STUDIES IN ARABIC TEACHING AND LEARNING
Year:2017 | Volume:1 | Issue:2 |Papers Count:6

The most important goal of language learners is to master the target language and apply it in communication situations and it is clear that culture has a profound effect on language teaching because language and culture are complementary and cannot be differentiated. “Compliments” are part of the language such that culture has a prominent role in the quality of their application in creating effective and constructive relationships between the speaker and the learner, either written or oral. However, the teaching of Arabic culture in the curriculum of teaching Arabic language to Persian speakers has not been fully considered, and - in most cases - Persian learners do not have enough ability to respond to Arabic compliments. Therefore, the contrastive analysis of compliments between the two Persian and Arabic languages provides a good context for learners in order to avoid making mistakes when using Arabic proclamations. Therefore, the present study has collected a coherent set of two Persian and Arabic phrases, and then examined their identical and similar as well as different elements using a descriptive-analytical method. The findings of this research show that the identical elements account for a considerable amount of the studied complications; therefore, it is expected that Iranian students will not face serious problems in learning Arabic compliments.

Since language is the most important means of communication among human beings, contemporary teaching methods put a great emphasis on this fact. Literary texts are an indispensable part of acquiring every language, and Arabic literary texts are the best texts to increase linguistic and oral skills of students and among these texts, poetry has more chance since it causes artistic pleasure for readers. Selecting linguistic content and filtering outstanding poetic texts that embody curriculum criteria of Arabic is very important since these texts should include factors and variables related to science, society, culture, and attitudes of modern age. In this regard, contemporary poetry is a productive language that contains senses and expressions. This study is an attempt to apply contemporary poetry to teach Arabic to non-Arabs. The goal of the study is to present a new source for teaching fundamental words in accordance with an expressive and analytical method. It can be a starting point to adopting a new approach to teaching Arabic to non- Arab students in the current age.

The Holy Quran is considered the most important text in Arabic and is located in the top of literature and eloquence of Arabic Language because it involves verses with different articulations and such a tempo that captures the heart of the listener and stays in his mind. Therefore, teaching Quranic listening skills can help in teaching Arabic listening skills, especially for Iranian students in Bachelor’s degree studying Arabic language and literature. This study aims to shed light on the knowledge of the role of listening to the Quran in teaching Arabic language to non-native speakers, especially the Iranians. It also seeks to find how researchers should handle the subject of listening skill used in the Quran in teaching Arabic language and how to use them in this field through a descriptive analytical approach. Then, the study proposes an approach to the use of listening Quranic skill in the listening of Arabic Language, especially in the laboratory according to the following: can we benefit from the recitation of the Quran and teach students Arabic sounds, and how they are pronounced in the subject laboratory#1, teach intonation in the subject laboratory #2, and Quranic stories in laboratory#3. Also, a number of the above-mentioned lessons should be devoted to using films, news and etc. for teaching listening skills. The rest of the lessons can be devoted to films and news based on teachers’ wants and plans.

Dictation is of utmost importance in teaching English and Persian languages in Iran, though it is usually neglected in teaching Arabic, and no specific course is usually dedicated to dictation in Arabic. Nor does any evidence exist on the Arabic teachers’ enthusiasm for using dictation in their classes. This may deprive the students of the benefits of Arabic dictation in their language education, as these merits are beyond mere correct spelling of words. The present study, hence, tries to use a quasi-experimental method to examine the effect of Arabic dictation on the Iranian high school students’ writing ability. For this purpose, 56 first grade high school students formed the experimental and control groups of the study. To test the homogeneity of the groups before the study started, a pre-test of dictation was given to both groups. Experimental group, then, received the treatment including dictation in every session of their classroom. Control group, on the other hand, learned Arabic grammar and practiced translation as is usual in typical Arabic classes. The procedure took a complete educational year to complete. The results of the study revealed a statistically significant difference between the dictation errors of the groups. They suggested the positive effect of dictation on the improvement of the learners’ writing ability and reduction of their writing errors.

Evaluating readability means evaluating the difficulty with which the reader faces in text comprehension. Analyzing readability helps prepare new materials and determine the audience level by evaluating the texts. There are numerous methods to evaluate texts which are generally divided into two types. The first type is based on interviews, questionnaires and tests. The second type evaluates the readability of the text by using formulae and calculations. Among the formulae, one can refer to “Fry Formula” which is the basis of the current study. Assessing Fry’s suggested charts revealed that these charts are not suitable for Arabic language structure. The main reason for this lack of suitability is expressing the last letter of words in Arabic leading to an increase in syllables. However, on the other hand, the easy-to-hard rule of text distribution, which is the basis of Fry Equation, can be used for evaluating Arabic texts. The aim of this study is to investigate the readability of Arabic book of current first high schools in comparison with that of the old junior high schools. Investigating each and every book and also the holistic comparison of secondary school and old junior high school books showed that these books have served well in determining the average of sentences; however, regarding the syllable distribution, these books are not so logical, as it was mentioned in Fry Formula.

Considering the importance of explanations for literary texts and after studying the explanations of the al-Sab al-Muallaqat (The Seven Suspended Poems in Arabic Literature) to know the methods of these books, the present authors intended to find an optimal method for literary texts. To this end, a descriptive - analytical method was employed. It is worth mentioning that each of these old explanations is written for educational purposes which appear in all of them, especially in the style of conversation or dialogue method. The results of the study revealed that many of the old explanations are one-dimensional; some of them pay attention to the syntax while some other are concerned with the words. It was also found that these explanations cannot show abstruse points in the texts; so, this research suggests a new method that deals with all aspects of a text. Therefore, two steps must be followed: first, before explaining the text, and second, during explaining the text itself.