In countries where heritage language education is not accessible through mainstream education, diaspora communities rely on community-based heritage language education. For example, Arabic-speaking children across Europe attend community-based heritage language education to maintain their heritage language. With the development of communication technologies, the number of heritage language schools offering digital Arabic language education is increasing (Hilmi, 2021). However, there is still a lack of research on community-based digital Arabic heritage language education. Hence, the current paper investigates the following research question: What characterizes the linguistic repertoire of five heritage language learners of Arabic and how does their teacher capitalize and expand on these repertoires in her teaching? This research question was explored through a digital linguistic ethnography over four months in an online Arabic heritage language school. Digital linguistic ethnography is interested in how people use language, interact, and construct communities, knowledge, and identities, through and influenced by digital technologies (Varis & Hou, 2020). The digital linguistic ethnography was conducted through observation, interviews with one teacher and five students, and the collection of identity portraits and other relevant documents. The participating school was located in the USA and offered Arabic lessons both onsite and online with students and teachers participating from different parts of the world. The participant students were participating from different parts of the USA, while the teacher was participating from Italy. In the analysis of the empirical material, we adopted a translinguistic perspective on language, which means that language and bilingualism are considered dynamic and must not be seen as two separate systems and structures (García & Li, 2014). Thus, multilinguals only have one linguistic repertoire from which they strategically draw from to make sense of their multilingual. The analysis shows that the five students had a complex linguistic repertoire, including competence in English, Levantine Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, and Spanish. Moreover, the analysis shows how the teacher capitalized and expanded on the students’ linguistic repertoires through the use of Modern Standard Arabic, varieties of Levantine Arabic and English. Hence, translanguaging was purposely used as a pedagogical strategy to teach the multiglossic and multidialectal Arabic language. This lead to a teaching characterized by flexible language use, where teacher and students drew on all of their resources to promote language learning and support the students in making sense of their translingual world (Garcia & Wei, 2014).
