICTs available at the center was absent (Active White Board), and teaching tools only included LCD projections and PowerPoint presentations. In addition, the way alphabetical letters were represented is considered creative, but didn’t help overcome the barriers encountered in this issue. The reason was maybe the limited time allocated for practicing writing and reading skills.

Recommendations include:

- Organizing the attendance and presentation of students to help maintain a consistent level, without enabling new “beginners” to intervene at the middle of the course.

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- Giving special attention to students with learning disabilities in class if the teacher is not willing plan to give him/her a specific remediation program.

- Presenting the teaching methodology right from the beginning of the course, to prevent negative arguments and objections toward the method used by the teacher.

- Reforming material present in handbooks and teaching AFL manuals to help in setting the program, rather than composing the whole thing up.

- Allotting a greater space for interactions to break all sorts of barriers, i.e. breaking the bonds and setting the goal of teaching for the sake of expecting good results, not only to finish the course.

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References

http://arabicwithoutwalls.ucdavis.edu/aww/alifbaa_unit1/ab1_culture_history.htmlhttp://www.alhewar.com/habeeb_salloum_arabic_language.htmhttp://nclrc.org/cultureclub/collection/speakers_corner/arabic.htmlhttp://www.slideshare.net/guest0c02e6/second-language-teaching-methodshttps://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/mjiyad/arbusa.htmlhttps://zaynabdia.wordpress.com/http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/framework_en.pdf

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Annex

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1. A 1.1 Level Objectives

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2. Sequence Model

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