Participation of 50 academics and lecturers from universities in the earthquake-affected areas

Doha – QatarDebate

QatarDebate in collaboration with the Arabic Language Studies & Debate Center at Fatih Sultan Mehmet University, organized the “Debate and Arabic Language Academy”  on June 7-12, 2023 in Istanbul, Turkiye.

 50 Arabic language lecturers and professors from different universities in southern Turkey participated in  the Academy, namely the regions of ” Gaziantep, Kahramanmaraş, Antakya, Kilis, Sanliurfa” that were severely affected by the earthquake.

Including 25 Arabic language teachers from secondary schools in Istanbul in  cooperation with the Ministry of Education, which nominated these teachers with high experience and professional competence to manage the debate championship that will be held in collaboration with the Ministry of Education in the upcoming days.

The program was divided into two phases and over a period of 6  days the first three days  were allocated to  the four qualified teams from the semi-finals of the national debating championships in Turkey, in addition to the  Fatih Sultan Mehmet University team, these 5 teams  took training  in debate skills and  how to employ them correctly in cases  and identify the methods of analysis and tasks of the two teams within the debates through enhanced applications of the content, with the aim of qualifying to participate in the next International Debate Championship in the Doha, Qatar.

The second phase is a workshop for Arabic language teachers titled: the use of debate in teaching and curricula for teaching Arabic to non-native speakers, and it lasted for three days, with the aim of reviewing the methods of activating debate in the classroom and using this skill in schools and universities,

In addition to enabling them to teach Arabic based on modern linguistics and introducing them to the debate community, as most of them do not have sufficient information about debates.

In this regard, Mr. Abdul Samad Kocak – Fatih Sultan Mehmet University – said: “We cannot fail to note that the program takes into account the varying levels of the participants, as the trainees were divided into two groups, whose training was supervised by Turkish and Arab  students from Fatih Sultan Mehmet University, Ibn Khaldun University, Marmara University and Istanbul University, where the trainers taught methods of teaching Arabic to non-native speakers.

Moreover, we seek through these workshops to find a base of professors and trainers familiar with debates, who deal with students directly, involve them in trainings and encourage students to learn debate skills.

The topics dealt with by the students included “teaching receptive skills – listening and reading -, productive skills – speaking and writing -, grammar skills in modern educational chains, and the foundations of teaching Arabic for the introductory level  –  the Turkish environment as a model  

Perhaps it is useful to emphasize the importance of the Arabic language for non-native speakers and the extent to which they want to debate in Arabic and even express their ideas and opinions using appropriate vocabulary.

To conclude the event, certificates were distributed to the participants after the open dialogue session under  the title  “Is it possible to combine the traditional method and the modern method in teaching grammar” QatarDebate is completing its plan  with the aim  of rooting this art and spreading it in Arabic locally and internationally to  be evidence of dialogue with logical thought about any  controversial and debatable  issues in order to reach a reasonable common grounds.