Teaching Arabic in context: language as a means to sample the culture beyond the official curriculum

In this piece, I reflect on my teaching practice and provide as an example of curriculum development and teaching and learning innovation in my field. As an interdisciplinary tutor, who is also in charge of delivering the Arabic Electives Pathway programme (Arabic as a minor in certain degree options), I have been implementing extracurricular activities that help advance my Arabic students’ grasp of the language through using what they have learnt to access various cultural inputs in Arabic beyond the official curriculum. In what follows, I reflect on the practice, which has proven very popular with the students; I also suggest expanding it through creating a new interdisciplinary elective module about the Middle East, which would be open to final-year interested students in the Humanities and would be taught in English. There would, however, be an extra option to access some of the materials in Arabic for the Advanced (final-year) Arabic Pathway students, who opt to take the module.