Foreign language learning policy in the United Arab Emirates: Local and global agents of change

In an effort to highlight the multitude of local and global forces that can facilitate and shape foreign Language Learning Policy, this chapter provides a historical exploration of foreign language policies in a rather idiosyncratic context, that of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a country where the indigenous locals are the minority and where the rulers of the country have embraced the global as a means to empower the local and usher the country in the era of modernisation and globalisation. English language teachers/experts and institutions have long been welcomed to the UAE to empower the nation in its quest of constructing a knowledge-based economy and becoming a regional and world leader in education, although recently with the advent of the Arab Spring, a discontent with the English language and its hegemony at the expense of the Arabic language has been evident in the region. This chapter looks into the agents, processes and causes of the rise of English in formal education in the UAE and its struggle to survive the current political climate