English version of my interview with Institute du Monde Arab.
How did you conceive your referential for your training curriculum for Arabic teachers?
Whenever I design a training program, my starting point is always the needs of the institution I’m collaborating with. I don’t believe in ‘one training fits all’. It’s unfair to the teachers, and it often backfires. Training only makes a real impact when it responds to teachers’ actual needs. My Online TAFL Coaching Program works a little differently: there, the curriculum grows out of my reading of the field and my visits to Arabic programs around the world. So there’s a general skeleton covering the core skills every teacher needs, but with plenty of room to address the specific needs of each group. In both cases, the principle is the same: I start from reality, not from a template.
· What are the main difficulties and the main obstacles you have faced when teaching Arabic to non-Arabic speakers?
Honestly, the biggest obstacle throughout my journey has been finding textbooks that are engaging and well-designed. And I think I speak for most Arabic teachers here: we end up spending countless hours creating our own materials, either because we don’t like what the textbook offers or because it simply doesn’t meet the needs of our students. We’re making progress on this front, but compared to other languages, we still have a long way to go. In a sense, that gap is what pushed me toward materials development in the first place; so the problem became a growth opportunity.
· Mrs Familiar, you held a discussion a few months ago on the biases professors have in their teaching, especially regarding teaching Arabic. Could you present your main ideas on your observations?
My starting point was that bias in teaching Arabic is rarely intentional; it’s invisible. Take for example confirmation bias, which is our tendency to search for and teach content that confirms our pre-existing beliefs and perception of the world. Confirmation bias shapes which texts we choose, which dialects we privilege in the classroom, and which cultural content we quietly avoid because it doesn’t match our own image of Arab culture. And this applies just as much to the materials we create ourselves. Designing your own content doesn’t make you immune; if anything, it gives your biases more room to operate. The deeper issue is that culture is identity, so we often teach our own reality as if it were the only one, without asking who actually decides what enters the classroom. My message was simple: as teachers, we need to make an effort to notice our choices and be honest about them.
· If you could specify a skill of an Arabic teacher in a competency framework, what would it be?
Building on what I just said about noticing our choices, if I had to name one competency, it would be critical self-awareness: the ability to examine your own cultural assumptions and pedagogical choices before asking students to examine theirs. A teacher who can’t detect their own biases can’t select materials fairly, can’t teach culture responsibly, and can’t be genuine with students. Everything else (methodology, technology, assessment) is easier to train. But this reflective capacity is what turns a language instructor into an educator.
