Arabic Language Study

The Abbasi Program Student Grant I received last spring enabled me to study Arabic language through Middlebury Arabic Language School this summer for eight weeks. The program was intensive and began with a placement test, after which I was placed at level 3.5 or High Intermediate Arabic II. I had anticipated placing into level 3, but after two days of class decided to remain and 3.5 and meet the challenge of participating in a class in which the majority of my classmates had already studied Arabic in the Middle East. Each week, class was held for five hours daily with approximately six hours of homework per night. Topics covered were reading, listening, writing, grammar, vocabulary, and a colloquial dialect. I was in a class of eleven students; the group was large of enough for rigorous discussions but small enough for me to receive personal attention from our professors daily. At level 3.5 we moved away from strict use of a textbook and instead utilized primary sources such as articles and news clips from Al Jazeera, BBC Arabic, various Arabic academic journals, and the entire novel Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Saleh in order to move into the advanced level of proficiency. Classes were supplemented by a Wednesday lecture series featuring guest speakers from Turkey, Oman, and Malaysia who lectured in Arabic on their professional work, such as the first translation of the journey of Ibn Battuta from Arabic to Turkish and the influence of Islam on Malaysian culture. The entire Arabic school watched films from various Arabic-speaking countries on Fridays and danced to popular Arabic music after the film screenings. At the end of the program, my class made a video to review what we learned over the summer and laugh with the entire Arabic school as we reminisced about jokes made and the immense progress we made from the first day to the last.

The tools I learned from this study—how to read high-level Arabic texts efficiently and effectively, how to listen for understanding to media Arabic, how to give a clear oral presentation and write a 1500-word research paper in Arabic, to name a few—have progressed my language skills to the advanced level and given me confidence to refine them and use them in a professional setting. Over the summer, I was forced to master the skills of taking notes and typing in Arabic proficiently, as well as familiarize myself with conducting research over the Internet solely using Arabic sources. All that is not to mention the invaluable introduction to colloquial Lebanese I received, which has enabled me to take the Levantine Arabic class here at Stanford this quarter with Dr. Khalil Barhoum. The act of learning to listen to my professors at Middlebury, whose Egyptian and Moroccan accents I had not encountered before the program, forced me to expand my vocabulary and gain confidence in interaction with Arabic speakers outside Stanford’s Arabic department. The insight I gained from my colleagues, classmates, and friends about the varied reasons to study Arabic and move forward with the language as part of a career path. I met and was shaped by future scholars, musicians, policy makers, soldiers, journalists and poets whose love for the Arabic language informed my own. I am excited to see where my advanced Arabic skills will take me and will always remain grateful for this opportunity made possible by the support of the Abbasi Program.