Arabic Language Literacy as an All-Important Aid in English Language Teaching to Arabic-Speaking Students

Abstract

Current research points to the importance of native language literacy in the development of second language literacy. Knowledge and skills transfer across languages from the mother tongue to the second language. But such knowledge and skills will only transfer if they have been thoroughly learned.

Due to the low standard of Arabic proficiency among both English teachers and learners, literacy in Arabic is not made use of in developing literacy in English. In particular, the teaching of English could greatly benefit from the use of Arabic grammatical and phonetic concepts that are not sufficiently developed in English grammar and language. Only a select number of such concepts are reviewed in this paper to serve as indicators of the advantages to be gained by a deeper study and knowledge of Arabic language phonetics and grammar.