Al-Maqha: A low - tech web caf é for foreign language learners

摘要

A rabic has become an import ant fore ign language in many European and American universities. The number of students has grow n steadily over the last decade, and though the Se ptember 11 th at tack undoubte dly had an impact on universit y students' inte rests in Middle Eastern studies in general, the inte rest in learn- ing Arabic as a foreign language began we ll before that: Recent figures from American universities show an increase of 92.5% betwee n 1998 and 2002 – from 5505 to 10596 students (Alle n, 2004, p. 275) – and a similar de velopment has taken place in Europe. Among the foreign language studies at Universit y of Southern Denmark, Arabic is now second only to English w hen it comes to numbers of student s, and languages like Ge r- man, French and Spanish, which traditionally played a major role until the mid 1990s, only at tract about half of the number of student s studying Arabic today.