Mohammad T. Alhawary

Director & Advisor:

MA Program in Arabic for Professional Purposes (APP)
MA Program in Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language (TAFL)

Mohammad T. Alhawary is Professor of Arabic Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on Arabic language and Arabic theoretical and applied linguistics. Prior to joining the University of Michigan, he had helped develop Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies programs and taught on different campuses in the US. Currently, he is working on multiple projects with the aim of providing additional empirical data on the process of Arabic as a second/foreign language to inform the field of Arabic foreign language teaching in America and elsewhere.

Students interested in our MA program may contact me at  mes-MAdirector@umich.edu. Students interested in our PhD program may contact me directly at mes-dirgradstudies@umich.edu or reach out to our graduate student services staff at mes-gradservices@umich.edu. 

Publications

Selected Books:

• Modern Standard Arabic Grammar, Revised and Updated: A Comprehensive Reference and Guide. Cairo & New York: The American University in Cairo Press, 2026.
• Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language: Techniques for Developing Language Skills and Grammar. London & New York: Routledge, 2023.
• Arabic Second Language Learning and Effects of Input, Transfer, and Typology. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2019.
• The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Second Language Acquisition. London & New York: Routledge, 2018.
• Arabic Grammar in Context. London & New York: Routledge, 2016. 
  
• Modern Standard Arabic: A Learner’s Guide. Malden & Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
• Arabic Second Language Acquisition of Morphosyntax. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2009.
  
• Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XVII-XVIII (co-edited with E. Benmamoun). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2005.
  

Selected Book Chapters:

• Arabic applied linguistics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics, pp. 11-31. Ed. by K. Ryding and D. Wilmsen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
• Frequency and L1 transfer effects for the perception and production of Arabic Lexical Stress by L1 English and L1 Chinese Learners of Arabic as an L2 (with Cheng-Wei Lin). In The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Second Language Acquisition, pp. 9-37. Ed. by M. T. Alhawary. London & New York: Routledge, 2018.
• Empirical directions in the future of Arabic second language acquisition research and second language pedagogy. In Handbook for Arabic Language Teaching Professionals in the 21st Century II, pp. 408-421. Ed. by K. M. Wahba, Z. A. Taha, and L. England. London & New York: Routledge, 2017.
• Professional standards for teachers of Arabic as a foreign language: Between selectional criteria and follow-up training. In Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor of Adel Sulaiman Gamal, pp. 426-440. Ed. by M. Al-Gibali. Cairo, Egypt: Al-Adab, 2013.
• Second language acquisition. In Encyclopedia of the Arabic Language and Linguistics Volume 4, pp. 138-146. Ed. by Kees Versteegh et al. Leiden: Brill, 2008.
• Language impairment. In Encyclopedia of the Arabic Language and Linguistics Volume 2, pp. 674-681. Ed. by Kees Versteegh et al. Leiden: Brill, 2007.

Selected Articles in Journals and Proceedings: 

• Arabic diacritics and their role in facilitating reading speed, accuracy, and comprehension by English L2 learners of Arabic (with A. Al Midhwah). The Modern Language Journal 104 (2): 418-438. 2020.
• Code choice between Standard Arabic and the Saudi dialect Twitter users (with S. Al Alaslaa). Al-‘Arabiyya 53: 1-36. 2020.
  
• L1 and L2 transfer to L3 in L3 acquisition and L2 learners of Standard Arabic (with A. Albirini and E. Saadah). Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 10 (6): 745-774. 2020.
• Arabic second language acquisition of agreement features by Chinese and Russian speakers: Findings and implications. In Proceedings of King Saud University Conference on Modern Trends in Teaching Arabic as an L2, pp. 631-651. Ed. by Saad Al-Qahtani & Majed Al-Hamad. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: King Saud University Press, 2014.
• Arabic second language acquisition research and second language teaching: What the teacher, textbook writer, and tester need to know. Al-Arabiyya 46: 23-35. 2013.
  
• Speech processing prerequisites or L1 transfer? Evidence from English and French L2 Learners of Arabic. Foreign Language Annals 42 (2): 367-390. 2009.
• Null subjects use by English and Spanish learners of Arabic as an L2. In Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XIX, pp. 217-245. Ed. By Elabbas Benmamoun. Philadelphia & Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2007.
• Processability Theory: Counter-evidence from Arabic second language acquisition data. Al-Arabiyya 36: 133-209. 2003.
  
• Elicitation techniques and considerations in data collection in early Arabic grammatical tradition. JALT 1: 1-24. 2003. 

Field of Study:

• Arabic Linguistics: Applied & Theoretical

Areas of Specific Interests and Expertise:

• Arabic second language acquisition (including the roles of internal and external learning factors such as age, input, output, L1 transfer, L2 transfer, and motivation)
• Arabic second/foreign language teaching/pedagogy
• Arabic language study abroad and learning Arabic through immersion
• Arabic language learning and technology
• Arabic proficiency testing
• Arabic syllabus & curriculum design
• Bilingualism
• Multilingualism
• Language impairment
• Literacy
• Arabic Medieval grammatical tradition
• Arabic lexicography.

Professional Service:

• Executive Director of American Association of Teachers of Arabic
• Editor of Journal of Arabic Linguistics Tradition
• Editor of Al-‘Arabiyya