Drawing on the collective expertise of language scholars and educators in a variety of subdisciplines, the Handbook for Arabic Language Teaching Professionals in the 21st Century, Volume II, provides a comprehensive treatment of teaching and research in Arabic as a second and foreign language worldwide. Keeping a balance among theory, research and practice, the content is organized around

12 themes:

• Trends and Recent Issues in Teaching and Learning Arabic
• Social, Political and Educational Contexts of Arabic Language Teaching and Learning
• Identifying Core Issues in Practice
• Language Variation, Communicative Competence and Using Frames in Arabic Language Teaching and Learning
• Arabic Programs: Goals, Design and Curriculum
• Teaching and Learning Approaches: Content-Based Instruction and Curriculum
• Arabic Teaching and Learning: Classroom Language Materials and Language Corpora
• Assessment, Testing and Evaluation
• Methodology of Teaching Arabic: Skills and Components
• Teacher Education and Professional Development
• Technology-Mediated Teaching and Learning
• Future Directions

The field faces new challenges since the publication of Volume I, including increasing and diverse demands, motives and needs for learning Arabic across various contexts of use; a need for accountability and academic research given the growing recognition of the complexity and diverse contexts of teaching Arabic; and an increasing shortage of and need for quality of instruction. Volume II addresses these challenges. It is designed to generate a dialogue--continued from Volume I--among professionals in the field leading to improved practice, and to facilitate interactions, not only among individuals but also among educational institutions within a single country and across different countries.