Standards for the Arabic Language in School Education: Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Given the recent experience of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on building standards for the Arabic language and its importance locally and in the Arab world, in addition to the absence of previous studies that reviewed this experience, the current study aimed to uncover the standards of the Arabic language in public education in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A descriptive approach was used in its exploratory design to achieve this goal and the analysis of official documents was used as a method for collecting data. The study concluded with a definition of the Saudi experience on building curriculum standards in public education and an explanation of the Saudi national program for building standards for the Arabic language. This included a definition of the Arabic language, a description of its nature, the rationale for including it as a field of learning in public education and its learning objectives, along with a description of its structure, a presentation of the structure model, naming its branches, determining its teaching hours, the central and main ideas of each branch, how to include common dimensions in the standards, and clarification of how to build standards according to levels and grades. In light of this experience, there is a need to build development plans and programs that benefit the Ministry of Education, faculties of education, and Arabic language teachers and their supervisors to teach Arabic in public education while considering the standards. However, there is a set of research proposals for researchers and specialists in teaching Arabic, the most important of which is conducting more studies to evaluate the current Arabic language curricula considering the experience of standards and determining the level of readiness of the educational field to apply the standards of the Arabic language in public education.