Authors
Hanada Taha-Thomure:
Dr. Hanada Taha-Thomure is currently Associate Dean of Bahrain Teachers’ College at the University of Bahrain. Previous to that she was the director of Arabic programs at the Language Acquisition Resource Center at the San Diego State University. She is the director of Arabexpertise, an educational consulting company based in California, USA. She has taught Arabic language to native and non-native speakers in countries such as Lebanon, Bahrain, Sultanate of Oman, United Arab Emirates and the United States of America for the past twenty years. Dr. Taha-Thomure has trained thousands of Arabic language teachers in various countries within the context of international private and public schools and in international conferences.
Dr. Taha-Thomure has developed many Arabic language instructional materials and scholarly works including: “Academic Freedom in Arab Universities”, "Ardh AlAswat", "Writing through Drawing, ," "My Colorful Books and lately a series “Arabic language through Dialogue 2 and 3” .
Lina Hariri-Hajj:
Lina Hariri-Hajj is a project specialist who assists in coordinating LARC’s Arabic program. She is also the graphic designer and the photographer responsible for LARC’s publications and brochures. In the community, she has served as Vice Principal of the Arabic Learning Center of San Diego for 6 years. Lina started as a classroom teacher in her native Lebanon teaching at the Students’ Paradise School and Lycee’ Minette Modern. Beyond LARC’s marketing materials, she has designed “Arabic Language Through Dialogue book 2 (1st edition)”, “Iraqi Dialect book”, and “My Colorful Book”. She has also contributed with photographs to all “Arabic Language Through Dialogue books” and illustrations to “Kharbashat Imra’ah Arabiyya” by Dr. Hanada Taha-Thomure.
Shereen Hijazi:
Shereen Hijazi started as a content material developer for San Diego State University. Shereen has a Graphic Design degree from SDSU Art School. Her work includes Arabic Language through Dialogue 2 and 3 as a material developer. In addition, she is the co-author of Arabic Language through Dialogue 1 and she handled the design of all the books mentioned above.
Ghassan Zakaria:
Ghassan Zakaria graduated from Mutah university in Jordan in January 2001, and then moved to New York where he worked at the United Nations Headquarters at the department of General Assembly Affairs and conference services/Translation and editorial division as a language reference assistant. Since August 2004 Ghassan has been teaching the Elementery Arabic 120 , Elementery Arabic 121 and Arabic Civilization at Cuyamaca-Grossmont college in addition to teaching the Elementery Arabic 101, Elementery Arabic 102, Intermediate Arabic 201 and Arabic conversational classes at San Diego state university at (Department of Linguistics and Asian / Middle Eastern Languages).mGhassan continues to work with the Language Acquisition Recourse Center at SDSU as an Arabic Language material creation and co-teaching the distinguish level Arabic courses
Lina Kholaki:
Lina Kholaki has a Masters degree in human development and adult teaching from Pacific Oaks College in California, Currently she is an Arabic language instructor at Cal state University in San Bernardino, California .She began teaching Arabic at New Horizon Elementary-Middle School in Pasadena, where she remained on staff for thirteen years. Since 2001, Lina has been training Arabic language teachers at the four New Horizon campuses for the Bureau of Islamic and Arabic Education and for the Aldeen Foundation. Lina is the co-developer of Hayya Natakalam Maan, a landmark program for teaching Arabic language following the modern standards for Early Childhood Education..In addition, Lina was a member of the Task Force Committee charged with drafting the Standards of Arabic as a Foreign Language for the 21st century for K-12, and was a leader for Arabic teachers at the 2006 UCLA Arabic and Hebrew workshop.
Lina has continued to be a Steering Committee member for curriculum development for the Arabic village of Concordia Language Villages since 2005. She has developed programs for after-school clubs and Arabic cultural events since 2001, and has presented her philosophy and experiences at numerous national conferences. Lina is a recipient award for the teacher of the year from New Horizon System in 2005.