The Arabic language is one of the significant languages continentally and globally. It is spoken by several Arabo-African nations as well as communities beyond these nations. While it has been the language of trade for centuries in Southwest Asia and North Africa, it continues to be an important language for several other reasons.
Besides Arabic’s crucial significance for commercial purposes, its value has been incalculable religious. Since the Qur’an – accepted as Allah’s exact unaltered words – was revealed to Prophet Muhammad (s) in Arabic, its status was automatically elevated to a sacred language. And it is for this reason that Muslims – over numerous generations – passionately encouraged one another to learn the language.
Hence, when scanning Muslim societies and communities, it will be observed that they were led by a crop of religious leaders; most of whom were generally trained in predominantly Muslim (Arabic-speaking institutions) and became well informed about the language’s daily religious usage. As a result of having been exposed to Islamic studies, they were also trained to read, write, and converse in Arabic.
On top of this, many of those, who studied the language, have not only employed it to understand the classical works in Islamic studies such as Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddima and Ghazali’s Ihya’ ‘Ulum ‘Ud-Din but they have branched off to use it in other social sectors such as the ‘Islamic Finance’ sector that form part of the contemporary banking systems.
Considering the new developments as regards the value and the use of the language, one cannot over emphasize the role that Arabic continues to play in advancing knowledge and transforming communities.
That said, permit the two organizations to set out two sets of objectives that underline the rationale for this first RoundTable discussion regarding Arabic.
UUCSA and Awqaf-SA’s Strategic Objectives:
- Advancing the Teaching and Learning of Arabic as the Muslim Lingua Franca in and outside South Africa.
- Permitting Muslims to have a working knowledge of Arabic.
- Enabling them to read and understand the Qur’an; and
- Ensuring that all students of Islamic studies (including the huffath) become fluent in the use of Arabic within their non-Arabic speaking environments.
Arabic Language Roundtable aims are to:
- Understand the purpose of learning and teaching Arabic.
- Map the status of Arabic studies in the South African Muslim community.
- Investigate the challenges in teaching the language.
- Survey those who have the qualifications to teach the language.
- Check whether they have relevant teaching experience.
- Assess the available material resources.
- Establish support requirements.
- Evaluate the previous curricula at institutions.
- Consider whether the current curricula meet the community’s requirements.
- Look at curricula used at the four levels: Foundation, Intermediate, Advanced, and Tertiary Phases.
- Discuss appropriate prescribed Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language (TAFL) texts.
- Calculate how much time is currently being allocated to Arabic teaching at the different levels and the diverse institutions.
- Compare the curricula at both the state schools and private schools.
- Create the necessary learning environments to learn and study the language.
- Offer summer and winter schools to enhance the use of Arabic for specific purposes such as reading and understanding classical works published in Islamic studies.
Outcomes and Resolutions:
- 1. Establish a Committee that acts as a monitoring agent that observes and records the progress of the implementation of resolutions.
- 2. The Committee should endeavour to issue n Annual Report to various stakeholders to highlight the development on this front.
- 3. While the Committee is jointly housed under and accountable to the UUCSA /AWQAF SA Secretariat, it factors in the various stakeholders’ interests.
Arabic Learning and Teaching Websites & Resources
Notes: Details below are tentative, meaning that there might be more useful websites that this quick survey has ignored. If such websites are found, their details must be included here.
This review includes information about teaching materials at various levels, ranging from introductory to advanced. Some adopt a grammatical approach while others use a communicative approach. A few of them even present dialectal variants.
https://arabic-teacher.com/download-books-articles/embed/#?secret=hIqbOM55jO
https://www.arabicteacher.com/
https://alifarabic.com/embed/#?secret=eoihkbIXII#?secret=s8SadRVAxz
https://www.arabacademy.com/embed/#?secret=VYoQUSuzfr#?secret=1rgZyikaJ5
https://www.alifbee.com/en/for-educators
https://www.coerll.utexas.edu/coerll/arabic
https://www.madinaharabic.com/
https://www.arabicin60steps.com/
https://www.arabicforall.net/en
https://www.fluentarabic.net/embed/#?secret=yD4pyhunwu#?secret=UL5BmeNs89
Tonsi, ‘Abbas, et. al. 2010. Al-Kitab fi Ta’allum Al-Arabiyya
Sieny, Mahmud Khalil et. al. 1983. Al-‘Arabiyya li l-Nashi’in
Al-Fawzan, Abd Al-Rahman bin Ibrahim, et. al. 1425 A. H. Al-‘Arabiyya bayna yadaika
Sieny, Mahmud Khalil et. al. 1994.Al-Arabiyyah li l-Hayat at https://books-library.net/files/books-library.net-06112023Sy9B9.pdf(Parts 1-4)
السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته, وبعد ،،
تقديم طلب تسجيل لغير السعوديين من داخل وخارج المملكة من خلال منصة موحدة تتضمن جميع الجامعات الحكومية في المملكة بعنوان ” أدرس في السعودية”.
ولمزيد من التفاصيل حيال التسجيل و آليته، الدخول على الرابط الإلكتروني أدناه:
https://studyinsaudi.moe.gov.sa/
ونود التنويه أن المتقدمة تتحمل مسؤولية متابعة طلبها المقدم للتسجيل على الجامعات من خلال المنصة وليس من خلال الجامعات المُدخلة ضمن الرغبات في طلب التسجيل، وذلك لمتابعة حالتها.
وما يخص شروط القبول والمستندات المطلوبة وفق ضوابط القبول لغير السعوديات من خارج المملكة أو من داخلها، الضغط على الرابط الإلكتروني أدناه :
https://www.pnu.edu.sa/ar/Deanship/Registration/Scholarships/Pages/about.aspx
