Testimonials from Professional Arabic Teachers
I have been using the Arab Academy courses with my students at the University of Houston since 2002, both to complement my "live" classes and to deliver "online" Arabic language courses. My students and I have been more than impressed. Activities are highly interactive and are fun to work on. I am still amazed at how those courses are making use of advantages of the medium (in terms of adapting program to meet learners" styles, drilling students in an engaging way, providing immense reading and listening activities). Teachers and students taking full advantage of Arab Academy’s curriculum will find it a great addition to most traditional language classes. The online exercises may be repeated as often as needed, unlike an hour’s class, and the random generation of problems in many exercises provides seemingly infinite variation. On the other hand, students don’t have to spend excessive amounts of time on concepts they grasp quickly, as they might in a traditional classroom. The Arab Academy extends our office hours to all times of day as teachers are actively and continuously involved on the message boards, and teacher feedback to individual questions is provided within 24 hours. I highly recommend using the Arab Academy program at universities, colleges and schools.
Tawhida El-Askary, Director, Arabic Language Program, University of Houston
I have used the Ab Initio program over the past few years with my students and have found it invaluable. I highly recommend it for use at any school that wishes to introduce the teaching of Arabic ONLINE.
When we first introduced the program into our school, it became clear that we have taken a step in the right direction. Here is what one of the parents wrote to me: "Mrs. El Agroudy, I just wanted to tell you that I found the web based Arab Academy program that my son Ben Merah worked on to be very practical, instructive and a great additional language instruction tool. He was able to work at his own pace, pronounce the words, and the see the translations as needed. In my opinion, this is the best tool CAC has applied to the Arabic classes I have seen and I hope it is maintained and expanded to all other Arabic classes in CAC. It provides only benefits to students. Thank you for this great improvement." Mohammed (Moe) Merah
The Arab Academy program is a useful, pedagogically sound one that I highly recommend for use at schools. I have seen its results on my students and can safely say that it works
Feedback on Ab Initio - Soheir Agroudy, Cairo on 19 April, 2006
Cairo American College
In sum, these excellent and comprehensive Arabic language courses provide instruction in Arabic that overcomes to an impressive extent the limitations inherent in the medium. Writing is built into the program at all levels with constant feedback and correction in spelling, morphology, and syntax as well as higher-level writing skills such as cohesion, structure, and style.
LangNet Review: National Foreign Language Center
Excerpt: Last paragraph: (http://www.langsource.umd.edu/index.php).
At the beginning, I was not totally convinced that the students would learn through the Arab Academy programs. I thought that they would not try to benefit from them. However, the result was a total surprise to me. Here is what happened:
• Students looked forward to the lessons on the projector and were disappointed if such a lesson was postponed.
• Students did their homework, even before I ask them to do it.
• Students worked on their own at home, and moved forward to lessons that I have not even given in class.
• Students compete to respond to any question in class.
• Students loved the activity on Forming Sentences with the Vocabulary. They competed in forming sentences before each other.
• Year 1 students relied on themselves in reading new words. The activity on: "Nouns & Verbs in Sentences" has helped them a lot.
Advantages of Program:
• The way the lesson is presented is very interesting. It made many students love the subject of "Arabic" at school.
• The beautiful and colorful pictures that are in each lesson made students eager to read the lesson and listen to it.
• The way the poems were read and sung made students enjoy poetry tremendously. They now learn and memorize the poems without any effort from me.
• The activity "New Vocabulary in Sentences" has greatly enriched students linguistic skills.
• The activities that students do at home, are very useful. The repetition of sound has greatly increased the students" language levels.
• In Year 1, the activity "Words in Sentences" has improved children"s reading skills and spelling. What is great about that activity is that you can hide the sound and picture, and draws students attention to the sentence. You can ask them to read it without reliance on the pictures.
• Grammar in all years has helped children learn it in an easy way.
• The way that grammar is introduced as of year 4, is very interesting. It makes students love grammar, which is an area that students usually have difficulty in understanding.
• The program brought teachers and students, teachers and parents closer, through the boards.
• Students interest in writing in Arabic has increased greatly.
• The program helps students learn the lesson quickly. I no longer needed to spend a long time in explaining as I used to do.