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Most Teachers Prefer Teaching MSA: Why This Approach Doesn’t Work

Most teachers who are offering Arabic language courses prefer teaching MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) to their students. A lack of teaching materials for dialects is often cited as the main reason for focusing on MSA, as opposed to one of the various Arabic dialects. As an experienced language teacher myself, I can tell you that this approach to language training doesn’t work. It increases student frustration and dropout rates. There is a better way to approach language training that gives students confidence and

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What is MSA (Modern Standard Arabic)?

MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) is the type of Arabic that is used in official documents, education, print media and correspondence. It is also the language of the Quran.

Even native speakers do not learn this language from birth; it is acquired as a second language when they start school. They may also learn it from watching daily news broadcasts, attending religious services or reading print media.

How Most Students Start Learning Arabic

When someone decides they want to learn how to speak Arabic, they usually sign up for a course in MSA. This is the type of program that is offered most often because teachers have access to more materials in how to teach MSA to their students. The students themselves are looking for a way to communicate with the widest variety of Arabic speakers and enrol in an MSA program, thinking it will help them reach their goal.

After a few months, many of the students who started their program with such enthusiasm for learning the language give up on their dream of learning Arabic. Why?

• Focus on How to Read and Write Arabic First

The course they chose is highly focused on how to read and write Arabic. In order to learn MSA, a lot of attention must be paid to learning writing rules and heavy grammar. If you think back to when you were in school, grammar class was probably not your favourite part of learning, was it? That part of your school activities was pretty dull, even though it was a necessary part of learning how to speak and write English properly.

If that’s all you knew about learning how to speak English, you would soon give up learning because you would decide that it was too difficult, wouldn’t you?

• MSA Varies Little Between Countries

MSA doesn’t vary much among the different countries where it is used. However, among native Arabic speakers, there are people who have enough knowledge of MSA to follow a news broadcast but would not be able to hold a conversation, read or write in this version of Arabic. Other people would be quite proficient in this version of the language.

When a student who has been learning MSA tries to speak to a native Arabic speaker, they ask themselves why that person’s language is so different from what they have learned in the classroom. They begin to doubt their own abilities and lack confidence in their ability to become proficient in the language and stop taking lessons.

How Native Arabic Speakers Learn Language

Native Arabic speakers start off by learning the dialect in the country where they were born. They hear it spoken at home and in their neighbourhood. When they start to learn to talk, this is their first language, and it just comes naturally.

The same thing happens to native English speakers. Even though English is the same language spoken in many parts of the world, there are different versions (dialects) spoken in the United Kingdom as opposed to Canada, the United States, the Caribbean and Australia.

If you started off your studies of English by learning the way that formal legal documents or Shakespeare’s plays are written, you would still be speaking English; it’s true. However, you would find it very challenging to make yourself understood to a native speaker. This is an extreme example, but I think you understand my point.