One of the strengths of language study abroad programs has been the varied degrees of immersion students of foreign language experience in the settings where they are able to speak and hear the language on a daily basis and experience the culture first hand. The immersion experience has recently been enriched by the addition of the experiential learning component which has added a new dynamic dimension to the teaching and learning of Arabic as a foreign language. Experiential learning takes students out of the conventional comfort zone of the classroom and encourages students to face new challenges which foster learning through experience and interacting. In this paper, I will draw on my research on the summer Arabic study Abroad program in Morocco to provide a description of the logistical and pedagogical challenges teachers face in integrating the experiential learning component in their curriculum and how to manage constraints connected to the differences in students ‘levels, especially at the beginning level , and the adjustments to the regular curriculum. I will also analyze the transformative experience outside the classroom in terms of the role of learner-generated content in not only enhancing cultural competency but in leading to the development of fluency, proficiency and confidence. The experiential learning involves cognitive stages that move from planning to observing and from interacting to reflecting and sharing. It therefore involves adjusting learning goals and pre-established tasks that make the students partners in the learning situation and promote development of intercultural competencies so they can align their learning outcomes with cultural competencies that enable them to move across linguistic and cultural boundaries and understand and appreciate multiple perspectives within a comparative and global context.

This research outlines the challenges facing international students of Arabic in a global campus in the Gulf, and presents a model for incorporating service learning in a short-term Arabic language study abroad program. Drawing on a study abroad trip to Morocco as a case study, the research explores the benefits of service learning as a form of experiential education in which students relate in-class activities to out of class experiences. In addition to promoting diversity and openness to other cultures, this form of language-learning empowers students and increases their personal development and self-knowledge. Recent methods in second and foreign language acquisition emphasize the role of interaction with native speakers for enhancing authentic language learning. Service learning provides an opportunity for connecting the theoretical world of classroom instruction with the outside “real” world. Existing research argues that service learning offers a teaching-learning paradigm that incorporates community service into an academic framework with a focus on reciprocity (Speck 2001). This framework is in line with the National Standards for Foreign Language Learning, which promote the five C’s: Communication, Culture, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities. Despite the apparent benefits of service learning as a pedagogical tool, debates have emerged regarding the efficacy of this method and its validity, given the political and ideological nature of engaging in service learning activities (Hartley et al. 2005; Carney 2013). This study discusses such concerns, and takes into account additional pedagogical challenges that arise in the context of the global campus, such as the wide range of students’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds, the inherent constraints of learning Arabic in an English-speaking institution situated in the Arab world, and the particularities of embarking on a study abroad trip from one Arabic-speaking country to another. The study presents recommendations for a successful service learning experience in an Arabic study abroad context, including attention to both student needs and community needs, as well as a focus on academic performance and self-reflection.

In this paper, I examine the use of blended learning approach in the teaching of Arabic culture and literature to advanced students in study abroad programs. More specifically, I explore the role of technology in mediating the material and promoting the learning goals in the reading skill and optimal interaction. I investigate how study abroad students engage with technology in their learning and how instructors can integrate experiential learning through an approach that presents literature and culture in more interactive, effective, and flexible ways to enable students to experience the culture, participate in it and develop linguistic and cultural competency. The intercultural component in my research focuses on the relationship between blended learning and the students’ abilities to engage in self-study. Since blended learning systems combine face-to-face and computer-mediated instruction, I will examine the educational and learning benefits of combining these approaches and how we can mitigate their potential limitations. One clear advantage of the use of blended learning in teaching Arabic language and culture to students in study abroad programs is associated with the possibility to introduce differentiated instruction which involves custom-designing instruction on the basis of students’ needs( DeGula 2004). I will analyze how courses such as Introduction to Arabic World Literature or Arabic as a Foreign Language for Advanced Students in Study Abroad, can benefit from, on the one hand, the strategies of computer - based learning for more flexibility, participation, and organization of the lesson, and on the other hand face-to-face in-class instruction for human connection, spontaneity, and group discussion, including learning components. The conclusion will focus on how blended learning in study abroad combines selection of material with outside the classroom experience of the culture, interactive media learning and social cultural immersion to enhance linguistic and cultural proficiency as well as the learning goals and the study abroad educational mission.

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.