ARAP DİLİ ÖĞRETİMİNİN TARİHÇESİ

The history of Arabic language teaching begins with the spread of Islam among the non-Arabic speaking peoples of the Middle East during the seventh century. However, our knowledge about the nature of the methods used for teaching Arabic in these early times is quite limited because of the lack of the materials extant from that period. Moreover, the majority of grammatical writings of the later classical period do not reflect any obvious aim of teaching Arabic as a second language, but the explanation of linguistic phenomena in the speech of the idealized native speakers, the Bedouin. The character of this grammatical tradition determines the nature of the entire course of the Arabic teaching in the Islamic world until the 21st century. In the West, however, the interest of learning/teaching Arabic begins as a reaction to Islam among Eastern Christians during the 9th century. The rationale behind their interest was to study Islam in order to be knowledgeable in their polemics against Muslims. Later on, the first Chairs of Arabic were founded as early as the sixteenth century in the European universities. However, the development of pedagogically suitable materials for teaching Arabic as a second language had to wait until the last decades of the 20th century.This article provides a background of the historical development in Arabic language pedagogy inside and outside the Islamic world, starting from the medieval ages and ending the modern period. By illustrating the similarities and the differences between the Islamic world and the West in the methods and objectives of teaching Arabic it gives a succinct description of the developments in both worlds. It also points out the fact that Arabic has been studied in the Islamic world as an essentia! pail of Islamic learning, while in the West, as a foreign language,