Hussein Elkhafaifi

Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures; Modern Standard Arabic pedagogy, Arabic grammatical tradition, language teacher training, listening comprehension, learning strategies, language policy, applied linguistics

Hussein Elkhafaifi is an Associate Professor at the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of Washington, Seattle. Hussein Elkhafaifi earned his MA and PhD in Arabic language and applied linguistics from the University of Utah. He has taught Arabic on all levels, as well as sociolinguistics; teaching Arabic as a second/Foreign language; Arab culture; media; and cinema. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Middlebury College, the University of California at Berkeley and at Los Angeles, and at the University of Utah. He is currently Associate Professor of Arabic and Director of the Arabic Program at the University of Washington.

His research interests include applied linguistics, Foreign/Second language teacher training; Language politics and ideology, Arabic linguistics; and language culture and identity. He has published articles in Language Problems & Language Planning, The Modern Language Journal, al-Arabiyya, and Foreign Language Annuals, in addition to chapters in other scholarly publications. He has served on the executive board of the American Association of Teachers of Arabic numerous times. He is also is a certified Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) tester through the American Council on Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR).