A Non Profit Organization with a Commitment to Excellence in Education
A Non Profit Organization with a Commitment to Excellence in Education
Arabic Reader Program
Developed by Aldeen Foundation in 2015, the Arabic Reader Program (ARP) is a reading program designed to address the need for literacy among Arabic language learners and aims to help students of the Arabic language to enhance their reading skills through interactive quizzes and self-monitoring of reading level.
A committee of senior experts in the field of teaching Arabic as a foreign language developed the standards for classification of books and stories that are aligned with the nine levels of ACTFL reading proficiency. The committee was aware of the importance of providing learners with their appropriate reading level, therefore the placement test was created to help students demonstrate their command of reading comprehension. When a student knows their reading level, it makes it easier to select appropriate language level books.
Reading is a skill, and as with any skill, it requires practice to improve. The shortage of age- and language-appropriate reading books for the Arabic language learners makes practice a challenge as students become frustrated and discouraged when reading books that are not at their reading comprehension level.
The Arabic Reader Program is designed to encourage Arabic learners across all grades and language proficiency levels to use literacy as a tool to acquire and advance their language reading skills and will enable students to apply the skills they have learned at their own pace to a variety of Arabic reading materials. Additionally, students will be able to monitor and personalize their reading practice. Teachers will also have the ability to check students’ individual progress and address their needs to enhance reading comprehension skills.
Students participating in the ARP program will be using classified and leveled books aligned with the ACTFL reading proficiency guidelines. The selected and classified stories in ARP are a tool to enhance and build on the learner’s reading proficiency level. ARP targets reading comprehension that will encourage classroom interaction, expansion and retention of vocabulary and will help the student to achieve higher levels in their communicative skills.
Comprehension quizzes for each of the leveled and classified books was developed by a committee of master teachers and experts in the field of teaching Arabic as a foreign language. Through these quizzes, reading comprehension can be assessed to promote advancement in language literacy.
In the words of Stephen Krashen from his book, The Power of Reading: Reading is considered the most important skill and reading comprehension is critical for success in language literacy. Research has shown that solid proficiency in reading, not decoding, is essential in order to enable learners to successfully read authentic texts.
Our goal with the Arabic Reader Program is to develop a love of reading in Arabic that ultimately leads students to becoming life-long Arabic readers!
Copyrights:
All copyrights of this project belong to Aldeen Foundation.