Asians, Africans outperform Saudis in Arabic language

JEDDAH: African and Asian students of King Saud University (KSU), Riyadh, have sprung a surprise by scoring better marks than Saudis in the Arabic language, for which they were honored by the university last week.
“The students — six of them — achieved scores of 4.25 and 4.5 while the Saudi students got 3.75 and 4, following which the Saudis could not be included in the honoring ceremony,” said Khalid Al-Hafi, the head of the Arabic language and literature department at the university, was quoted as saying by local media on Sunday.
However, female Saudi students performed well in the subject, with 25 of them achieving higher scores, that is 4.25 and above.
“Saudi male students feel that the labor market does not demand graduates specializing in Arabic language and they focus on special courses. But if they have no choice, they take up Arabic language and wait for a chance to change the specialty,” said Al-Hafi.
On the role of the university to encourage Saudis to study the Arabic language specialty, he said the department established a center that offers services, free of charge, to enrich the Arabic language and knowledge of the students, linguistically and cognitively.
“The services are offered to the students in the other departments also and are aimed at training the students on language skills, reading, writing and research,” he said.