Teaching Numbers in Arabic -- Nuha Al Sha'ar
Before discussing some practical steps which teachers might find useful, two points need to be mentioned. Firstly, in contrast to the way numbers are taught in some Arabic course books such as Mastering Arabic, it is probably best if numbers are taught all at once in one lesson or in two related lessons. Secondly, depending on the syllabus of the teacher, numbers can be taught either in spoken form, paying less attention to grammatical details, or in written form where different grammatical points need to be discussed, for example, 'ashron in the normative form , and 'ashrin in the accusative and genitive form.
At the beginning of the lesson, it might be useful if the teacher draws the students' attention to the fact that the shape of numbers in European languages are in fact derived from Arabic ones, while the current Arabic number figures are Indian numbers which were imported into Arabic through trade relations. It is therefore worth pointing out that Arabic numbers have connections with European numbers.
The complete article is a downloadable document in Word format and PDF format.
- English version in Word format and PDF format
- Arabic version in Word format and PDF format.
