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For the past few years I have been pursuing, on a part time basis, a long-time intention to learn the Arabic language. Living in a small town in New Mexico where there are no Arabic classes available, I have had to do what I could. I've studied with an Iraqi, I've studied with a Sufi shaikh, I've tried many Arabic tape courses and I've attended an Arabic language school in Morocco. Today I'm still a struggling beginner and haven't given up. In this paper I've taken the opportunity to research the way adults learn the Arabic language and what works or doesn't work for them, hoping to help myself and others who might read these pages to better direct our studies.
Whether one studies Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) or as a second language (ASL), understanding the scope of the field and where the individual's interests and goals lies within it can give the learning process the necessary initial momentum based in reality. ("A foreign language" implies that the studies take place in a foreign environment, while a "second language" is studied where that language is used.)
Many of the ideas presented here are not specific to learning Arabic, but are general principles from the fascinating field of second language acquisition (SLA).
This study will look into four aspects: A) Who are the learners and what are their motivations in studying Arabic?. B) Is Arabic particularly difficult for adult learners? C) some points of interest about concerning the Arabic language, and D) what methods are available and appropriate for adults learning Arabic?

Who are the learners and what are their motivations?

1. Great interest and focus is directed during this decade toward the Middle East and the Arab world, and not always from a positive point of view. Nevertheless there is much more education money and other funds directed to encourage individuals to learn the Arabic language in all its aspects and to teach it.

2. There are many differences and polarities between "American-English" and the Arabic language, which also reflect cultural differences. The learner should be familiar with these differences:
a) The first differences that the American learner encounters are
(1) the letters of the Arabic alphabet, which are so much different in appearance and use, and
(2) a number of new and 'strange' sounds which although natural to the human voice box, are foreign to us, and very difficult for many older learners to vocalize correctly.
b) Another difference we find is in the vowelling. Many of the vowels are little marks external to the written text itself, which usually are omitted. The reader, through knowledge of the language and the grammar, is expected to know the right intonation without the vowels.
c) Unlike English, Arabic grammar is extremely logical in structure which makes it easy and fascinating for learners with a logical-mathematical type of intelligence.
d) At the same time Arabic and its culture are very emotionally charged. One realizes very quickly that in general just the sheer volume of the Arabic is several notches higher, and to express oneself correctly, a certain amount of dramatical commitment is in order. My first Arabic teacher used to have the student stand up by the blackboard in front of the class, literally shouting these difficult to pronounce sounds. We would shout back and forth at him the KHAs and the DHAs until he was somewhat satisfied with our pronunciation.
e) We also want to remember the place words of politeness occupy in Arabic. Linguistically, the formal use of polite and courtesy forms is almost obligatory. One of my Moroccan Arabic teachers would not accept as correct sentences which were grammatically perfect but did not include the right code of politeness.
3) A powerful tool to help us understand grammatical differences between languages is the concept of markedness. In its distilled form, markedness is a theory about SLA that says that certain linguistic elements are more basic, natural and generalizable ("unmarked") than more complex less frequent ones which are "marked". Areas of the L2 (second language) which are more marked than the student's L1 (first language) will be more difficult to learn.
Marked forms always indicate unmarked forms. They have to do with opposites or complimentary forms which are not symmetrical.
For example: 1. How old are you? vs. How young are you?
or How tall are you? vs. How short are you?
Old and young are opposites but exchanging them does not give the opposite meaning. We say that "old" is marked and "young" is unmarked, and it is the same with "tall" and "short".
2. Singular nouns are unmarked in English, plural nouns are marked. Not all languages cause nouns to be plural -- but may indicate plural only through the number that precedes or follows the noun, (as in Chinese which does not have plural noun forms: Hence Chinese students of English are likely to say: "I have 3 ball", which is a literal translation from the Chinese to English.)
So what we see here is that a form of language A can be more (or less) marked than language B, and the rule of makedness is that if a form in language A is more marked than language B, then it is easier for a learner to go from A to B then vice versa.
An English to Arabic example of a less marked form would be the possessive. In English: "This is Yusuf's donkey." In Arabic: "Hadha hemar Yusuf." In markedness theory, English speakers would have a relatively easy time learning the Arabic possessive because it doesn't require a change to the subject like the possessive <'s> of English because Arabic indicates possessive through word order in its sentence structure.
On the other hand, a problem area for students of Arabic would be that here nouns carry gender markers (or are genderized and therefore are more marked then in English.)
Phonetically, the Arabic kha and ka come to mind as they are not two discrete sounds in English and are thus more marked in Arabic than English.
4) Also minimal pair work is a great help for students to distinguish similar sounds. Sounding two similar sounding words, side by side, helps to distinguish between them. For example we can use minimal pair work with Arabic speakers learning English to help distinguish between "P" and "B".

On the positive side:
Adults are more fully-developed in their first language (L1) and so have a broader range of vocabulary and grammatical concepts. This greatly enhances their abilities in a second language (L2).
Noam Chomsky has a theory of a template (a system of understanding) being created in the brain, to recognize the different patterns, as language is acquired. It is therefore relatively easy to recognize similar concept (vocabulary, grammar, etc) in a second language, thus making people with a well-developed use of their L1 proficient learners in an L2.
Adults who are well based in their own language and understand the levels of "markedness" in its different areas, can use this theory to better understand how to convert to the new language.
Adults are better able to process language patterns logically and to understand the structures and differences between their L1 and the L2, thus enhancing their learning abilities.
Adults are usually more focussed and enthusiastic students, study harder, etc.
Their intelligence and memory patterns are more crystallized and mature, which allows them to think in a more organized way and to be more aware about their memory patterns.

On the negative side:
Affective factors: Adults tend to be more formal and emotionally "up-tight" or anxious in the classroom. They are thus less willing to risk making mistakes and less able to relax -- both important factors in the brain's ability to acquire language quickly and efficiently.
Their intelligence and memory patterns generally decrease in fluidity and speed with age. The older an adult is the less fluid and slower his thinking patterns are and his short term memory is less efficient.
Adults are also more likely to become "fossilized" in their speech patterns than children. For example: a non native English [L2] speaker might say: "I go today to store.", though grammatically incorrect, works to indicate the future tense, or, "I no want it." which reflects a direct translation from the L1 to the L2. Both communicate meaning but are grammatically incorrect. Adults (more than children) tend to find what works and keep using that form even though it may not be quite right.
Fossilization is most acute in adults in the form of pronunciation which is a skill which seems to have a window of opportunity that lasts through adolescence. That is why students who seek to acquire the Arabic language in adulthood are rarely able to "sound like a native" in their pronunciation. Hence, one often finds families who learned Arabic abroad, whose children have near-native like fluency of the Arabic pronunciation while their parent (or parents) retain an accent no matter how long they stay there or practice Arabic pronunciation. This is largely because adult learners (of Arabic or English) have a harder time "hearing" different sounds --- or as an Arab friend once said: "You think I don't know "B?" "I know B!" "B, like Bennsylvania, bolyester, and beoble!" ---- Or much to the amusement of Arab speakers listening to English and American Muslims sing the religious song "Saltu qalbi" heard by Arabs as: "I ask my dog (kalb)." instead of the intended: "I ask my heart (qalb)".

Overview:
Learning someone else's language is as old as language itself. One without a language is "nobody" in a human society. A baby has to start learning a language as soon as possible, therefore, in the nature of its creation there is an innate mechanism to automatically learn a language in all its aspects. As the child grows into adulthood, this natural mechanism diminishes or is covered up by mental processes and behaviors. The security in one's own language is the barrier that has to be crossed to learn the language of another. Here we will look at methods to help to do just that. Different methods will be more or less useful to different people, and they could be used in various combinations to yield the desired results.
An important point for the learner to understand when choosing how to study Arabic is the dichotomy between the spoken language and its classical or literary form. While spoken or colloquial Arabic changes from county to country, classical Arabic is not used in the street, but is the same throughout literature and is understood by more educated people.
The process of acculturation is important for the learner to understand or to be aware of. Every living language can be seen as an unseen matrix that connects people of the same culture psychically together. To the degree that a learner is acculturated or immersed in a culture, the easier it will be to learn its language. To surround oneself with members of the desired culture will by itself be a strong tool to learn a language.
Learning one's own language and learning about how to do that can strengthen the ability to learn another language.

Teaching Methods:
Grammar-translation; its basic goal is to help students to read Arabic literature through learning grammar and the use of a dictionary.
Audio-lingualism: is based on listening to a dialogues and mimicking and memorizing them. The same dialogues then can be used to learn the grammar, language structure and vocabulary.
Cognitive-code: same as in the grammar-translation method, grammar and vocabulary are used to learn the language, but here an attempt is made to help the student in all four skills (speaking and listening in addition to reading and writing.)
The direct method:- the teacher will use only Arabic to teach or do anything else in class.Through discussion and questions, the student is expected to guess how the language is constructed, its grammar, the meaning of words etc. The teaching is grammar based, and the student must participate in the discussion as best he can.
The natural approach: we are still in the classroom. The teacher uses Arabic but the student can use Arabic or their own language. The discussion is interest-based with minimal amount of corrections. Home work is given and corrected.
Total physical response: consists of physically obeying the instructor's commands which become more and more complex over time. Learners are not pressed to speak until ready. This method uses mostly listening comprehension to initiate learning.
Immersion: In this method we use Arabic as the medium of instruction rather than as the object of instruction. Whatever is going on, whatever studies are taking place, are conducted in Arabic and only Arabic is used for the time of the class.
Total immersion method is similar to immersion, but here the whole school day and all activities are conducted in Arabic. To make it more total and more intensive, it can be used in a 24 hour dormitory situation with psychological stresses built in to force openness to the Arabic language.
Strategic interaction (SI): an experimental method presented by Rajai Khanji (1984), combining colloquial and classical Arabic through self study in groups, drama and self-research.
Other experimental methods have been developed, like suggestopedia and the silent way method which try to deal with lowering the affective factor in creative ways, through the use of games, music, meditation, hypnosis, social interchanges etc. These methods try to lower the wall of resistance which especially adult learners have and to raise their confidence in their ability to learn a new language.
Technologies like audio, audio-visual and computer-aided learning either by themselves or in conjunction with other methods are widely used today. Also there are a lot of great picture books and picture dictionaries available. These are a excellent resource for learning any second language.
Individual self-self study. Many adults study the Arabic language independently, experimenting and using a variety of methods that work for them. Many books, audio and video tapes and computer software are designed for the self-learner. Learners study at home, in their cars, while traveling to Arabic speaking countries for pleasure or work and while reading sacred Muslim texts and Arabic literature.
Independent group studies: Adults come together in Arabic study groups to learn and teach each other while using the variety of methods already mentioned.
Intensive workshops are made available to the self learners of the Arabic language to energize and supplement their individual studies.

Learning the Arabic language can and should be a very challenging and satisfactory process. It can also be a frustrating experience if not approached correctly and with the right attitude. The learner has to remember that the Arabic language is such a vast field that only a few students can even come close to mastering it. As adult language learners we can only do the best with what we have, make the effort, put and in the energy. The amount of joy in the process can be the indicator of how well we do.
Since it can be a life-long project, the learner must be patient, seek the best method or combination of methods available, find a good teacher and relax in order to allow change to occur. In no way do I say here not to struggle hard and work consistently and intentionally. High pressure methods and programs that force learners to study when they are very tired in order to go beyond their resistance levels prove to be effective. But if there is no overall satisfaction and enthusiasm for the change that occurs, the process of learning will eventually stop.

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