WHICH VARIETIES OF ARABIC TO LEARN?

Abstract

Teaching Arabic as a foreign language is very specific for different reasons. The main obstacle in searching for the optimal and effective teaching model for the Arabic language is the pronounced diglossia, a situation in which two languages or two forms of a language are used simultaneously under different conditions, formal and functional in a community, that is to say “higher“ literary/standard Arabic and a “lower one“ which encompasses numerous regional dialects. As a foreign language, Arabic has been taught all over the world, primarily at the university level, but the priority has always been given to a “higher language“. It is also dominant in teaching nowadays but in creating curricula for teaching Arabic, more attention has been paid to relating the opposites of diglossia with the main speech dialects.