This paper reports a study of the reading and spelling skills of grades 1-3 Arabic-speaking children in Bahrain. Children were tested on their literacy skills (single word reading and spelling), their ability to decode letter strings (non-word reading) and measures of phonological awareness, short-term memory, speed of processing and non-verbal…

Some positive responses emerged from the tragic events of September 11, 2001, including recognition of the importance of international education, especially about non-Western cultural regions of the world. Colleges and universities in particular saw dramatically increased interest in teaching and learning about Islam and the Arab world. Many…

This series of articles explores the history of Jewish Education magazine, later known as the Journal of Jewish Education, with a particular emphasis on its intersection with the history of American Jewish education and, more generally, American Jewish life. Major themes and issues that preoccupied the magazine's editors and writers are isolated…

This study investigates the problems that translators and Arab learners of English encounter in translating Arabic sentences containing the Arabic discourse marker "fa" into English. Several types of texts were surveyed in order to identify the salient functions that this marker has in Arabic discourse. Five major functions were identified:…

This paper explores what kinds of advantages and strengths the process of learning to read simultaneously in different languages and scripts might bring about. It is based on a socio-cultural view of learning and literacy and examines early literacy in three parallel literacy classes in Watford, England. It analyses the learning experiences of…

The purpose of this study is to explore the nature of attitudes held by parents of Jewish Hebrew students at a Boston area Sunday school. Five parents of diverse backgrounds were interviewed in-depth to discuss the nature of their attitudes. Three common themes emerged related to the reasons for their high levels of involvement with the Sunday…

This third volume in the course on Chad Arabic emphasizes the active development of speaking skills in the target language. The active participation of the student requires imitation and induction of linguistic structures to a large extent. Some 45 units present grammatical material on gender, parts of speech, and verbs. Each unit contains a…

This volume is part of a revision of the 1968 edition of "Elementary Modern Standard Arabic." It consists of 30 lessons covering the basic grammatical structures of Modern Standard Arabic, and presupposes a knowledge of the phonological and writing systems. The first priority is the comprehension of written materials, but other skills…

This cross-cultural study examined the generic structure of English and Arabic job application letters written by native Arabic speakers and English native speakers to find out the discourse genre text similarities and differences between them. A corpus of 60 job application letters written by 60 job applicants was subjected to the form of move…

This paper reports on a study conducted with children belonging to a rarely studied minority group, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Israel, an extremely religious group that endorses patterns of voluntary segregation. The research population also demonstrates linguistic segregation, as they use only Yiddish for daily communication with…

English as a second language (ESL) teachers have long noted that native speakers of Arabic exhibit exceptional difficulty with English reading comprehension (e.g., Thompson-Panos & Thomas-Ruzic, 1983). Most existing work in this area has looked to higher level aspects of reading such as familiarity with discourse structure and cultural knowledge…

The dilemma of cataloging works in writing systems other than the roman alphabet is explored. Some characteristics of these writing system are reviewed, and the implications of these characteristics for input, retrieval, sorting, and display needed for adequate online catalogs of such works are considered. Reasons why needs have not been met are…

While the goal of language teaching has been the development of practical communication, most language tests have stressed mastery of discrete linguistic skills. Oral language performance-based testing requires test-takers to use and perform in the language in actual communicative situations. The variations in communication created by the…

In this paper we examine the language situation among the Gypsies of Jordan within the framework of previous theories on language maintenance and shift as proposed by Le Page, Fishman, Dorian and Kelman. The study investigates language and cultural maintenance among the Gypsies of Jordan to permit comparison of the relative influences of various…

In this series of articles, I explore the history of "Jewish Education" magazine with particular emphasis on its intersection with the history of American Jewish education and American Jewish life more generally. I isolate major themes and issues that preoccupied the magazine's editors and writers, and analyze how their discourse sheds light on…