An increasing number of Saudi parents are enrolling their children in international schools, hoping for better education. However, they have now started to realize that by focusing on an English curriculum their children may lose knowledge of Arabic, their mother tongue. Lamees Zuhairy, a 29-year-old mother of two daughters, said that enrolling her girls in an international school was necessary for better education. “After returning from America where I had been studying, I enrolled my children in an international school because all of their studies had been in English and I also know how English language is important for scholarship students,” Zuhairy said. “My daughters take all their classes in English and they have an Arabic lesson once a day. One of the disadvantages I've noticed with my daughter, who is in fourth grade, is that she cannot read formal Arabic very well,” she added. Zuhairy explained that her daughters are taught maths and science in English only. “Last week I was shocked while tutoring my daughter to find that she couldn't write the number 20 in Arabic,” she said. However, Zuhairy is trying to help her daughters by giving them Arabic stories to read. “Another problem my children are facing is that they are confused about written and spoken Arabic. They ask me how two different words can have the same meaning in spoken and written Arabic and why I'm not using formal Arabic when speaking,” she said. “Nowadays, the future requires fluent English,” said Haneen Turki, a 30-year-old mother of two. “The scholarship program began when my children started school. I didn't want them to suffer in the future like I did with the English language,” she added. Her sons have one Arabic class a day and they also take Islamic Studies in Arabic but all their other subjects are in English. “They can't read all the numbers properly; for example, they get confused between the number 7 and 8 when writing in Arabic. I hired a teacher to teach them Arabic at home, but unfortunately nothing changed,” she said. Maha Yousef, a 26-year-old mother of one, said that she enrolled her daughter in an international school for proper education and a better future. “Education is better in international schools,” Yousef said, explaining how her daughter's school uses the Canadian curriculum, considered one of the best in the world. “When my daughter studied in America, her kindergarten teacher used to tell me to speak only Arabic to her at home and not to use English so she wouldn't lose her language,” she explained. However, Yousef recognizes the importance of both languages and she is trying to build up daughter's Arabic language by letting her watch old cartoons such as “Sally”, which was a hit in the 90s. “Nowadays most cartoons are dubbed with different Arabic accents unlike the ones we used to watch when we were kids, which might cause a problem with a child's language,” she said, adding that her daughter is not facing any difficulties when it comes to reading and writing because she is learning Arabic at home and at school. Research indicates that children who are fluent in two languages have an intellectual advantage over those who speak only one language. Yasser Hassan, a linguistics home tutor, said that most of his students go to international schools. “Parents should be aware that their children still need the Arabic language whether spoken or formal. Children can learn up to five languages together if they are taught properly, but here parents are not giving equal focus to both English and Arabic,” he said. Hassan also gave an example of a young student who had difficulty with the Arabic language. “I had an eight-year-old student who pronounced Arabic words with an American accent. I taught him Arabic and I told his parents he needed to watch Arabic cartoons and to read stories in Arabic in order for him to improve, which he eventually did,” Hassan said. As a linguistics tutor, Hassan understands the demands of modernity and globalization but he believes parents should be aware that someday their children might completely lose their ability to read, write and speak Arabic. __
