Arabic Teacher hints, advice and tips: I know from my own experience that being on a continual path of self-improvement is an absolute necessity toward be a good teacher. Hang out with other educators that you admire. Watch them closely and learn from them. Imitation is the greatest compliment! Join your Arabic language association (AATA - http://www.aataweb.org) plus two foreign language teacher associations (state and national: ACTFL- (http://www.actfl.org) and attend their annual meetings on a regular basis. Get involved anyway you can with each. Rub noses with people at the TOP. Get to know the officers personally. Keep in contact with them. Use these association offerings, suggestions and resources. American Association of Teachers of Arabic (AATA) aims to facilitate communication and cooperation between teachers of Arabic and to promote study, criticism, research and instruction in the field of Arabic language pedagogy, Arabic linguistics and Arabic literature. The information available here is a sampling of the materials available to AATA members. For information on joining, please click here, or follow the navigation links to the left. Whenever you can in your own environment, ask to observe colleagues in action in their classroom. Pick up ideas that work for them and adopt and adapt them to you own classroom. Always be on the "lookout" for new ideas, new means of teaching, new ways to incorporate things that work for others into your own methodology. Don't hesitate to ask questions of teachers who have had much success as to how and why that happened. I used to observe elementary teachers and how they interacted with their young students. Always something to learn. "Learn from the mistakes of others. You'll never live long enough to make all of them yourself." Another that I always loved is "If you think you're green, you'll grow - if you think you're ripe, you'll rot." All true. Don't rot! That's an axiom that will never grow old. You may think that you are the best, but you're not. There is always someone better than you. (I learned this playing basketball) Learn from them. Know what the best practices are and be aware of the current online resources that can be of great help to you and your Arabic language students. Keep your classroom presentations FRESH. Keep up with innovation and the changing needs of your students by incorporating technology such as computer use, iPhones, iPads, e-mail and a host of other innovations into your routine classroom activities to communicate with others in the target language and to access authentic resources. Stay current with options and trends in the field such as the National Standards and know how to incorporate them into your daily plans. Hopefully these few ideas will aid in your growth and success. Stay with it. Don't throw in the towel like many have, but again as I point out above, whatever new ideas you discover, you must first adopt and then adapt. Not everything you see elsewhere will work for you as I have personally learned. You must adapt those ideas to your own classroom. There are a host of great ideas available on all these sites, but they are only as successful as you will make them. And perhaps most important of all, do ask your students often how they feel about what they are doing and learning and what they enjoy the most and the least in your classroom. Most of all, do enjoy your students and share yourself with them. [They don't care how much you know until they know how much you CARE] I hope that you picked up some ideas here that will aid in your total success. Have fun in your classroom. (ps I picked up these ideas in a recent dream and wanted to share with each of you) I'm 72 but never too old to learn and never too old to share ideas. Best yet, why not be learning another language yourself? Check out one of the sites above. It is a great means to experience first-hand what your students are feeling. Now you are "walking in their shoes." Don't forget to have FUN doing it. (See Below) jeb BA, MA, ABD Fun Learning Games and Fun Activities for the Arabic Classroom A wide array of proven fun games and learning activities for teachers to use in the classroom. 35 years of classroom experience for students and their teachers to enjoy. Some hints for learning Arabic: Those who attempt to learn Arabic are probably familiar with the specific challenges associated with learning this language. One of the greatest challenges that students of Arabic are faced with has to do with the script. The Arabic language has an alphabet that contains 28 letters. Most students find that it does not take long to learn the Arabic alphabet. However, each letter has four different forms. The form that is used depends on whether the letter comes at the beginning, middle, or end of a word. Learning the different letter variations can be a challenge for students. Another characteristic of Arabic that may confound students at first has to do with how books are written and read. In Arabic, books are read from the right to the left. When a book is opened, it is opened from the left. One of the greatest challenges that most students face as the learn Arabic is the fact that most vowels are not used when writing. In beginning textbooks, the missing vowels are indicated by little marks that are placed above and below the words. However, more advanced texts and most reading materials do not contain these helping marks. Yet another challenge involves the special "noises" that one must learn in the study of Arabic. Learning Arabic involves learning many new sounds that are not used by most Westerners. Perhaps the most infamous of these is the sound that is described as emitting air from the back of your throat, as if trying to put out a candle by blowing air from the throat. This sound can be difficult for new students to learn and to use fluidly during conversation. Finally, learning new vocabulary poses a special challenge for those who seek to learn Arabic. For Westerners, studying European languages seems easier for students because they tend to recognized vocabulary words. The language "feels" more familiar, and thus does not seem to represent such a challenge. Although there are special challenges to learning Arabic, the effort is definitely worth it. Arabic is the language of a large part of our planet. It is the main language in 22 countries, spoken by more than 250 million people. It is also the second language in many Islamic countries because It is considered the spiritual language of Islam -one of the world's major religions- (we're talking here about more than 1 billion people). It is one of the permanent languages in the United Nations. Another reason is that Arabic is one of the oldest living languages in the world, and it is the origin of many languages, in fact there is a theory that says "Arabic is the origin of languages" and those who adopt this theory depend on the fact that Arabs are able to pronounce any sound in any language in the world very easily, on the other hand lots of non-Arabs have a very hard time pronouncing some Arabic letters which are not available in their native language. Source: Social studies site Arabic Language Course (Fadi's Free Arabic Language Tutorial) - Introduction Lesson 1 - Arabic Language Course - the Alphabet See portions of this program below... Why should you learn Arabic? Arabic is the language of a large part of our planet. Whether you are interested in learning Arabic for educational or cultural reasons or simply because you want to impress a friend or have a tattoo of your name in Arabic, it is easier than you may think. It is the official language in 22 countries, spoken by more than 250 million people. It is also the second language in many Islamic countries because It is considered the spiritual language of Islam -one of the world's major religions- (we're talking here about more than 1 billion people). It is one of the permanent languages in the United Nations. Another reason is that Arabic is one of the oldest living languages in the world, and it is the origin of many languages. It has heavily influenced languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, Persian, Hindustani, Turkish, Malay, Urdu, Indonesian, Kurdish, Pashto, Swahili, Berber, Bengali and many others. Arguably it is said that Arabic is one key origin of modern day languages. An indication of this is the fact that most Arabic native speakers are easily able to pronounce almost any sound in any language in the world, on the other hand many non-Arabic natives have a hard time pronouncing some Arabic letters and sounds which are not available in their native languages (for example the letter Dhad in Arabic is not used in any other language in the world, and the Arabic language is sometimes called the language of the Dhad). For thousands of years minor changes were made to the Arabic language and it was appropriate for every era throughout the countless civilizations that used it as their native language. In fact, Arabic has a great influence in most of the languages in our present times. Maybe, the most obvious contribution of Arabic is developing and passing on the "Arabic numerals" (0,1,2,3..) to humanity, not to mention the numerous words with Arabic origins which are used today in most languages (Algorithm, Algebra, Alcohol, Coffee, Zero, Sugar and the list goes on.) Arabic was the international language of science, mathematics, culture, and philosophy during the Middle Ages. Its contribution to the Western civilization as an infrastructure for development of science and medicine is enormous. Why did it stay alive through thousands of years when other languages didn't? The main reason for that is that Arabic is a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam and the Qur'an, and that kept it the main language through the 1400+ years of the Islamic civilization. Marrakech, Morocco