learn arabic

So I am FINALLY going to the Middle East after years of wanting to go. I booked a plane ticket to Syria and I’ll be there for nine weeks this summer. I haven’t sorted out exactly which classes I will take when I am there but it will probably be a combination of private tutoring and university classes. I can’t wait.

I’m trying to get in some good studying before I go and have started taking some private lessons with a really good teacher that I know. I hope that I will come back after the summer having more confidence in reading and being able to have simple conversations with native speakers.

Last year I took 12 weeks of Arabic at a language school here in NYC. I learned a lot but a lot of what I learned was relearning what I’d already studied in previous classes and had forgotten. In the fall I signed up for another 12 weeks (which I’m currently still attending). It’s a semi-private class and the purpose of it was to go back and really learn what we’d already covered in other classes; to have a solid grasp of the vocab and constructions so that we could actually use them. So far it’s not working that well. I’m still going over stuff that I’ve already learned, still finding that I need to review it, and still it’s not sticking. I think a big part of it is the teaching method used by the instructor but it’s also problematic that I have no use for Arabic at the moment. I’m thinking about going to study Arabic in the Middle East this summer if I can afford it. It’s the only way to really learn the language.

I just wrote to a grad student at Columbia who is an Arabic tutor. She is from Lebanon so it would bee interesting to learn some Lebanese Arabic too. We’ll see where this takes me.

I once told a Jordanian friend of mine that I COULD learn Arabic if I wanted since they offered it at my university. He said no, it’s too hard! Then he laughed and said he was joking but he was half way serious.

The next fall I was waiting outside of my academic adviser’s office and I saw a flyer advertising Arabic 101. Although signing up for the class would put me at 19 credits for the semester, it fit perfectly into my odd schedule, so I took it as a sign that it was meant to be.

I took Arabic 101 in my last semester at university before going on an exchange to Italy. After I graduated I took Arabic 102 at the community college. Then, back in Italy, I took another Arabic course that was really usless (mostly translation and no conversation).

I’m definitely still just getting a taste of the language, even with these three courses under my belt. I really am determined to learn the language though. One of my other “things” is to live in Egypt and part of the reason that that is so compelling is that it would give me an opportunity to be immersed in the langauge. (I really think that you can’t truly learn a language until you live in a country where it is spoken.) Another option could be learning it in the Peace Corps while stationed in Jordan. I know that in that situation I’d come away fairly fluent.

Who knows, maybe I’ll do both!