Jonathan Featherstone

Honorary Fellow

Biography

Background

Jonathan Featherstone obtained a BA (Hons) in Arabic and Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1982.

Upon graduation he worked as Lecturer of Arabic at the Defence School of Languages in Beaconsfield, Bucks and then later at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office where he was Senior Lecturer of Arabic. He has also taught Arabic at ILI in Cairo and with the Danish Army in Copenhagen.

In 2003 he obtained his CELTA teaching certificate from International House in London.

In 2007 he was appointed CASAW Instructor of Arabic at the University of Edinburgh where he designed and delivered a programme of Intensive Arabic for MSc and PhD students and taught on several masters programmes. He was appointed as Senior Teaching Fellow in 2013, before becoming an Honorary Fellow in 2021.

In addition to teaching Arabic, his interests revolve around raising the standard of the teaching of Arabic to non-native speakers in universities, colleges and schools. He has designed and delivered a five-day intensive training programme in the Integrated Approach for Arabic teachers not only in the UK but also in the UAE and at the University of Bir Zeit in the West Bank.

He has delivered workshops on the Integrated Approach in terms of Arabic teaching at several universities in both the UK and the USA including Edinburgh, SOAS, Leeds, Denver and Cornell.

Awards

In 2017 Jonathan was nominated runner-up for the Ian Campell Award for Best Teacher in the Humanities

  • BBC Talk Arabic (Book with CDs) Publisher: BBC Active; 1st  edition ( 2009) ISBN-10: 9781406652932, ISBN-13: 978-1406652932
  • BBC Talk Arabic (Book with CDs) Publisher: BBC Active; 2nd edition (2015) ISBN-10: 9781406680164
  • Preparing Arabic Teachers for Integration: The Edinburgh Model (Chapter 4) in: Arabic as One Language, Al-Batal (ed) Publisher: Georgetown (2017) Hardcover ISBN: 9781626165038 (1626165033) Paperback ISBN: 9781626165045 (1626165041)
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