ABSTRACT
Growing out of the documented increase in interest in Arabic language learning over the past fifteen years, there is an urgent demand for Arabic language programs to focus on intercultural communication. Achieving high proficiency in the Arabic language remains a key goal for Arabic-as-a-foreign-language (AFL) learners, who come from both the academic and professional sectors: undergraduates and graduate students, military personnel, foreign service officers, policy makers, journalists, independent researchers, and many others make up the Arabic-language student body today. Many language programs focus on teaching language skills in isolation: speaking is done in a certain portion of class for a predetermined amount of time; listening activities are based around another text unrelated to the day's speaking exercises; etc. Since listening and speaking skills occur simultaneously in real-life discourse, this chapter describes the importance of integrating listening and speaking skills through following two approaches: content-based language instruction and task-based learning.
