World News
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
view the rest of the comments
It's all thanks to the English for colonizing us. Usually, the second language spoken is either English or French, depending on who this country celebrates its independence from.
I even was an English teacher in the Middle East at some point lol
Yes, English is taught in most Arab countries starting in Grade 1 all the way up to highschool. Almost every upper educational organization will offer students English 101 if they fail a placement test or need extra help.
I know about English education in the Middle East since I'm from there; what I meant is: Does it actually stick in Gaza? At least where I'm from it goes like this: You just memorize the words and grammar, somehow pass the exam and then forget all of it, after high school you go from kinda sorta having intermediate level English back to only knowing the basics unless you study a field where you learn in English. I doubt the average person in the street from my country would be able to have a functional conversation with a, say, foreign tourist, so I'm wondering if it's different in Gaza.
There are certainly problems with teaching it as a second language, but it's still taught by UNRWA teachers (to at least one third of the kids there) from an early age.
I grew up in Jordan and the average young person will in most cases speak good English. It fades with older generations given how much their education sucked, but a large portion of people speak it. I've even been told that it was taught better in the 80's than now.
Don't think I've ever met anyone who doesn't speak enough English to communicate with someone on the street except for my Grandma and she was basically illiterate.
What country are you from?
Ps: to answer the question specifically about Gaza, I don't have any stats for that, but I know the UNRWA schools teach English
Egypt.
Curious: how would you describe your educational system with how they teach Arabic vs English?
Both are bad but for different reasons.
English education has one core problem: It focuses too much on vocabulary and grammar, and not enough on production. Your average Egyptian student should know a decent amount of vocabulary (until they forget it after their exams end anyway), but they have next to no idea how to create a natural sentence or actually write a passage or essay because while we do have essay writing on the exams (I think it was removed in favor of MCQ questions a few years ago, though) it's taught as a second thought or not at all. There's also a (heavily abridged) novel taught with every school year, but rather than treating it as a vehicle of language learning teachers (and exams) focus on the actual contents, so you end up with questions like "What was character X wearing in situation Y" that make just reading Q&A summaries a much more efficient way of tackling the exam than actually reading the novel. Also almost nobody does listening or speaking unless you're lucky or rich.
As for Arabic, it's a different situation but the outcome is similar. The Arabic curriculum in Egypt is massive. There are about 5 sections, each with a ton of content that you need to memorize because the exam focuses more on content than the skills you're supposed to learn. For example in reading you have 5 or so passages whose contents (including metaphors the author used, for example) you have to memorize and regurgitate in the exam. Grammar is a little better, but it also has some issues. There's also a story but like in English the focus is on the contents and for some reason it's abridged. Writing is, like in English, an afterthought that is barely given any care in the classroom. The end result is that the curriculum does little to give students the ability or desire to read or write Arabic literature. I'm pretty sure you could get Al-Mutanabbi to take the Egyptian Arabic exam and he'd fail unless he studies about the same amount as a normal Egyptian student because of the amount of fact memorization that's unrelated to actual mastery of Arabic. Edit: If it sounds like I'm salty that's because I am.
Seems like you have every right to be salty. All of this totally sucks!