At Symposium of the Arabic Language, Heads of Departments Call for Harmonizing Teaching with Market Requirements

The heads of the Arabic language departments in the Gulf universities called to balance between the scientific aspects of teaching the Arabic language and the requirements of the labour market. They stressed that the Arabic language teachers should benefit from the modern language teaching methods in teaching the Arabic language.

Dr. Khalifa Yaseen Binarabi, Head of the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at UoB, has recently participated in the 1st Symposium of the Arabic Language Departments in the universities of the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries (GCC) which was held in Doha, the capital city of Qatar.

The participants at the symposium believe that the study plans of the Arabic language programme should include applied skills. The departments should enforce different methods for teaching the language. They should use modern methods of teaching at the universities to ease the teaching process.

The Symposium determined the main four challenges that face teaching the Arabic language in four themes: study plans and the requirements of the labour market; the plan, student, and language and research skills; teaching methods of and the content; and graduate studies and research data.

The Symposium was attended by 28 participants including Arabic language programme directors, heads of departments, and directors of universities and some specialized centres.

The Symposium aimed at boosting the relationship between the Arabic language departments in the Gulf States, creating cooperation, unifying visions and linking the academic programmes at the levels of students and society.

The participants emphasized the importance of supporting data studies, especially higher education. The Symposium is hoped to be held annually in one of the GCC countries.