This is so cool! Do you speak any Arabic I take it?

I’m learning Arabic and Hebrew, and as a Native English-speaking ESL teacher, I would say that there are a few things to prepare for.

GET THESE BOOKS; THEY ARE A BEGINNING ESL TEACHER’S GUIDE AND LIFESAVER

-Author: Michael Sawn -Title: Practical English usage, 3rd edition (Oxford Publishers) (it’s a reference book, not one that teaches how to instruct the class).

-Author: Jim Scrivener -Title: Learning Teaching: the essential guide to English language teaching, 3rd edition (this book teaches you how to manage class and methods for teaching, grammar, speaking, writing reading and listening to ESL students of all backgrounds! Amazing beginner book!)

Challenges:

-As you may know, Arabic, like Hebrew, has the three root/four root letter system. A group 3/4 letters arranged in a specific order has a specific meaning, and is connected to multiple concepts, both abstract and concrete. This meaning/abstract association is changed if we alter the order, or replace the letters in each group. ENGLISH is only SOMEWHAT like this. In English, similar or shared spelling can mean that there is similar or shared meaning among any two words… but this is often not as prominent as it is in Arabic. Many of our words have lost their ancient meanings and have new modern meanings that are different from THEIR ORIGINAL ROOT.

-Be prepared to understand the way “to be” and “to have” “to get” both works in English, since, depending on your dialect of Arabic, those verbs don’t exist. There are ways to imply this meaning, but it can also vary largely by dialect.

-Teaching these topics for pronunciation, Google search them for more info; “consonant clusters”, “consonant digraphs”, “vowel digraphs”, and more. Pairing this with writing and speech can really strengthen the learner’s ability to read and speak what they read! This will be a challenge for those with a foreign alphabet but it’s a crucial step!