Nora Boustany writes in today’s ITAL Post that, whatever the proposed 2007 federal budget’s other priorities, it at least includes a quarter-million dollars to teach kids Arabic language and culture:
Since 1961, the Concordia Language Villages program, a kind of summer camp in Minnesota for young people, has offered immersion programs in 13 languages and cultures. The villages, set up on 900 acres around Turtle River Lake, give students a chance to learn Chinese, Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.
Now the program is adding another village: Al-Waha, the Oasis, to teach Arabic, thanks to $250,000 in the proposed federal budget for the fiscal year ending in October 2007.
During two-week immersion sessions, students will study Arabic and participate in a variety of educational and cultural activities common in Arabic-speaking cultures. The sessions involve native speakers, visa stamps in mock passports, custom control hassles, currency exchange and authentic cuisine -- no overseas travel required.
It’s tempting to make fun of this type of living-abroad-at-home program—girls’ rights might be limited for two weeks but every child would be exposed to superb coffee and poetry—but it sounds like the Concordia program is ripe for replication around the country, and not just for two weeks a year.
2 comments:
Hi there i am Hussain. i have read your good post. Thanks for Sharing. Isn’t it good if we start to guide our children about Learning Arabic because i think that would help them in future. i want to share an application developed by me a little effort i have made, so that kids these days understand and learn Arabic Alphabet Pronunciation in a fun way. The download link to the app is given below, you must try it for your kids.
Download Link : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.quranreading.muslim.kids
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