Arabic Second Language Learning and Effects of Input, Transfer, and Typology

Despite the status of Arabic as a global language and the high demand to learn it, the field of Arabic second language acquisition remains underinvestigated. Second language acquisition findings are crucial for informing and advancing the field of Arabic foreign language pedagogy including Arabic language teaching, testing, and syllabus design. Arabic Second Language Learning and Effects of Input, Transfer, and Typology provides data-driven empirical findings for a number of basic and high-frequency morphosyntactic structures with two novel typological language pairings, examining Arabic second language acquisition data from adult L1 Chinese- and Russian-speaking learners of Arabic as a foreign language. Alhawary’s study examines the different processes, hypotheses, and acquisition tendencies from the two learner groups, and documents the extent of the successes and challenges faced by such learners in their L2 Arabic grammatical development during the first three years of learning the language. In addition, the book offers both theoretical and practical implications related to input exposure, L1 and L2 transfer, and typological and structural proximity effects. This book serves as a valuable resource for both second language acquisition experts and foreign language teaching practitioners.

Readers will be grateful for professor Alhawary's experience and in-depth analysis of learning Arabic as a second language (ASL). This book is a major contribution to our grasp and understanding of key issues in ASL based on Alhawary's years of research and analysis combined with his extensive knowledge of Arabic linguistics and applied linguistics research methods. It will be a key reference for linguists, a useful tool in the classroom, and a source of solid findings on which to build future studies in this field. --Karin Ryding, Professor emerita, Georgetown University

Mohammad T. Alhawary is professor of Arabic linguistics and second language acquisition at the University of Michigan. He is the editor of Al-‘Arabiyya journal as well as the Journal of Arabic Linguistics Tradition and the author of many works, including Arabic Second Language Acquisition of Morphosyntax, Modern Standard Arabic Grammar: A Learner's Guide,  Arabic Grammar in Context, and The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Second Language Acquisition.