Laila Familiar

Lecturer of Arabic Language Affiliation: NYU Abu Dhabi
Email: lailafamiliar@nyu.edu
Education: MA The American University in Cairo; PhD Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

Research Areas: frequency dictionary specialized in the lexicon of contemporary Arabic fiction, development of graded readers for learners of Arabic as a foreign language

Laila Familiar specializes in the design and development of instructional materials for Arabic as a Foreign Language and in corpus linguistics. She is project manager of Khallina, a website dedicated to the teaching and learning of Arab culture(s) through open source audiovisuals. She is also the editor of Sayyidi wa Habibi (2013) and Saaq al-Bambuu (2016) for learners of Arabic, and the translator of La Tía Safeyya y el Monasterio (2000), a novel by Egyptian author Bahaa Taher.

Recipient of the Texas Foreign Language Teaching Excellence Award (2014), Laila Familiar was a lecturer of Arabic at The University of Texas at Austin (2008-2014), Director of the Arabic Summer Institute (2012 & 2013), and Academic Director of the Critical Language Study Abroad Program in Fes-Morocco (2011). Previously, she taught Arabic at The American University in Cairo, the Center for Arabic Study Abroad program in Egypt, and Middlebury College.

In addition to teaching, Laila Familiar was actively involved in the development of an online Listening and Reading proficiency test sponsored by the National Middle East Language Resource Center and the Arabic Flagship Program (2008-2012).

Her current research involves working on a frequency dictionary specialized in the lexicon of contemporary Arabic fiction and the development of graded readers for learners of Arabic as a foreign language.