For our children’s sake, we must not let Arabic die

Mick Randall

• Last Updated: June 08. 2009 8:17PM UAE / June 8. 2009 4:17PM GMT

At a recent international conference on the growth of English as a lingua franca, a colleague and I delivered a paper on the attitudes of students in the Dubai Police Academy to the use of English. Fellow academics were astounded to learn that most expatriates in the UAE had little or no Arabic and in many cases had never even attempted to learn it, even at a rudimentary level. To these colleagues, coming from Europe and South America, it was inconceivable that you could live and work in a country without needing to communicate in its native toungue.

@body arnhem:How has this situation come about, and how can it be addressed?

One obvious response is to blame globalisation and the demands of commerce, the price that must be paid for commercial development: but surely social and language policies should be governed by more than commercial imperatives. Such policies should also consider the wider socio-political issues. In our research with the Dubai police we found nothing but positive attitudes to studying English and the use of English in their work, but there are many in the Government and the community who are concerned about the loss of Emirati identity, as The National reported as recently as last week.

This concern is focused on the perceived decline of Arabic in Emirati society, but the attitudes of non-Arabic speaking expatriates must also be of interest: they form a significant proportion of the teachers in schools and universities and are thus important role models for young Emiratis. If your teacher is not interested in learning or using Arabic, what message is being sent about its value as a means of communication?

The attitudes of international schools in the region to Arabic and Arab culture has long puzzled me. In the early eighties, when my wife and I lived in Oman, we were surprised to discover that our seven-year-old daughter was learning about Maori culture from a young and enthusiastic teacher from New Zealand. We had no problem with this in principle (and our daughter learnt a lot from the exposure to a world minority culture), but it seemed incongruous that a school in Muscat was looking at Maori, not Arabic, culture. When some parents raised the issue of teaching Arabic to the children (rather than French, for example), the school board responded that there was no demand, while French was necessary for Common Entrance examinations in England. This seems to me to be an example of the less beneficial effects of “consumer-led” education.

Things have changed since then: like the Omanis, the UAE Ministry of Education now stipulates, quite rightly, that Arabic and Islamic Studies should form part of all school curricula, so there is much “TAFL” (Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language) in private schools. You might think this would lead to the re-valuing of Arabic within society, but sadly this is not the case.

The recent Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) inspection in Dubai found that Arabic and Islamic studies teaching was “Good” or “Outstanding” in only 28 per cent of schools, with 18 per cent “Unsatisfactory”. One often hears that lessons are boring, children dislike the subject and levels of proficiency achieved are low. Compared with the efforts put into other second languages (the traditional subjects of French, German and Spanish), Arabic receives little attention. The number of students enrolling for GCSEs in Arabic is minimal compared with those registering for the traditional second languages.

The reason, surely, is that parents don’t value Arabic: a view that may not be in the best interests of their children. What could be more impressive on a CV than fluency in a second language such as Arabic? In the US, one of the fastest growing undergraduate language studies is Arabic, and the British academic David Graddol has identified Arabic as demographically the fastest growing language in the world.

So why, given Government regulations and the amount of time spent trying to teach the language, does the problem persist?

The sad truth is that most schools pay only lip-service to the regulations. Having good Arabic courses will not attract more students. The term “world-class education” is often glibly used when discussing school quality, but it is usually measured narrowly in terms of test scores, such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) . Unfortunately, neither Arabic language teaching nor the wider issue of social responsibility are measured on these scales. So in many private schools, with their eyes on the bottom line, Arabic does not receive the attention it deserves. In most schools, Arabic teachers are paid less than others, and there is little or no training in teaching Arabic as a foreign language, which is different from teaching Arabic to native Arabic-speaking children.

Not all the blame can be laid at the door of the schools. There is little knowledge available on TAFL, and little effective or attractive classroom material compared with Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) resources. TEFL is a multimillion (if not billion) dollar global business with huge profits to be made by international publishers. This has also generated a large academic research sector, the main bankroller of applied linguistics. In contrast, TAFL has received almost no attention in terms of published materials or methodology.

We at the British University in Dubai are investigating setting up specific TAFL programmes to help teachers to teach the subject effectively, but our search for partners, and models on which to base our programmes, has revealed that the situation is equally dire worldwide.

This is not the only problem in the learning of Arabic by expatriates: the situation is complex and deserves further research. But the issue of the “value” of Arabic is an essential element, and education clearly has a part to play.

Awareness of culture and language are important educational aims: they are not measurable or “sexy” issues for parents and schools, but they are nevertheless important for a balanced education. The KHDA’s school inspection is to be applauded for highlighting the problem. It is now up to the schools to respond effectively.



Dr Mick Randall is Dean of the Faculty of Education at the British University in Dubai, which financed the Dubai Police Academy research