Acquiring a new language can be intimidating; therefore, your commitment, motivation, engagement, and passion are key factors to achieve your goals in learning the language. Remember, it is not a one-person endeavor; it is a collective endeavor to pave the way for a conducive learning environment. This course guides you, strategically, to learn Arabic by outlining the following:
Target Audience:
- Age group: English-speaking adults with commitments and enthusiasm to learn the Arabic language.
- Goals: Teaching Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and its culture for general purposes, specific purposes, and speaking.
For general purposes, the goal is to take students from beginner to intermediate and advanced levels in four months (normal pace). However, if you want to speed things up, you can complete the entire course in less than 4 months (intense).
Regarding teaching Arabic for specific purposes, we only enroll students with intermediate or higher levels, acquired in the general-purpose domain. Courses are offered in the following fields: legal studies, Arabic for business, and security studies. The duration for these specialized courses is 45 days per specialty.
Finally, we teach speaking to those who want to advance in this modality. We conduct speaking on 20 role-plays from different life activities. Learners can add, omit, agree to these role-plays, or bring their own as bases for speaking lessons.
What do we teach?
- Themes: We focus on teaching topics at beginner (module 1), intermediate (module 2), and advanced (module 3) levels.
- Vocabulary: We cover high-frequency and low-frequency words at the beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels.
- Grammar: We cover almost all grammatical features of Arabic in all three levels.
- Cultural Notes: Culture and language are two faces of the same coin: we teach culture conjointly with the themes to enrich the content and context of our learning environment.
- Learning styles: In our teaching philosophy, we integrate various learning styles to supplement learners’ demands.
Authentic Materials: During this course, we provide authentic Arabic resources like news articles, songs, movies, and podcasts, especially for intermediate and advanced students.
Teaching format
- Online: We only teach our classes online using the zoom platform. Flipped classroom, which means students go over materials before class, is the model we use to free up time for discussion and speaking during sessions.
- Class Time: Class meets 3 times a week for one hour a session, involving interactive activities, pair work, and group discussions.
- Bonus Time: Each student will have 3 additional free hours during the entire course, which is four months (1 hour per module) to be used for diagnostic assessment or to make-up classes. The bonus time is optional: students can re-purpose it or not to use it at all.
Resources and Materials:
- Recorded Videos: Pre-recorded videos are released to the students to go over prior to class time. We upload videos on various topics on Zoom.
- Quizlet: Vocabulary is uploaded on the Quizlet platform to facilitate acquisition and retention. Also, you will have vocabulary lists available.
- Handouts: Handouts, as needed, are provided to support our students’ learning progress.
- Arabic textbooks: We do not provide textbooks; however, we can help our learners by recommending textbooks.
Assessment and Feedback:
- Summative Assessments: We conduct regular quizzes and assignments to evaluate learner progress, and to discover areas that need improvement.
- Formative Assessments: We Incorporate regular discussion, projects, and presentations to measure students’ growth and give feedback accordingly.
- Self-reflection: Learners can trace their own learning development through journaling or other ways of self-assessment.
- Feedback: We give constructive feedback to students throughout the course: generic and personalized.
