Arabic Preparation Lessons

Hello, my name is İbrahim Helalşal. İ’m from Jordan. At the same time, I’m a Turkish citizen. İ came to Turkey to do my graduate studies. After İ finished my master I also did my doctorate here. İ worked in some corporations. One of them is the United Nations, the American consulate. And some private companies. I also worked as director in an Arabic Education Program. And now İ work in 29 Mayis University. Here we have created a lot of projects. In this university, I work as the Head of Arabic preparatory school and as a director in the Arabic Practice Education and Research Center. Our Arabic preparation in Turkey is little bit different from other places. The reason is because our lessons are practice based. We use a system which is made up of 900 hours and 6 levels. One level has five weeks. So that we can diagnose if our student it’s successful or not. If there is a problem, we can solve it at the end of the fifth week. When we teach Arabic we work with a book, but we only use 40 % of it. Beside this, we make our students watch Arabic movies every week. Before they watch the movies, we translate some words from the movie so that they can learn it before hearing them. And we make our students read them aloud five times and later they watch the movie. One time in two weeks we organize a conference called ‘’what you know about my country’’. Because most of the students come from other countries they can easily learn the language. Our lessons are interactive. With the topic ‘’what you know about my country’’ we organize some activities. When we don’t organize it, the students discuss some topics. We create an exciting environment. Our target it’s to make students talk and be able to give answers in Arabic when they are participating in international conferences in their presentations after they graduate. At the same time İ’m a translator, I do Arabic-Turkish translation. I have done translations at 100 conferences minimum. And I was able to see that the presenters coming from Turkey only do their presentations in Turkish and for this we are trying to find a solution. We have some projects in Arabic preparation. One of the projects is project 3. We create group of 3 students. Every week all the groups watch 3 movies. Our Research Center has a movie channel on YouTube. There are at least 300 videos in our channel. After they watch the 3 movies they make a summary of these movies in 30 words in Arabic. And at the end of the fifth week after they have watched 15 movies they choose one and write down word for word the words from the chosen one. Our students have to participate in 27 projects after the 3rd level. The project is as follows: the students choose 2 days in a week. After they choose the days we print some big posters and then circulate them around the university. The students talk only in Arabic for those two days that they choose. In the first day of the week we walk around the classes and the students promise that they will not talk in another language beside Arabic. And we give some small cards for the students and it’s written ‘’sorry, today I will not talk in Turkish with you, because today İ can only talk in Arabic’’. With that, our students become tourist in İstanbul. We have been using this project for 4 years. And it has been very effective. And our students feel like they are living in Arabic countries without even going abroad. Even if it isn’t the turn for students to talk in Arabic they still have to talk in Arabic with those who are oblıged to talk in Arabic. That’s why it’s not project 2/7 it is 4/7. All the students that are learning Arabic they work in a new project in every level. We also organize film competition. The students act out a couple of good films. They create new scenarios. The most important part in Arabic preparations is the instructors. And we believe that books and physical facilities are important but the teachers are the most important. We have a method of choice for the teachers. We can’t find native Arabic speakers looking for work in Turkey. We work with names that specialize in teaching Arabic to foreigners. We invite them and guarantee work for them. That’s why our student can notice that our academic staff are talented. After our 900 hours of lessons, our students can speak Arabic comfortably. They are able to write compositions, stories and do presentations. Our students have to do some presentation in 3 minutes. This activities start from the first level. Because each class have 15 students, everyday 3 students do presentations in 3 minutes and they are be able to talk step by step. If we ask how they can do presentation in the 1st level, we can say that they do it by memorizing. And after that the teachers ask questions. And to see the performance of the students the teachers administers some tests. These tests influence 40% of the total grade, 30% from the written exam and another 30% from the interview. After the student completes the level, he has to pass through an interview which takes 30 minutes. In those 30 min we try to analyze the students’ Arabic speaking potential. All the students that come to the interview have to do some presentation in the first 3 minutes he. After completing the first level, a student should be able to read a text with 70 words in one minute. Those who finished the 6th level must be able to read a text with 130 words in one minute. Those who finished the first level must be able to type a text with 50 words in Arabic. And those who finished the 6th level have to type a text with 100 words in one minute. To learn how to read and write, a different dimension is necessary. To learn how to read and write means using computer well. Can we do that? Last year one of the weak students wrote 132 words in one minute. And they say that: teacher, even in Turkish we can’t write this fast. And we say that: yoy aren’t able to do this because you didn’t learn Turkish in 29 Mayis University. And beside that in interviews we take a look at the books. İnside the books, how is the researches. Before we play the movies we share out the questions and we check if they memorize them or not. In Short, in Arabic preparation we make the student work. At the end of the year we bring up the student to the highest level of the Arabic language.