Developing Arabic Language Reading Skills in Secondary Schools: Problems and Solutions

This paper examines the significance of reading ability in the Arabic language since the revelation of the Qur'an. It attempts to correct the assumption that students in secondary school have mastered certain reading skills in Arabic which can help them without any formalized reading instruction, which ideally must have begun as early as the primary school stage. This assumption is probably a reason for the lack of interest in training reading instructors because any Arabic teacher is believed to be a reading expert. Reading is a continuous process, as a result, the reading problems, classified as: physical intellectual emotional, language home and education, require a gradual approach to their solution. The absence of trainers and training programmers in Arabic reading, no doubt, affects the three levels of comprehension skills in the students, namely literal, recognitional and inferential. It is hoped that this discussion will provide the teachers of the language opportunity to identify which of the reading problems highlighted here affects their students, and probably use the methods hereby suggested to solve them. It is concluded that poor reading gives rise to low scores in examinations.