Cultural Competence in the Textbook Modern Standard Arabic

Since language is the container of culture and the strong relationship between them, it is necessary to pay attention to the cultural dimensions of the language purposes in language teaching books. After linguistic and communicative competence, cultural competence is the third pillar of language teaching objectives. Cultural competence means understanding what the language carries in terms of culture that expresses the thoughts, experiences, values, customs, etiquette, and arts of its speakers. The book Modern Standard Arabic written by Eckehard Schulz and Sebastian Maisel is one of the works that gave importance to teaching Arabic culture to language learners. By reading this book, many concepts of Arab Islamic culture such as Quranic verses, hadiths, the Fundamental Principles of religion, Islamic holidays, and Islamic sciences can be seen. The authors dealt with the history of various Islamic sciences such as architecture and medicine, and they did not neglect contemporary cultural festivals as far as possible, so this book can be considered an excellent example in the field of paying attention to second language culture in Arabic language teaching. What appears less lively in this work, and perhaps could have been more apparent, is the attention to Arabic literature – especially classical literature – as one of the most important Arab cultural elements.