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[nomad soul]

For those who like history:

Saudi Aramco's timeline: http://www.saudiaramco.com/en/home/about/history/1930s.html

And for you hardcore EFL teachers, here's a rather interesting article about the beginnings and development of Saudi Aramco's English instruction program from the 1950s on:

English Instruction in the Saudi Aramco Training Curriculum Part 1
English Instruction in the Saudi Aramco Training Curriculum Part 2
English Instruction in the Saudi Aramco Training Curriculum Part 3

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[FrenchConnexion]

Thanks Nomad Soul for posting those articles from time to time. I enjoy reading them.

[nomad soul]

More Aramco history tidbits...
(Excerpts from 75 Facts: A Beginner's Guide to Saudi Aramco, Saudi Aramco World, May/June 2008 issue)

THE LONG ROADS
In the early days, it took oilmen about a month to travel from North America to Saudi Arabia. Take paleontologist Nestor Sander, who set out in November 1938 from the west coast. First crossing the United States by train, he and his colleagues sailed on a German liner from New York to France. They stopped briefly in Paris, where they boarded the Orient Express for Istanbul. Crossing the Bosporus by ferry, they caught another train south through Turkey, Syria and Iraq to Basra, where they boarded a steamship to Bahrain. They stayed there a few days and then sailed the last few kilometers to Saudi Arabia on a dhow. Saudis tell stories, too: When Fahmi Basrawi joined Aramco as a teacher in the mid-1940’s, he crossed the Arabian Peninsula from Jiddah to Dhahran by riding atop sacks of wheat on a truck for 131½ hot, dusty days.

THE STAR TEACHER
Fahmi Basrawi could read and write Arabic when he signed up to work in the mid-1940’s, but he had never studied English—the subject he was hired to teach—so he taught himself the language by memorizing words from a textbook. Basrawi flourished in the company’s Jabal School, where Saudis aged eight to 18 studied English, basic arithmetic and Arabic, and he excelled at organizing youth sports and field trips. He later attended college in Lebanon under company sponsorship, and he became a well-known personality on Aramco television, where he hosted educational programs for 17 years.

THE BRATS ARE ALL RIGHT
In the late 1940’s and 1950’s, many American employees who came to Dhahran were veterans of World War II, and when their families began arriving, they followed a tradition of the US armed services and referred (affectionately) to all employee children as “brats.” After all, it was just a short jump from “Army brat” or “Navy brat” to “Aramco brat,” and camp life did, in some ways, resemble life on an overseas military base. Brats they are to this day—proudly and still affectionately. AramcoBrats Inc., based in the US, boasts about 5000 members in more than 50 countries, and it holds biennial reunions. In 2007, three Brats produced a feature-length film, Home: The Aramco Brats Story, about expatriate children growing up in company communities.

THE UNIVERSITIES
In 1963, the company helped found the Middle East’s first college of petroleum technology, which in 1986 became today’s King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. The company released land adjacent to its main camp in Dhahran and contributed $11.5 million toward the construction of the campus, which opened in 1970.

In 2006, the Saudi government tasked Saudi Aramco with establishing the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) on a tract of land north of Jiddah. Scheduled to open in 2009, this research university aims to attract institutional partners and graduate students from around the world to study issues in water, environment, bioscience and nanotechnology.

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See 75 Facts: A Beginner's Guide to Saudi Aramco for the full version.
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[nomad soul]

Read about the first Aramco teachers (from "Saudi Aramco and Its People: A History of Training" by Thomas A. Pledge):

Aramco and the Jabal School, 1944-1949
First American Arabists - Saudi Aramco

Interesting video on Aramco's history: Saudi Aramco - Era of Discovery (1984)
(The reenactments are a bit cheesy compared to the original footage.)

[nomad soul]

Pictures that speak for themselves: Saudi Aramco: 80 Years in Photographs

More fascinating reading on Aramco's history and its impact:

Say It In Arabic (Saudi Aramco World, 1963); American children learn Arabic in Aramco grade school
The Search Began In 1933 (Saudi Aramco World, 1963); The beginnings of oil
Learn, Remember and Know (Saudi Aramco World, 1964); Saudi students try to adapt life/studies in the US
A Path To Progress (Saudi Aramco World, 1965); Learning via Aramco's Industrial Training Centers
Fly The Desert Sky (Saudi Aramco World, 1967); Moving supplies and men
Discovery! The Story Of Aramco Then (Saudi Aramco World, 1968); Chapter 2: The Crucial Corner - making the first oil deal
Discovery! The Story Of Aramco Then (Saudi Aramco World, 1968); Chapter 6: The Wildcatters
Discovery! The Story Of Aramco Then (Saudi Aramco World, 1969); Chapter 7: Dammam No. 7
Discovery! The Story Of Aramco Then (Saudi Aramco World, 1969); Chapter 9: The Second Wave
Discovery! The Story Of Aramco Then (Saudi Aramco World, 1970); Chapter 13: The Time of the Hundred Men

[Mr. Kalgukshi]

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