Is it time to change how we learn Arabic?

“Teaching Arabic, in general, is difficult,” says Najat Ali, who teaches Arabic and English to Grade 1 to Grade 9 pupils in Dubai.

In her 15 years of teaching, she has seen first-hand how native and non-native speakers struggle to learn the language.

One of the major challenges, she says, is a lack of practice outside the classroom. This can be an issue particularly in multicultural countries like the UAE, where English is widely used as a common language among a diverse population.

Ali says Arabic teachers are also offered fewer training and development opportunities compared with their English teaching counterparts.

“[English teachers] have webinars, seminars, everywhere, every day, online. We don’t have that much in Arabic,” she says. “Schools need to work more on developing and training teachers themselves.”

Quality Arabic resources for pupils are also more scarce than for English subjects, which Ali says come with a well-designed curriculum along with engaging tools and activities.

“In Arabic, we don’t have those curriculums and we don’t have those resources that really meet the kids’ needs,” she says.

“We don’t have applications, we don’t have websites to support us. We try our best to use technology but whenever you try to use any website or any game or any app, it’s designed in English.”

Despite being a linguistically and culturally rich language, Arabic hasn’t yet found its own space to grow and evolve in the digital realm — and the majority of young peoples’ learning and entertainment in the region now occurs online.

The difficulty of teaching and learning Arabic is in part due to the language being "diglossic” — with two or more versions of it existing and in use at the same time. Across the Arab world, MSA exists alongside numerous regional dialects.

This variation between MSA, dialects and colloquial Arabic has contributed to a decline in reading literacy and prevented children from engaging with the language in the way they might with English.

A World Bank report, released in June 2021, found that more than half of children in the Middle East and North Africa region experience a form of “learning poverty” in Arabic and cannot read or comprehend, “age-appropriate text by age 10”, displaying a “below minimum proficiency”.

The report found children were struggling to learn the language due to their limited engagement with MSA before starting school. It also found that parents in the Mena region were less likely to read to or play word games with their children compared with parents in other regions.

The report recommended early exposure to MSA and bridging the gap between MSA and dialects spoken at home. But parents say even that is not without its challenges.

Ghanam and her husband have been making a conscious effort to only speak Arabic to their children, Ghanim, 10, and Amina, 8, at home. They often find themselves having to repeat words and sentences to help their children understand.

Helping their children with their Arabic homework is also a constant and emotionally draining struggle.

Ghanam says her son, an A+ pupil across all other subjects, had to submit a 500-word essay in Arabic MSA recently that he found so difficult to comprehend, he cried in frustration.

“He was like, ‘I don't understand what I'm writing’, so we have to explain it all in English,” she says.

“It was in Arabic fus-ha, and it was nothing he understood. English is so easy. Everyone speaks it the same way.”

Part of the problem, she says, is that Arabic content is “old-fashioned” and doesn’t relate to children and young people. While some effort is being made to rectify this disconnect by some content providers, it remains minuscule compared to English language content.

In July 2021, academics and ministers from around the world attended an online roundtable, hosted by The World Bank, to find solutions to bridge the gap in Arabic literacy among Arab children.

One of the suggestions was to include regional dialects in education alongside MSA — a widely opposed concept in Arabic language teaching.

Hanada Taha, a professor of Arabic language at Zayed University, raised that many pupils, who speak a specific dialect at home, can find it challenging to engage and learn MSA when starting school. She recognised that this dissonance can cause a lot of educational, cultural and cognitive tension and could “lead to a lot of resistance to learning Modern Standard Arabic and the relevance of it”.

Taha said Arabic diglossia has also affected Arabic reading and comprehension — a topic that, until recently, was “not spoken about much”.

The solutions Taha suggested matched those of the World Bank report. They included a call for more research in predominantly Arabic-speaking countries, like Jordan, but also early exposure to MSA through various forms of media, ensuring schools provide a well-developed programme that serves as a bridge between MSA and dialects, and ensuring the curriculum uses a “lexicon that is very similar to the child’s dialect”.

But even these suggestions are complicated by the existence of numerous dialects across the region.

Ghanam says the onus should be on educators to make the lessons more engaging and relatable for children.

“I know teachers have hundreds of kids a day that they teach but there should be a different way, because generations are changing, our life is changing and I believe this system should change,” she says.

“Just remove that old way of teaching the kids Arabic and make it more flexible.”

Laila Familiar, a lecturer in Arabic language at New York University Abu Dhabi, says much of Arabic literature for children uses language that “is not always suitable or at the level of children and what they know in fus-ha.”

She says that, in general, books assigned in schools have an indoctrinating tone, which “is not what promotes reading for pleasure”.

These issues, Familiar says, reveal an obvious disconnect between traditionalists and the younger generation.

“We fail on one hand to accept the reality that the children of today are not the children of yesterday,” she says.

“We’re not making an effort to incorporate anything that lives in the Arabic language which is at the level of the youth and try to bring it closer to the curriculum. Meaning, anything that has to do with dialects is automatically discarded from the curriculum.”

While many Arabic scholars and educational policymakers are against the idea of including dialects into Arabic language education, Familiar argues this can make Arabic more accessible.

“For [the pupils] it’s a strange language, it's a second language,” she says.

“If we bring the living culture closer to the pupil and find a bridge between us as educators and what young people like … I think we can open a door and build a bridge that takes them slowly closer to fus-ha.”

Reimagining the way Arabic is taught may seem radical to some, but it’s a vision that Hossam Abouzahr advocates and promotes.

Abouzahr, a Lebanese American writer and analyst, created The Living Arabic Project in 2013 as an online resource for Arabs. The site includes Lughatuna, a multi-dialect Arabic dictionary with more than 100,000 Arabic words and 200,000 definitions in MSA, plus Levantine, Egyptian, Moroccan and Iraqi dialects.

“There’s a lot of new spaces that are forming where people are moving more and more toward colloquial Arabic,” he says.

“In addition to that, there's just a lack of interest in fus-ha. You see it in kids’ books and in the number of books that are published in the Middle East, people just aren't reading that much. They aren't comfortable with the language.”

Abouzahr says another issue is that MSA doesn’t have a native speaking population, meaning that any developments in the language are not natural or organic, but artificial and concerted.

“We’re not willing to incorporate more words into Arabic,” he says. “We’re not willing to allow the language to grow more organically. It’s a choice to a certain extent that we want to keep fus-ha pure.”

He warns that if MSA continues to remain unchanged, then it will eventually fade out of use.

“What I really wish that we could do,” he says, “particularly with technology, is to reach a new kind of language, or a new concept of language that's based on multilingualism that’s all Arabic.”

But while there are passionate advocates for incorporating dialects or completely disregarding MSA in Arabic education, many still hold steadfast that fus-ha is not redundant and adds linguistic value to Arab speakers.

Writer, researcher, lecturer and founder of Barjeel Art Foundation, Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, believes in the cultural importance of MSA as a means to connect the Arab world.

“I think that you must teach fus-ha,” he says, “because fus-ha for me is the standard Arabic on which you can build many different layers. You can build into Shammi [Levantine], into Iraqi, into Egyptian, into Khaleeji [Gulf], into North African and Sudanese. I’m not dismissing the other opinion, but my opinion is you definitely have to teach fus-ha.”

Al Qassemi does, however, recognise the real challenges of learning MSA.

Not only is Arabic being challenged by other languages — chiefly English — through media, music, and education, but English also exists in all facets of society, from the domestic, to school and social spaces.

“From what I can observe, it seems that there is a trend where Arabic is becoming less and less ‘cool’. It’s becoming more of a marker of sophistication to speak English,” says Al Qassemi.

Whether it’s weak translations or dubbing, or a lack of investment in design and production, not enough is being done to make Arabic accessible, fun and attractive to younger generations in entertainment, he says.

Al Qassemi says “there was much cooler Arabic content” when he was younger in the 1990s than there is today.

“If nothing changes, Arabic will continue to play less and less of a role and there's going to be a stratification of Arabs who speak English and Arabs who don't speak English, and then this is going to be the new elite.”

No matter the position of educational policymakers, teachers, academics and parents around the issues of learning MSA, all parties can agree that the problems with Arabic go beyond the classroom.

Ghanam believes it is much easier for own children and younger generations to continually be engaged and inspired by English, for its ease of use and its accessibility online.

“Everything is in English. TikTok is in English, YouTube is in English, all these vloggers and YouTubers are in English,” she says.

“English is the language, English is what's in, as much as you try to make them watch Arabic programmes, they don’t. But what are the Arabic programmes for kids in that age? I believe this has a lot to do with it.”

Ali, as a teacher, also recognises that media and pop culture are vital ways in which pupils learn a language.

“English is the language of movies,” Ali says.

“Everyone watches Hollywood movies. This is another source of learning the language. We don’t have this in Arabic.

“IIt feels like the Arabic language doesn’t exist on the web, which is really the main source of this generation.”

Outside of education, entertainment, books, and social media have had a profound and inescapable effect on culture, and specifically, Arabic.

There is a wide gap in availability of original Arabic entertainment, from TV shows to movies, games and books, when compared to English options.

Helen Al Uzaizi, a Jordanian mother of two and chief executive of BizWorld Middle East, a business dedicated to entrepreneurship education for children, says “cool” Arabic content does not exist in the world of teenagers.

“Arabic TV shows that exist are not cool,” she says. “There’s content being developed for very young kids, like babies, and there’s content being developed for adults, like new Netflix shows, but they’re not suitable for the middle years.”

Al Uzaizi’s daughter, Gianna Ghurani, 14, struggles to learn Arabic at her private school and says part of the problem is that English content is simply more easily accessible than Arabic.

“I don't think English shows or movies are more fun,” she says. “It's just that I’ve grown up with it.”

Accessibility and the “cool factor” are two of the main reasons why English original content is so easily and eagerly consumed by younger generations.

It’s a point of view shared by Shamim Kassibawi, a mother of one and founder of Play:Date, an app that helps families build their social circle and find playmates for their children.

Kassibawi is trying to incorporate Arabic into her two-year-old daughter’s early development and has found that, while there is a lot of dubbed content online and on streaming services, there isn’t much tailored original Arabic content that appeals to children.

“I’m not sure if the algorithms don’t push these shows to us but they are hard to find it should be made easier” she says.

“There aren’t any shows like [US YouTube channel and streaming media show] CoComelon for example, which is fun and easy for children to watch but deals with everyday issues that children face.”

Kassibawi says many of the parents she meets express frustration over their difficulties with engaging children in Arabic.

“They complain about the schools, TV shows, music. Obviously a kid isn’t going to listen to Al Arabiya or Al Khaleejiya, they’re going to turn to Virgin Radio or Radio One. They want to listen to English. Basically, it’s become uncool to speak Arabic. That’s what it feels like is happening.”

Kassibawi says the issue goes beyond what’s happening at home and that the responsibility shouldn’t rely solely on parents.

“Someone needs to take ownership and make Arab content cool,” she says. “It needs to be a 360 campaign. It’s not just on the parents at home, it’s a full on effort.”

The challenges around creating original Arabic content that is relevant and accessible seems to be the obvious way forward for Arab media in an increasingly digital streaming world.

“I’m a voiceover artist and I wonder all the time, why do we buy thousands of hours of cartoons from here and there and add Arabic voiceovers?” asks Syrian actress and voiceover artist Laura Abu Asaad.

The mother of three feels outdated forms of education are hindering the way children are learning Arabic, and is acutely aware of the power and importance of storytelling in entertainment as a learning tool.

Abu Asaad has recorded hundreds of hours of cartoon soundtracks translated from Japanese, Korean, French, and English and dubbed shows from Latin America, Croatia, Turkey and the UK.

“Why don't we produce our own shows?” she asks. “We have some here in Dubai TV and Abu Dhabi TV and they are great, but it's not enough.”

She says open dialogue with young people is needed to create Arabic content they will engage with.

“When you create stories from your life, from the people around you, when these stories reflect you own life it makes more of an impact,” she says.

There have been recent moves by producers to create more Arabic content to reach an underserved viewership in the Middle East.

Streaming giant Netflix has launched several initiatives over the past two years to produce more Arabic content, in an effort to find more compelling and diverse stories from the Arab world.

“We’re working with Arab storytellers to tell stories that are authentic and ultimately give more people a chance to see their lives reflected on screen,” says Nuha El Tayeb, director of content acquisitions at Netflix Mena.

“That means working with both new and established voices to tell stories that haven’t been told before and provide Arab talent and filmmakers with a platform to gain fans globally.”

In 2020, Netflix signed a five-year exclusive partnership with Myrkott studios to produce Saudi-focused shows and films. The US company also signed a deal with Saudi production house Telfaz11 studios in 2020 to produce eight new films.

Netflix has initiated different programmes to help build the infrastructure of storytellers in the region. These include a partnership with a Saudi production training studio to launch a development programme for young talent; a programme in Kuwait to aid six writers and filmmakers from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait; the Because She Created writing programme that trained 22 women from underrepresented areas in Egypt; and a collaboration with The Middle East Media Initiative to identify four Arab writers — who were each awarded a $30,000 grant to further their creative projects.

“There is enough ‘cool’ content to go around, and many ‘cool’ storytellers to work with, but we are at an important juncture,” El Tayeb says.

“It’s the beginning of a journey and we’ll take time to get there as more storytellers experiment with new formats of storytelling, and find a space to tell these stories to new audiences. The priority is being able to create a space that allows them to unleash their potential.”

Several original Arabic films and TV shows aimed at young people have been released by Netflix over the past few years. But while some were positively received, others were widely criticised. 

In June 2019, Netflix premiered Jinn — its first Arabic original series. The contemporary supernatural drama that focused on young Arabs living in Jordan received mostly positive reviews, but was met with criticism from Arab audiences in Jordan and the region for what were considered “immoral scenes”.

In August 2021, Netflix released Al Rawabi School for Girls, a show about bullied outcasts at a prestigious girls’ school in Jordan. Like Jinn, the series received a backlash for its themes around violence, bullying and honour killings. It was accused of being influenced by western media, and there were calls for the show to be removed from the streaming service.

Calls for censorship and social pressure to dilute certain themes or to ban shows entirely is common in the Arab world. Content for young adults is typically under particular scrutiny for its perceived influence on them. Whether or not Netflix and other streaming platforms creating choose to succumb to these pressures will have a ripple effect on the kind of shows and movies young people and children eventually consume.

In October 2022, Netflix released Dubai Bling a reality show centred around the lavish lifestyles of a group of self-proclaimed millionaires in the emirate.

Though the show received scathing reviews from the public for appearing to be scripted and promoting an inaccurate way of life in Dubai, it was a big hit for Netflix. Dubai Bling was the third most watched non-English language TV show on the week of its release and consistently placed in the streaming platform’s top 10 most watched shows. It was also praised for displaying the different dialects of Arabic freely spoken between cast members.

While Dubai Bling, may have struck some formula of success, it will take more than cast members simply speaking Arabic in regional dialects, driving fancy cars and getting into fights to capture the attention of younger generations moving forward.

“I understand they're trying to appeal to a larger audience, but I think it just makes it a little less authentic in a way,” says Sama Adnan, 17, an Iraqi Year 12 pupil, about the way the little original Arabic content that exists for her generation is packaged.

“The issue isn’t with reality shows in general,” she adds, with regards to Dubai Bling. “It really feels like they are trying so hard and it’s kind of cringe. It feels very performative and just awkward to watch.”

Adnan’s exposure to original Arabic content in the media is usually through her parents. She hardly hears about it outside her home and is generally not interested in watching it. She says a lot of the original Arabic content currently available for adults feels “whitewashed” and not authentic to the experiences of her generation.

“There are so many topics that are considered taboo,” she says. “So, there’s no accurate representation of what it’s like to be a teenager and, as a consequence, it makes people not really want to watch it because they just don’t see themselves on screen.”

Adnan says this lack of authenticity in the way Arabic is taught at school is another reason why the language is so inaccessible to young people.

“The curriculum itself is very uninteresting and there's no passion in the way they teach,” she says.

“It just feels very, ‘let's get this over with’. They just focus on the grammar and most of the literature they teach us is war literature — like random tribal wars — when there are so many greats Arabic poets and writers that we just don’t study. I don’t know why.”

Adnan says that English subjects are taught with a lot more variety and topics are approached in several different ways.

“We have literature as a [separate] subject too in English, where you dive really deep into writers’ work. So, [the school] makes use of your time and it makes you feel like you did something in that class and you really learnt something.”

Adnan says she is interested in learning Arabic but feels she lacks the skills, despite coming from an Arab household, living in an Arab country and learning Arabic at school.

“I think Arabic is awesome but it just feels like it’s hard to access,” she says. “It’s like this very cool culture that a lot of times I just don’t feel part of. I feel like I can’t understand it. It makes me feel like I can’t access it.”

Making Arabic more accessible through education is a vital part of reviving engagement in the language, says Farah Chamma.

Chamma is, in many ways, what young Arabs would refer to as “cool”.

At 28, she’s an acclaimed Palestinian spoken-word poet and performer whose work has gone viral online. She also runs workshops for high school pupils on Arabic poetry.

“I see very often a fear of Arabic [among pupils],” she says.

“A lot of people say ‘I’m Arab, but I’m really bad at it. I didn’t practice Arabic, I get all my harakat [vowel marks] wrong. I don’t read any books in Arabic, I usually read English books.’ These are things I hear a lot. These trends are really ingrained in accessibility, in how much more we use certain languages.”

Chamma ascribes to the school of thought that encourages the bridging of the gap between MSA and dialects, rather than emphasising their differences.

“It’s interesting to know and understand the root of words, why some words are fus-ha, where some words in dialects came from,” she says.

“For example why does Khaleeji have more fus-ha words? Or why do some words in the Levantine dialects have unknown origins? This type of learning would help us understand our language better. Understanding the root of words, the history of our language ... we don't do that at all.”

Chamma is also creating original Arabic content. She is the co-host of Maqsouda, an Arabic language podcast about Arabic poetry, with a fellow award-winner, Lebanese poet Zeina Hashem Beck. Together they engage in informal conversation about Arabic poetry and are changing perceptions on how to engage with the language.

“I think what me and Zeina are doing is the solution,” Chamma says.

“We are taking Arabic content that we genuinely love and talking about it with freedom, without fear of the Arabic language police or fear of the cultural police.

“We joke, we talk in all honesty about poetry without a need to have an academic perspective. This gives us freedom. If we have this approach with everything we love in our culture, in music, arts, film, then our language will grow from that.”

While academics and policy-makers across the Arab world are battling it out over the best way to teach Arabic — whether through the old methods or the new, and as streaming services need the time to deliver authentic, diverse and highly produced original content, Arabic language comprehension and use among young people still lags behind.

Some children and young adults are struggling to come to grips with how to understand MSA and their own regional dialect, as well as the language’s relevance in the English-dominated digital world.

For Ghanam and many parents, children learning Arabic isn’t only about getting the right grades for a required subject in school, it’s a matter of tradition and cultural pride.

“I believe Arab children should be able to speak Arabic,” she says. “I’m so proud to be Arab and I think kids should also feel proud. They should learn it and speak it between them too.”

Ghanam understand the pull towards English due to the prevalence and popularity of western culture. Having grown up in Sweden, she had to teach herself Arabic, choosing to read as much she could to improve her Arabic.

“English is obviously what they get drawn to more and Arabic doesn't interest them. It's a bit sad, actually,” she says.

“It’s a struggle because at the same time. I don't want to push Arabic too much on them in case they hate it,” she says. “I don't want them to hate Arabic.”