Teaching Arabic in the Diaspora

As a language with strong religious connection, teaching Arabic in the diaspora comes with unique challenges. This thesis explores the teaching and learning of Arabic in Australia and how schoolteachers and parents negotiate the competing imperatives to teach Fus-ha (the HV) and Ammiyya (the LV), to balance the need to teach religious literacy skills and secular conversational skills to Muslim learners. These learners encompass both traditional heritage language learners but also students from non-Arabic backgrounds, who learn Arabic for religious purposes. As such, this thesis challenges and extends our understanding of “heritage language learning” in Australia, and interrogates how different school settings approach these mixed ability cohorts.