Bu nitel çalışmada XVIII. yüzyıldan itibaren Osmanlı’da, Cumhuriyet’in ilk yıllarında ve takip eden yıllardan günümüze kadar geçen süreçte, ortaöğretimde bir yabancı dil olarak Arapça öğretiminin nasıl gerçekleştiği ana hatlarıyla belirtilmeye çalışılmıştır. Arapça öğretiminde karşılaşılan sorunları ortaya çıkarmak amacıyla Üsküdar Anadolu İmam Hatip Lisesi’nde öğrenim gören öğrencilerin ve aynı okulda görev yapan Arapça dersi öğretmenlerinin görüşlerine başvurulmuştur. Çalışmada öğrencilere açık uçlu sorular yöneltilerek Arapça öğretimine nasıl baktıklarının ortaya konmasına, öğretmen ve öğrencilerin görüşleri doğrultusunda öğretim yöntemleriyle ilgili mevcut aksaklıkların giderilmesine katkı sağlanmasına çalışılmıştır. Arapça öğretiminin daha etkili, kalıcı ve anlamlı gerçekleşmesini sağlamak adına makalenin sonuna bir dizi öneri sunulmuştur.

In this article, the history of Arabic education in Turkey is investigated, and an overall assessment of its current condition is presented. Within the scope of the article an outline of Arabic education in secondary schools from the 18th century onwards is given, comprising the Ottoman periods, the early years of the Turkish Republic and the following years until the present. With the aim of indicating the present problems encountered in language education, the opinions of the students and teachers of Üsküdar Anadolu Imam Hatip High School are consulted. The research is significant mainly in two aspects. Firstly, this research employed the method of asking open-ended questions to students in order to determine their perspective on Arabic teaching. Secondly, the questionnaire aimed to trigger self-evaluation among the teachers in light of the opinions and recommendations of the students, and contribute to the process of improving teaching methods. This research was carried out according to the qualitative case assessment model based on an in-depth and multi-dimensional examination, from the perspective of the students and teachers in Anadolu Imam Hatip High Schools. For this article the method of interview and scanning was employed from the qualitative data collection methods, and the teachers and students were taken as the source of data. It was assumed that the fact that the questions were openended and wide-scoped would enable the source of data to view the problem from a wide perspective. The scope of the article consists of 200 eleventh and twelfth grade students and 15 teachers from the Anadolu Imam Hatip and Imam Hatip High School in Üsküdar, İstanbul in the school year of 2009-2010. The three open-ended questions that were directed to the students were also directed to the teachers who taught the Arabic class in an interview setting. All the teachers who taught Arabic were included within the scope of this article. While the data was being analyzed the method of content analysis was used; the opinions and statements of the teachers and the students regarding Arabic education were coded. In the data coding phase, certain themes were established by the clustering of codes under cohesive and logical titles. Later on the percentages of these themes within the larger coding were calculated. In the third phase the data was arranged according to the codes and themes. In the last phase a set of conclusions were reached by interpreting the findings. The findings were discussed under the subtitles of “lack of purpose in Arabic education, presentation of the material in a manner not compatible with the students’ language skills levels, the inadequacy of the Arabic basis of the students and the weekly lesson hours, indifference towards Arabic among the students, problems stemming from language, teaching methods, teachers, students, and lesson tools”. Twenty-six percent of the students think that the language education problems stem from the students, 25% see the source of the problem as the education system, 19% hold the teachers responsible, and 17 % regard teaching methods to be problematic. As opposed to this 37% of the teachers think that the problems encountered originate from teaching methods, 21% hold the education system responsible, whereas 13% think the students and 11% the teachers to be the most important part of the problem. The fact that problems stemming from the education system ranked second place in both the student and the teacher responses proves this issue to be an important subject worthy of attention. In schools such as American Robert College and Üsküdar American Academy where education is in a foreign language, language teaching with a component of grammar instruction is carried out intensively only during the preparatory year. The grammar rules that are taught during the preparatory year are improved during grades 9, 10, 11, and 12 without direct allusion via application. It is plausible to suppose that the foreign language education method that is implemented in American Robert College and Üsküdar American Academy can constitute a model for secondary and even higher education institutions. A series of suggestions are included at the end of the article for the Arabic instruction to be made more effective, permanent, enjoyable, and meaningful. Some of these are: “reinstating the preparatory year in the Imam Hatip High Schools in a similar fashion to the private foreign high schools, providing student exchange programs such as Erasmus and Socrates for grade 12 students, encouraging students to attend summer language schools in Arab countries, focusing instruction entirely on Arabic in the preparatory year, making it possible for students to pass on to the next grade only through a centrally administered test where at least a 60 is required out of a 100, implementing the “class teacher” method of the primary schools, using visual and aural tools in language education, etc.”