Teaching arabic as a foreign language: The importance of cultural awareness

Abstract

Nowadays, learning foreign languages is envisaged as a priority within any Western curriculum, but most research has been conducted in dominant languages such as English or Spanish. Hence, our goal here is to focus on the teaching of Arabic as a foreign language and highlight the importance culture plays in its learning. Thus, using a comparative method, we have analysed several suwar in the Quran in order to elicit cultural information which can be used when teaching Arabic. Issues such as marriage, divorce, right of inheritance and freedom have been addressed. We also revised the cultural implications and policies in teaching Arabic in relation to diachronic analysis of Medieval Andalusian literature. Therefore, we conclude that teaching Arabic language and literature has to be contextualised and related to economical, socio-political, and especially cultural aspects where the religious rigidness would be overpassed and would help in extoling freedom of literary expression.