Research in study abroad has been theorized as offering an intensive language experience that enhances language proficiency and drives intercultural communicative competency (Mitchell, Tracy-Ventura and McManus, 2015; Shiri, 2015). Given the constraints of in class instruction in simulating real life, natural language interaction, study abroad programs offer learners the opportunity to foster sociolinguistic competence, aiming at enhancing their sociocultural awareness to the variability of registers in interpersonal communication and practice in authentic life scenarios with real consequences (Kinginger and Blattner, 2008). Although these studies are important in delineating the study abroad potential for second and foreign language learners, research has not focused on heritage language speakers. As speakers who have different needs from second or foreign language learners, heritage speakers constitute a unique constituency of language learner with different linguistic and social competencies in the target language. Given this, unlike other language learners, heritage speakers already possess the sociocultural knowledge as members of the Arabic speech community in the diaspora. However, the interruption of the language acquisition process for heritage speakers (Montrul, 2008) and the constraints in the domains of language use in diasporic communities inhibits heritage speakers’ ability to fully function in Arabic as their Language use become thus constrained to Low functional domains. Based on the analysis of thirty narratives of heritage speakers’ personal experiences conducted in the US, this study focuses on their sociolinguistic competencies in Colloquial (CA) and Standard Arabic (SA). The results indicate that although speakers exhibit advanced fluency in CA as compared to SA, they lack the sociolinguistic competence in norms of appropriateness when matching the appropriate register with the right situational context. The role of narratives in eliciting different social situations is to examine hHeritage speakers’ ability to deploy the appropriate variety to match its corresponding social context as compared to norms of language use of native speakersm to language norms of native Arabic speakers. Based on the results, I will outline recommendations for heritage speaker-focused study abroad programs which aim to increase language fluency and sociolinguistic competency for heritage language learners in the target language through experiential learning. Immersion study abroad programs in the Arabic-speaking world should highlight the importance of utilizing a variety of registers of Arabic within diverse contexts of interactions. This will provide the requisite sociolinguistic training that heritage learners require to function as competent speakers embedded in the wider Arabic-speaking community.