An innovative approach to teach language and understand the impact of the East Mediterranean's social, personal & religious value standards and modes of life. Value standards were built through the ages and transmitted from generation to the next via language expressions and cultural understanding. It is a foreign language training that is accredited to the solid linguistic relationship between language and culture where language is an expression of culture & cannot be separated.

Foazi Y. El-Barouki, was born in Damascus, Syria. He received his initial college and university-level education in Cairo, then moved to the United States where he earned his master's degree at Temple University, Philadelphia, PA., and his doctorate degree from the University of San Francisco, CA.

Forty-four years of Dr. El-Barouki' s professional experience is focused on foreign language teaching, management and curriculum development, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Monterey Peninsula College; as well as Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) of Middlebury College, Vermont and DLI-Foreign Language Center, Monterey, California. He has been an active member of AFL, Arabic as a Foreign Language, ACTFL, American Council for Teachers of Foreign Language & AATA, American Association of Teachers of Arabic. He retired as Professor in 2017.

During his lifetime, Dr. El-Barouki has been publishing books and actively involved with research articles and studies on topics in the fields of literature, cross-cultural communication, language, and history in "Our World," "Our Heritage," "DOCO Newsletter," and "Dialog on Language Instruction." He is married to Gufran Sneeh and they have three sons and five grandchildren.

The idea of "Understanding Cultural Values Through Language in the Eastern Mediterranean" developed by Dr. Foazi Y El-Barouki, is unique and original; no language and culture learning book for any foreign language is anything like it. The author's approach for enriching knowledge of the Arabic language and culture is quite fulfilling and rewarding. This outstanding work, emphasizing the fact that language is an expression of culture, should really be of interest to Arabic foreign language students, scholars, and researchers.

Howard D. Rowland, PhD in Arabic & Near Eastern Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arber, 1971.