Under the auspices of His Excellency the Dean of Al-Leith University College, Dr. Muhammad Al Maliki, the Arabic Language Department at Al-Leith University College organized a symposium entitled the "Arabic Language: Between Reality and Hope", in celebration of the World Arabic Language Day. A highlight of the symposium was a paper presented by Dr. Ahmad `Abdul-Maqsud, which discussed the contemporary use of Arabic language in education and the major problems facing the current educational process, including the linguistic phenomenon of bilingualism as observed in some Arab countries. The paper also explored the key solutions to address these problems.

Another paper during the symposium was on the theme of the influence of media on the teaching of Arabic language to learners of different ages; it was presented by Dr. Khalid Al-Khudairi. The paper identified the greatest problems facing media nowadays, with regard to its programs, in general. Nevertheless, the paper did not disregard to pinpoint some bright aspects, such as news releases and some historical series that adopt fluent, classical Arabic as their standard medium of communication.

The next paper in the symposium, by Dr. Jamal Abu Na`aj, described the contemporary reality of Arabic language under the impact of social media, and the negative consequences that resulted of the misuse or misapplication of technology, such as inadequacy or lack of Arabic-supporting programs or technologies related to PCs and smart phones, especially when this knowledge was first introduced to the public. This led to the phenomenon known as "Arabizi [Arabic chat alphabet]", and similar trends, in which Arabic text is written using Latin alphabets and numbers. He then tackled another problem: linguistic degeneration, that is, bilingualism or hybrid language. It refers to mixing colloquial with standard classic Arabic, which led to the decline and eventual corruption of the proper linguistic use of the language, resulting in the spread of wrong pronunciations and grammatical mistakes. He gave some examples of the errors arising from such misuse at all the linguistic levels: vocal, morphological, syntactic, and semantic. He also provided an analysis of the causes behind this linguistic degradation, and the most significant remedies for it.

The final paper in the symposium was presented by Dr. `Adil Ibrahim and discussed the current status of the language used in commerce and business. It comprised some forms of hybrid language and distorted speech, as found in the names of some objects and commonly-used words, such as the terminology used for measures and currency, and the language used when buying and selling. It also indicated the tendency towards a reliance on foreign languages instead of Arabic, and the possibility that Arabic may be replaced by a foreign language.

It is noteworthy to mention that the symposium was conducted in the framework of cooperation between the College Club and the Arabic Language Department, which contributed to outlining the importance of this symposium, which was arranged in an organized and methodical way.