From Book Completion to Skill Acquisition: Reframing Arabic Instruction for Non-Native Adult Learners

Abstract

A persistent pattern in Arabic instruction for non-native adult learners in the Indian subcontinent and comparable non-immersive contexts is that institutional and pedagogical success is measured by some prescribed book completion rather than by the development of targeted functional language skills. When practitioners discuss Arabic courses, the primary question is “which book is being covered?” — not “what competence is being developed?” This paper argues that the shift required is not from one book to a better book, but from a book-completion paradigm to a skill-acquisition paradigm. The skill argued for is intensive reading competence — the ability to engage analytically with Arabic text with full understanding, defined operationally as the capacity to derive meaning from Arabic text through functional structural understanding — identifying grammatical roles, recognising morphological forms, and processing undiacritised text with precision. Widely used Arabic instructional books are examined not to discredit them, but to show that even well-designed books often do not produce the targeted reading competence when used in contexts and for skill outcomes they were not originally designed to serve. Drawing on Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller, 1988), Skill Acquisition Theory (Anderson, 1983), and instructional alignment frameworks (Biggs, 1996), the paper argues that the real variable in Arabic instruction is not the book itself, but the clarity of the targeted skill outcome, the methodology guiding instruction, the teaching approach in the classroom, and the coherence of skill delivery across the programme. The paper concludes with concrete implications for programme design, teacher training, and learner assessment.