Arabic on campus and beyond

The main aim of the conference was to enable students and teachers of Arabic at UK institutions to share perspectives and experiences of the way Arabic is taught. It brought together teachers of Arabic and other ‘hard’ languages from universities, schools, and other professional environments from across the country and beyond. The conference was the result of an ongoing collaboration between the Centre for Advanced Study of the Arab World2 (directed by Elisabeth Kendall) and the Centre of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies3 (directed by Yasir Suleiman). The Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World had been established in 2006 to train the next generation of UK students in the Arabic language, and to enable scholars and social scientists to work with original sources and establish new contacts in the Arabic speaking world. Unfortunately, language training had recently been ranked as the least important learning benchmark in UK area studies.4The Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World and the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies aimed to challenge this approach.