Montasser Mahmoud

Using Learners' Local Culture to Develop English Language Skills Montasser Mahmoud

This volume is the logical outgrowth of the previous book ?Islamic Arabic culture in English Language Textbooks?, which explored the criteria of Islamic Arabic culture that should be involved in the English Language Textbooks prescribed for Muslim Arab students. This second volume tries to present an answer to the following bewildering question, ?Do we really need to teach language with its own culture?? The intimate relationship between language and culture is strikingly illustrated by many studies, which confirm the view that language and culture cannot be separated. I always asked myself,?Should the students' local culture be neglected?? I decided on my goal and determined to find out the truth through designing an Islamic-Arabic-culture-based course and teaching it to a sample of Muslim Arab students at Al-Azhar institutes in Egypt. With so much energy directed at further investigation, it was obvious that any such development would be valuable and that different trends and tendencies were bound to develop. Based on the results of the study,it was clearly shown that the proposed Islamic?Arabic-culture-based course was very effective in developing EFL listening and reading skills.