This study investigated the composition of the social network that the homestay offers learners in an intensive summer Arabic language program in diglossic and multilingual Tunisia and examined the types of language socialization as well as the overall linguistic and intercultural competence such opportunities present. The study specifically investigated patterns of student interaction with members of the host families and explored the degree to which students took advantage of this rich learning environment. A survey was completed by 73 students upon their return to the United States at the end of the summers of 2010–2012. Results showed that, although the social network often involved extended family members, the host mother remained the primary locus of interaction. Data also showed that the homestay offered a breadth and depth of experiences that affected students' linguistic, sociolinguistic, and cultural gains and that, postprogram, students maintained their connection to this social network via social media.

This study explored the impact of short-term study abroad on the language attitudes of college-level learners of Arabic in the United States. It investigated students' destination preferences in various Arabic-speaking countries, their attitudes toward learning Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and regional dialects, and the factors that they perceived as influencing their attitudes. Survey responses from 371 participants indicated that learning Arabic in the Arab world favorably impacted students' attitudes toward dialect learning and sociolinguistic awareness. Students in this sample rejected learning MSA exclusively, believed that learning any dialect was important, and they became open to learning multiple dialects, including those that are less commonly taught. Respondents attributed this attitude shift to the change in their learning context, i.e., learning Arabic in an Arab country.

This study explored the development and maintenance of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) among 352 American learners of Arabic who completed summer intensive language programs in five Arab countries. Data were collected through a survey that was based on the 2007 draft of the Culture Proficiency Guidelines (Lampe, 2007; later adopted by the Interagency Language Roundtable in 2012) that was designed to measure ICC development and was administered upon students' return to the United States. The survey also investigated which components of the intensive study abroad program fostered the development of particular components of ICC. Data indicated that although students mostly developed ICC at the Intermediate level (completing daily activities), they also progressed into higher levels, e.g., by identifying, comparing, and contrasting traditions, history, and politics or by participating in low‐frequency social occasions. Data showed that the structured and the unstructured components of the program and the diglossic learning of Arabic both supported, to various degrees, students' development of ICC. Data also suggested that students sustained their developing levels of ICC upon their return to the United States, as demonstrated by their ability to shift perspectives, their increased compassion toward different populations, and their sensitivity to stereotyping.

No abstract

Learning Arabic, a category IV less commonly taught language (LCTL), can be a daunting task even with the luxury of a five-day per week schedule, good teachers, office hours, and solid learning materials. This study reports on the successes and challenges of teaching Arabic within a distancelearning environment. With a grant from the Fund for Improvement of Post Secondary Education (FIPSE), the authors developed Arabic Without Walls (AWW), a first-year online Arabic course supported by Web materials (e.g. text, graphics, sounds, short human-interest videos, and selfcorrecting Java-scripted exercises). The AWW course was delivered in a Moodle wrapper with weekly chat (voice and text) sessions. AWW was taught for two years at the University of California, Berkeley (2007-2009) under the direction of Sonia Shiri and then for two more years at the University of California, Irvine (2009-2011) by Maha Alsaffar. The AWW course was designed to prepare students to seamlessly enter a second-year Arabic class with competence equal to that of those students studying Arabic in a face-to-face format. The present study focuses on student outcomes and their reflections during and after this two-semester course. One of the unexpected findings was that the small-group computer-mediated communication (CMC) sessions with sound and text gave students more personal attention than would have been possible in the classroom setting. The overall student impression of this online learning experience suggests that AWW was a credible alternative for students who otherwise would not have had access to Arabic instruction at their home institution or for those who had sought a more flexible learning environment due to their own schedules and life circumstances. In this study, we seek to contribute to the establishment of best practice for online language learning, including a CMC component.