Interest
in learning Arabic has greatly increased in recent years and many schools,
colleges, and universities have added Arabic to their curriculum. Nevertheless,
this important world language is not regularly offered at most institutions. As
a result, the U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of
Post-Secondary Education funded the University of California Consortium on
Language Learning & Teaching and the National Middle East Language
Resource Center to develop Arabic without Walls (AWW), an innovative
distance-learning program that will allow anyone, ranging from high school
students to senior citizens, to study Arabic—no matter where they live. A team
of highly respected curriculum developers designed AWW to take advantage
of the latest technology, while simultaneously ensuring the critical human
contact essential for successful language learning. In order to provide a rich
learning environment that exposes learners to the depth and breadth of Arab
culture, we collected authentic materials and engaging interviews that introduce
learners to a sample of real Arabs from various regional, educational,
professional, and religious backgrounds. AWW is based on the widely-used
textbook Al-Kitaab fii Ta`alum al-Arabiyya (Brustad et al., 2nd ed.,
Georgetown University Press, 2004). The content and scenarios of the interviews
parallel the content of the lessons in Al-Kitaab and are used as the
basis for online learning activities that help students acquire real facility
in using Arabic.
The University of California, Irvine offers AWW for
university credit. Brigham Young University offers a high school version and will soon offer a university credit option. Both courses have won
national awards. The full AWWwebsites
are not publicly accessible, but some of the video resources are available at iTunes U, but we provide here a PDF file with screenshots
of the high school version. (July 2010)
simultaneously ensuring the critical human
contact essential for successful