Workshop on a New “Textbook of Syrian Arabic”

At the Seminar for Arabic and Islamic Studies, a new textbook for Syrian Arabic is currently being developed in cooperation with an international team of scholars and practitioners.

From 19 to 21 March 2026, a workshop was held at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, where the general framework of the project was discussed and initial ideas for its implementation were developed collaboratively. In a productive and creative atmosphere, numerous suggestions were gathered and successfully integrated into the project plan.

The workshop featured a series of impulse presentations that provided valuable input from different perspectives:

• Eva Youssef (Materials for Egyptian Arabic)
• Juli Singer (Digital materials for Modern Standard Arabic: arabisch.digital)
• Linda Salerno (A cultural concept for teaching Jordanian Arabic)
• Ingeborg Kubitschek and Leonie Thenent (Syrian Arabic from a student’s perspective)
• Leonie Thenent (Presentation of Mosaik, a student project on Syrian culture)
• Melanie Hanitsch (Materials for Damascus Arabic)
• Petr Felčer (A new exercise book for Damascus Arabic)

The workshop provided an important foundation for the further development of the textbook and strengthened the exchange between researchers, teachers, and students working in the field of Arabic language pedagogy.