Author(s)

Siham Abukhalaf

Department of Education, The British University in Dubai, Dubai, UAE.

Arabic is the official language of the UAE and the language of all federal authorities. However, English serves as the country’s lingua franca and the primary medium of instruction in nearly all private educational institutions. The UAE has introduced a Language Education Policy (LEP) that emphasizes the importance of learning a second language (L2) in addition to the first language (L1), which refers to a person’s mother tongue. Consequently, bilingual education has received increased attention in recent years, with the modernization of the UAE’s education system and the promotion of a bilingual approach to teaching and learning being central objectives in the strategic plans of educational supervision bodies. This research aims to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the language policy in an International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum school in Abu Dhabi and provide recommendations. The school’s language policy document is critically analysed, leading to several key findings, which are presented and discussed in this paper.

Language Policy, Teaching Language, Language Acquisition

Abukhalaf, S. (2024) A Critical Analysis of the Language Policy of an International Baccalaureate Curriculum School in Abu Dhabi. Voice of the Publisher, 10, 400-412. doi: 10.4236/vp.2024.104031.