Principles of Teaching Arabic: Possible Contributions of Recent Approaches

The purpose of this paper is to review the principles of teaching Arabic according to contemporary approaches of teaching second and foreign languages in the West. It explores the possibility of benefitting from these approaches to enrich Arabic teaching practice. The paper follows the evolution of language teaching approaches from basing instruction on syntactic knowledge up to acquiring the ability to use the language collaboratively, interactively, and communicatively. It closely examines the communicative approach, particularly one of its components, the interaction perspective. This perspective focuses on using authentic language, not only within the confines of the classroom, but also in social settings.