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The Individualization of Arabic Language Acquisition

During recent decades and, more specifically, since the time of the NDEA Act, significant progress has been made in the sphere of language instruction in Arabic. The old anecdote concerning Cambridge University, where beginning students were instructed to purchase Wright’s Grammar and study it for a week before commencing a reading of the Kamil of al-Mubarrad, may be apochryphal or at least have suffered some of the embellishments characteristic of folk tales, but the situation described came reasonably close to the reality for British undergraduates not too long ago. More attention is now being paid to the preparation of teaching grammars, readers and a whole variety of textbooks which will enable students with a wide variety of ages and language aptitudes to acquire proficiency in Arabic. Another area in which a great deal of research is now in progress is that of testing and test validity; in the case of Arabic, instructors in the U.S.A. now have access to a revised and improved version of a standardized test which will assess the proficiency of students at three different levels. In all this the American Association of Teachers of Arabic (AATA)— an international organization in spite of its title— has played an important role, in that it affords a forum for discussion and publication in which problems can be identified and potential solutions suggested. In what follows I will discuss some recent developments in Arabic language instruction implemented by members of AATA on their campuses, all of which can be subsumed under the general heading of “individualization.”