Rabat - Morocco’s Minister of National Education and Vocational Training Rashid Belmokhtar said in a press interview that teaching students foreign languages will not have any negative impact on the status of the Arabic language in the national education system.
While stressing the need for development in foreign language instruction, the minister explained that it does not mean marginalizing the Arabic language.
He said that the Arabic language has its own privileged position as a constitutional language that no other language can compete with.
Belmoktar added that a study conducted by his ministry recently revealed that students’ generally exhibit a subpar command of the Arabic language.
“In Morocco, a study in this area had never been done until this last year,” the minister said. “We did this study to understand why [students’ mastery of] the Arabic language is so low.”
The minister went on to explain that there is a difference between teaching Arabic and using it as a language of teaching.
“We don’t make a clear cut difference between these two objectives,” Belmokhtar said, “and here we make a mistake.”
The minister called for a new model for teaching Arabic effectively in a way that would both help students perfect the language technically and teach them to use it communicatively.
The post Minister: Teaching Foreign Languages Will Not Negatively Impact Arabic appeared first on Morocco World News.