LLAS News Blog

News articles of interest to higher education LLAS subject fields.

Tuesday, 12 October 2010

USA: Students want colloquial, not classical Arabic

As interest in Arabic-language studies has risen over the past decade among Westerners, language programs in the Middle East and North Africa face new challenges.

According to educators in the region, students today want courses that emphasize colloquial Arabic and expect classes to have a greater focus on cultural and social issues. Historically, programs in the region taught grammar and classical Arabic, which is used in the Koran and other Islamic texts.

The Chronicle of Higher Education
Posted by John Canning at 12:09
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1 comment:

Arabic Ustaz said...

Is Arabic not neglected?

It is true and widely accepted as being true - that a student who has learned another language is more likely to appreciate and have greater cross culture understanding if they were to learn another language. A lot of the times it shows that things can be said and done differently.
Whether someone is interested in learning Arabic for educational or cultural reasons or simply because they want to impress a friend, it is easier than one may think. Arabic is fourth most prevalent language after Chinese, Spanish and English, it is the official language in 22 countries, spoken by more than 250 million people. It is also the second language in many Islamic countries because It is considered the spiritual language of Islam -one of the world's major religions- (we're talking here about more than 1.2 billion people). It is one of the permanent languages in the United Nations.

Many people know that men and women usually do not shake hands in Arab cultures. Few people know however, that it is considered normal for people of the same gender to hold hands. You may have heard that the Arabic script is read from right to left, but did you also know that numbers run from right to left just like Western numbers?

One can learn about all this and much more with the language course Online (Arabic-Online.co.uk), which means live, interactive online Arabic lessons 1-2-1 or in small groups.

The teachers demonstrate that Arabic is not so difficult to learn as often said. The course is accessible to everyone and will soon be available in a number of different languages, currently teachers speak English, Spanish and French.

Arabic Online
http://www.arabic-online.co.uk

February 19, 2011

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