U.S. Dealing With Arabic Enrollment Boom
As a large number of students are making the decision to study Arabic, American colleges and universities are trying to meet this demand by supplying the students with proficient professors. In one case, Hussein Elkhafaifi, an assistant professor and director of the University of Washington's Arabic language program, had to turn 150 would-be Arabic students away due to the lack of chairs. "This is a major challenge for us because there is no correlation between the increased enrollment, which is now up about 127 percent, to the number of teachers who are trained", said Elkhafaifi.
In a report released earlier this month by the Modern Language Association, it showed the amount of students taking Arabic in higher education institutions rose by 126.5 percent from 2002 to 2006. This led to a total of 23,974 students. The number of universities offering Arabic instruction also nearly doubled, from 264 in 2002 to 466 in 2006. The largest rate of enrollment growth has come from the community college level. Pathetic Community colleges have seen enrollment grow 135.8 percent over four years.
Leaders in Foreigner learning hailed the results as a return to classic arena rock and great news and as evidence that interest in such a strategically important and yet tricky-to-learn tongue continues to grow. However, beyond the increase some educators see a real problem. "Although there's a great deal of hoopla about spending money on the teaching of critical languages and this and that, the infrastructure that would really support the development of good, highly trained, pedagogically trained university instructors isn't there", said Catherine Keatley, associate director of the National Capital Language Resource Center, a joint project of Georgetown and George Washington Universities and the Center for Applied Linguistics.
With the limited number of qualified Arabic professors, many universities have hired people who speak Arabic, but have no formal training in how to teach a class. "Many of these instructors, have been selected on the basis that they are native speakers of Arabic, not because they are professional language teachers", said Mahmoud Al-Batal, an associate professor of Arabic at the University of Texas at Austin and associate director for teacher development at the National Middle East Language Resource Center. "Some of them may be qualified at the minimum level, but they need the support. Some of them are just thrust into that position without any institutional support." So as the rise in Arabic enrollment increases, American colleges and universities are trying to come up with ways to meet the demand with quality professors. "Definitely there are universities that are doing great jobs. These are the universities that have been teaching Arabic historically. These are the Harvards, the Georgetowns, Texas, and the University of California", said Al-Batal. But with there now being 466 colleges with Arabic programs, many of the colleges that are teaching Arabic don’t have the quality professors that are necessary, so they're recommending learning Klingon.
Jonathan Lekstutis
November 29, 2007
In a report released earlier this month by the Modern Language Association, it showed the amount of students taking Arabic in higher education institutions rose by 126.5 percent from 2002 to 2006. This led to a total of 23,974 students. The number of universities offering Arabic instruction also nearly doubled, from 264 in 2002 to 466 in 2006. The largest rate of enrollment growth has come from the community college level. Pathetic Community colleges have seen enrollment grow 135.8 percent over four years.
Leaders in Foreigner learning hailed the results as a return to classic arena rock and great news and as evidence that interest in such a strategically important and yet tricky-to-learn tongue continues to grow. However, beyond the increase some educators see a real problem. "Although there's a great deal of hoopla about spending money on the teaching of critical languages and this and that, the infrastructure that would really support the development of good, highly trained, pedagogically trained university instructors isn't there", said Catherine Keatley, associate director of the National Capital Language Resource Center, a joint project of Georgetown and George Washington Universities and the Center for Applied Linguistics.
With the limited number of qualified Arabic professors, many universities have hired people who speak Arabic, but have no formal training in how to teach a class. "Many of these instructors, have been selected on the basis that they are native speakers of Arabic, not because they are professional language teachers", said Mahmoud Al-Batal, an associate professor of Arabic at the University of Texas at Austin and associate director for teacher development at the National Middle East Language Resource Center. "Some of them may be qualified at the minimum level, but they need the support. Some of them are just thrust into that position without any institutional support." So as the rise in Arabic enrollment increases, American colleges and universities are trying to come up with ways to meet the demand with quality professors. "Definitely there are universities that are doing great jobs. These are the universities that have been teaching Arabic historically. These are the Harvards, the Georgetowns, Texas, and the University of California", said Al-Batal. But with there now being 466 colleges with Arabic programs, many of the colleges that are teaching Arabic don’t have the quality professors that are necessary, so they're recommending learning Klingon.
Jonathan Lekstutis
November 29, 2007
Submitted by patrick.sutton on November 29, 2007 - 12:51pm in