Arabic-L:K-16:Needs Advice on High School textbook for American Students of Arabic

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Thu 08 Nov 2007
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Needs Advice on High School textbook for American Students  
of Arabic

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1)
Date: 08 Nov 2007
From:"Abdelkader Khila" <akhila at uscsd.k12.pa.us>
Subject:Needs Advice on High School textbook for American Students of  
Arabic

Hello everyone,

My district is starting an Arabic program in the high school for the
2008 school year, thus maybe becoming the only public school in
Pennsylvania to offer Arabic. We will most likely start with one class
or two depending on how many kids will sign up and we are hoping that
Arabic will soon become an integral part of the Foreign language
offerings in our school district. The implications and the possibilities
are tremendous down the road. Our students genuinely regard languages as
a very important component of their education. They start Spanish in the
elementary and add French and Spanish in 5th grade, then choose a
language to study from 6th grade and up. Some students even take two
languages in high school, their schedules permitting. Our high school
offers Chinese, Latin and Japanese in addition to the more common
languages and now we are extremely excited about the possibilities with
Arabic. Cultural exchanges and Summer trips to the target cultures are
very common in our district. As we speak, I am in the process of putting
together a trip to Québec for the French students since I teach French.
Our German students are used to going to Germany every summer, our
French and Spanish do the same when it comes to France and Spain. There
is even talk this year about a trip to China. So, the possibilities are
endless..Egypt? Morocco?

Now after the brief description of my district, here is what I am
asking: Anyone who reads this, who is a publisher, an Arabic language
textbook writer, etc. If you have a book/books/resources that you think
is the right book for me to recommend to my school district for the
Arabic class, then email me back. The students are American students (
high school between the age of 14 and 18) who have never had Arabic
before. Since religion or the preaching of religion is explicitly
prohibited in the American Public schools, your book should be free of
any overt religious teaching and focuses on the teaching of the language
and the cultures. I am right now reviewing books to recommend to the
school board ASAP. If your book is truly suitable for the students ( I
will decide that since I will be teaching the class, I am a native
speaker of Arabic), then I would not hesitate to recommend it full
heartedly. The district then will purchase as many books as we need for
the first year class. With every year that goes by and the more we
expand the Arabic program, the more need for more books and resources
will arise.

I posted a similar request some time ago and I had some responses then.I
do thank those who were kind enough to answer( Munther Younes, Raji
Rammuny, Claudette,etc) . I did not follow through at the time because
for various reasons the district decided to postpone the pilot Arabic
program for another year( mainly because I was a long term French
substitute teacher at my district and they were working hard to keep me
there full time for the purpose of actually starting the Arabic program)
Now that I am full time, there is 99.999% chance that Arabic will be
taught next year!

So if you have something, please email me. I am looking specifically for
textbooks/ resources samples even used ones.I am willing to return
whatever you send me within a reasonable time frame as soon as I review
them. Here is my other email address just in case...my school site
sometimes prevent email from getting through if the server deems it to
be junk: akhila at hotmail.com

I look forward to hearing from you

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End of Arabic-L:  08 Nov 2007