[susan53]

No, I don't think you can expect teachers to prepare special lessons either - unless they're paid for it of course. But they could at least tell them to bring a book to read and then to write a book report. Or show and tell/ research a talk on a topic that fits in with the class textbook to present to the other kids - who get the listening comprehension practice. Would have to be handled sensitively though ...

Interesting question about the Arabic situation. I've discovered that here Arabic is taught as a foreign language in some high schools though it's fairly novel. The "Linguistic" High Schools take a third foreign language, and Arabic is the third popular after Chinese and Japanese. And according to a news article on one of the schools that do it, in one of the classes there were some Arabic speaking kids. But it wasn't clear if they'd chosen to be there or not.