Horton Park Acadamy pupils explore language and culture in Qatar with QFI's support.

Click Here for article

‘Arabic and me’ is a competition in New South Wales, Australia, involving digital skills (open in NSW only) which might inspire you to create a competition in the UK?
http://arabicandme.org.au/      

Welcoming Languages: Including a Refugee Language in Scottish Education

This project explores the inclusion of a ‘refugee language’ in Scottish education as a way to enact the idea of ‘integration as a two-way process’ that is at the heart of the New Scots Refugee Integration Strategy.

The project has involved education staff in learning Arabic to welcome new arrivals. The project report includes findings, such as:

Education staff who had been learning Arabic reported that they ' found that learning basic Arabic is practically useful: it allows them to use simple language to attract the children's attention; to give them some simple instructions; and to make connections between their learning in English and their existing knowledge.

Learning basic Arabic was found to have huge symbolic value. All staff interviewed told us that the Arabic speaking children greatly appreciated the efforts made by staff in their schools, and that they felt proud to be able to help staff practise Arabic.

Offers award-winning, high-quality language learning programs delivered by refugees, for all levels of Arabic, Armenian, French, Kurdish, Persian and Spanish, as well as professional translation services to individuals and organizations worldwide. 

https://natakallam.com/

The Best Arabic-Language Movies from the 2010s, Ranked.

Please click here to view.

ArabiKey is a new website, centred around the Arabic language and featuring a free Arabic keyboard which emulates the Windows keyboard.

What is the purpose of this Online Arabic Keyboard?

As an online Arabic teacher, the idea of creating an online Arabic keyboard came to me when I found my students were struggling with the digital homework I would give them, primarily because they didn't know how to type in Arabic on their computer. In fact, a lot of them didn't know how to add an Arabic keyboard to their system, and for those that did, not being able to see the letters they were typing represented a huge handicap.

So, I decided to create an online keyboard for computer users possessing keyboards without Arabic letters displayed.

Please click here to read more.

Congratulations to Luma Hameed and her colleagues on the launch in December 2021 of this new resource, the first stage of ‘Yalla Arabi’, Arabic as a Foreign Language.

Please click here for more information.

Images and presentations around the issue of including culture in lessons.

http://www.arabalicious.com/cultural-capital.html

Writing mats are useful to support students in their writing tasks whey they run out if ideas or are not sure how to structure their work . 

This one is shared by Luma Hameed - Arabic writing mat

QFI Resources

Arabic Educator Bulletin

The Arabic Educator Bulletin is a monthly newsletter for educators, administrators, policymakers, and researchers interested in Arabic language teaching and learning at the primary and secondary levels. The Bulletin shares classroom resources and activities, upcoming workshops and conferences, job postings, grant opportunities, and news related to Arabic language education across the US and Europe.

Sign up via this link.

Arabic Teacher Councils

QFI supports Arabic Teacher Councils (ATCs) for educators in the US, UK, and Germany. Each council organizes activities, professional development events, workshops, and webinars, among other activities, throughout the academic year to professionalize the teaching of the Arabic language. ATCs also provide networks for educators to exchange ideas, share resources and build community with others in their field.

In the UK, QFI supports six ATCs:
• UK Newcastle Arabic Teacher Council
• UK Midlands Arabic Teacher Council
• West Yorkshire Arabic Teacher Council
• Arabic Teacher Council in North West England
• London and Southern Arabic Teacher Council
• Liverpool Arabic Teacher Council

To join or start a council in your country, learn more about ATC activities, and participate in upcoming events, please click here.

Tilemaker

QFI’s Tilemaker is a mosaic tile generator app that allows students to explore geometric design and to create their own tiles using symmetry, tessellation and calligraphy. Students are introduced to the basic principles of mosaic design which opens up a whole world of artistic and cultural heritage.

Please click here for full details.

This contribution offers a brief overview of the Film in Language Teaching Association (FILTA) and introduces some of the available resources (for example, the Arabic study guides) and the Arabic Group, led by Dr Salwa Mohamed. It presents the recent INSET, delivered by the Manchester Metropolitan research group Film, Languages and Media in Education (FLAME): Using Short Film Creatively in the Arabic Language Classroom, and resources, materials and links to videos. This workshop was part of the research project Transmedia in Education: New Approaches to Transmedia and Language Pedagogy, linked to the Cross-Language Dynamics (AHRC).

The final part of this presentation/materials invites Arabic Language Teachers to join FILTA (https://www.filta.org.uk) [free membership] and share resources related to this area.

Finally, the research group FLAME 

https://www.mmu.ac.uk/languages/flame/  welcomes possible research collaborations from Arabic Language Teachers working on this interdisciplinary field.

Resources for the Arabic classroom

Doaa Mohamed contributes this note about how she use Finger Puppets in Arabic teaching, as she demonstrated in the launch event.

I have seen so many of my students shy away from speaking during lessons. They somehow feel more confident and start speaking when they use one of my finger puppets. The lion  puppet “Assad” is especially a big hit with students of all abilities and interests.                                              

They use them to have fun practicing conversational skills, to make up stories, create new sentences and so much more.

Dooa says : ‘Thank you for a heart-warming Zoom meeting “ALL Arabic Zone Launch”. I learned a lot from all the creative teachers who participated, and hope to stay in connect with this wonderful group of people.’

British Council / QFI Arabic beginners scheme of work for year 7 (or for the first year of learning Arabic language) is available here: https://www.qfi.org/blog/arabic-study-plan-year-7-complete-beginner/

This scheme of work has been prepared to assist teachers of Arabic who are introducing the language to students who have no prior knowledge. It follows a similar approach to the one used for other modern foreign languages and seeks to establish a sound footing for learners who may go on to take the Arabic GCSE. The plan contains a termly curriculum map which outlines the main learning objectives and a detailed scheme of work that sets out the weekly language and culture content for the first year of Arabic learning. There is also an introduction which explains the thinking behind the design and format of the plan.

British Council is hoping to create some related lesson plans in the future.  

Email [email protected]

November 16, 2020

To celebrate International Education Week, British Council and Qatar Foundation International’s (QFI) Arabic Language and Culture programme offered two opportunities for primary and lower secondary pupils;

• An online, traditional, Arabic story-telling workshop for a maximum of 30 participants.
• An opportunity to connect a class with a native Arabic speaker through the NaTakallam project where the speaker was be able to discuss Arabic language and culture with the class, as well as share their own experiences as a refugee.

Arabic Language Zone Show and Tell Webinar

Watch the webinar here.

This webinar welcomed Fatima Khaled to speak about her Project Based Learning work, based on language and Art.

Luma Hameed to speak about her e-publication for Secondary Arabic learners.

Please click here for Fatima's Presentation.

Please click here for the session recording.

Click here to view the ALL London Workshop

The padlet used at this event contains many useful resources, including a Film glossary and is available here

https://padlet.com/c_herrero/Arabic

For the 2021 webinar, Luma Hameed created some classroom activities for school teachers to follow up and attached them to this flyer.

In this webinar Luma Hameed gave an update from the Arabic Teachers' Council.

Seloua Izeboudjene talked about games and techniques to teach gender to small children

Mevludin Sahinovich (speaking in a personal capacity) spoke about encouraging speaking in the Arabic language classroom

and Kiyan-Mehdi presented his website Arabikey

Please click here to view the session recording.

Are you an MFL educator?
Are you interested in Arabic Language and Culture?
Join us for our FREE Training event.

Please see flyer for full details

Topics:

Arabic Gamification: Sharing Practice.
Between the lines: language across generations.
Arabic Culture: Tea in Arabic Tent Experience.
Preparing Arabic translators and interpreters for the UK language service sector

Register Here

Teaching Arabic Language and Culture in Context is an introduction to up-to-date methods for the teaching of Arabic: Click Here 

Ms Fatima Khaled (Headteacher of Peace School, London) shares how can we use digital storytelling in the classroom as an approach to help students personalise their learning and make the learning of Arabic language, creative, authentic, cultural and fun.

https://fatimakhaled.home.blog/2020/01/11/reflections-on-multilingual-digital-storytelling-at-the-peace-school/

For Ms N. Benhalima, learning culture is vital in MFL lessons because it puts the language into context. Here, she shows how students had to design a leaflet for an Arab country to include different cultural aspects such as food, clothes and dialect and present them to the class.

shared by Ms N. Benhalima (Westminster Academy, Teacher (Arabic, French).

 Cultural Awareness

Here Sahar Y.I. Alshobaki (PhD student, University of Roehampton) shares her research in progress on her approach to teaching Arabic by starting the engagement with a new student by asking them to create their personalised Learner’s Vision.

 Alshobaki Arabic as one

Please click here to be view the QFI Lessons Learned document.

Arabic Teachers' Council in London and Southern England - 2022 Free CPD Sessions!

Goldsmiths, University of London is very pleased to announce the return of the ‘Arabic Certificate Course’.
This course, which draws on Goldsmiths’ substantial experience as a provider of professional development for teachers of Arabic, has been developed through a partnership with the British Council and Qatar Foundation UK. The course promotes a reflective, process-based and collaborative approach to professional development integrating theory and practice. It is based on a combination of lecture workshops, self-study activities and classroom teaching.

For further details on this course and how to apply, please click here.

Contact : [email protected]

The British Council, working with Qatar Foundation International, supports teachers of Arabic in schools in a variety of ways. See also Events.

https://www.britishcouncil.org/education/schools/support-for-languages/arabic-language-culture-programme

A well-established and rich bank of resources for Arabic, with a facility to Join the Facebook group from the website.  

http://www.arabalicious.com

Thoughts from Steven Fawkes on the value, importance and practical usefulness of songs in the hands of the Language teacher.

Steven Fawkes Exploiting Songs in the classroom

Jim Anderson’s information sheet on QTS/CPD opportunities

There is a forum for teachers of Arabic on jiscmail :

[email protected]

Luma Hameed kindly shares a collection of common mistakes made by students - A level common mistakes

The Arabic Teachers' Council in London and Southern England is excited to launch this competition for Arabic learners of primary and secondary age, which is supported by the HHCL Advisory Group and the ALL Arabic Zone.

The competition promotes a love of reading aloud in Arabic through engaging stories on diverse themes. Participants will enhance their reading confidence, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary while competing for four prizes, each of a £100 voucher. 

Participants should register through their mainstream school, even if they learn Arabic at a local complementary school or privately.  This is to help raise awareness of Arabic learning in mainstream schools.

Schools benefit by fostering extracurricular activities and excitement, especially among students learning Arabic as a foreign language or as a home, heritage or community language.

More information and guidelines are on the ATC link: Click Here 

The deadline to register is:                      Saturday 7th February 2025.

Click here: Form

The winners (one in each category of primary and secondary - heritage and non-heritage learners) will be decided by a judging panel and our guest author 'Sonia Nimr', a Palestinian writer, storyteller, and academic specialising in children's and youth literature in Arabic.

Contact email:

[email protected]

Arabic Speaking Competition (ASC)  

The Arabic Speaking Competition #SpeakArabic is an annual competition that inspires and encourages pupils’ Arabic language study while celebrating their skills.

Registration for the 2024 competition is now closed. Click here 

Ms N. Benhalima shares: “Following a challenging yet insightful and rewarding experience of teaching online throughout the pandemic, I have integrated different digital and platforms tools into MFL lessons to make them engaging and meaningful. These digital platforms were very useful for retrieval practice and also for different online assessments.”

Noreia Benhalima The use of digital tools during lockdown 2.0 shared by Ms N. Benhalima (Westminster Academy, Teacher (Arabic, French).

The Open Accessible Summaries In Language Studies (OASIS) initiative aims to make research findings on language learning and teaching available and accessible to a wide audience.

OASIS summaries are one-page descriptions of research articles on language learning, language teaching, and multilingualism that have been published in peer-reviewed journals listed on the Social Science Citation Index or the Arts and Humanities Citation Index. The summaries provide information about the study’s goals, how it was conducted, and what was found, and are written in non-technical language. Where relevant, they also highlight findings that may be of particular interest to language educators, although the initiative is not solely aimed at research with immediate practical implications. The summaries are generally approved, and often (co-)written, by the author(s) of the original journal article.

  https://oasis-database.org/

Here, Dr Judith Rifeser (Deputy HMO ALL/ Goldsmiths, University of London) provides a short reading list for Arabic language teachers.

The Language Learning Journal is the official journal of the Association for Language Learning. It is an open access journal by Taylor Francis that publishes international research on the teaching and learning of languages, pedagogy and multilingualism and multiculturalism. ALL members have access to the journal as a member benefit. ALL Language Learning Journal page: https://www.all-languages.org.uk/research-practice/language-learning-journal-llj/

You and/or your school can join to become an ALL member here which provides access to the full range of benefits that ALL has to offer. We also offer corporate membership: https://www.all-languages.org.uk/join/become-a-member/

Within the ALL Language Learning Journal links, the DOI (Direct Object Identifier) will lead directly to the article, if you are an ALL Member.

Anderson, J.  (2011) Reshaping pedagogies for a plurilingual agenda. In: Language Learning Journal. 39:2 pp. 135-147. https://doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2011.573683

Anderson, J. (2008) Towards integrated second language teaching pedagogy for foreign and community/heritage languages in multilingual Britain. In: Language Learning Journal. 36:1 pp. 79-89. https://doi.org/10.1080/09571730801988553

McPake, J., Tinsley, T. and James, C. 2007. Making provision for community languages: Issues for teacher education in the UK. The Language Learning Journal, 35(1) pp. 99–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/09571730701317705

Ros i Solé, C. (2013) Cosmopolitan speakers and their cultural cartographies. In: The Language Learning Journal, 41:3 pp. 326-339, DOI: 10.1080/09571736.2013.836349

McPake, J., Tinsley, T. & James, J. (2007) Making provision for community languages: issues for teacher education in the UK. In: The Language Learning Journal, 35:1, pp. 99-112, DOI: 10.1080/09571730701317705