E-learning Arabic through English made easy at JMC
Trichy: The Jamal Mohamed College (JMC) in Trichy has announced that it would include unique Arab e-learning software for the benefit of students of the Arabic department from the next academic year. The software has been developed by Khan from Malaysia, an alumnus of the college who has done extensive research over two decades to develop this software.
The 63-year-old college on Wednesday offered a platform to officially launch the “globalization of Arabic learning through English e-learning software” at the hands of Vellore MP M Abdul Rahman.
The purpose of the software is to encourage the target group to speak, read and write the Arabic language easily,
Khan later told TOI. Khan completed the erstwhile pre-university certificate at JMC in 1972-73 when he took Arabic language. “I spent 15 to 16 hours a day during the past 15 years to develop the software. After the IT revolution, I thought it would be easier to develop a software of this kind and it has now come to fruition. The programme has been certified and appreciated by many Arabic scholars working in Islamic universities in Madina, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Brunei, and now in India,” said Khan. He will soon take the software to Sri Lanka and the Middle East.
Talking about the software, Khan said that since a language was needed to learn another, he chose English as the medium. But it is a multi-lingual concept. “This is a software through which any language can be learnt through another language with an inbuilt translator, but for now only Arabic language can be learnt through English,” Khan explained. Khan also said it was priced at around Rs 20,000 in the CD format that must be downloaded into any computer, and could not be replicated. Asked whether the price was prohibitive, Khan said he had spent more than the equivalent of Rs 6 crore and once the principle was realized, he would even give it free to educational institutions, and brought the price down considerably to bring it within the reach of the ordinary learner.
A M Mohamed Sindhasha, principal of the college said that his institution would become the first in the country to introduce the software from the next academic year. At present, there are about 200 students who have opted for the undergraduate programme in Arabic and they spend six hours in each semester for Arabic. It is easier to read and write through memorization, but it not is practical to speak the language, admitted Sindhasha. Hence out of the six hours, three hours would henceforth be allotted for practical learning to speak Arabic with the help of the software and it would be installed in around 40 systems in JMC linked to the interactive
