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In Summer 2008, Pacific Arabic is offering, for the second time, an
intensive eight-week beginner course, equivalent to one year of college
Arabic. Students with no prior exposure to the language will reach an
intermediate level of spoken and written competency in Modern Standard
Arabic by the end of summer. The course was offered for the first time
in 2007 and was a smashing success. Read more about it below or skip on
to details about the course.
This year, we are also offering an intensive eight-week intermediate
course, equivalent to second year college Arabic or to MSA 5 and 6
(plus a lot more) here at Pacific Arabic. This course will cover all
of the material in Al-Kitaab II as well as a wide array of authentic
materials. Read all the course details below.
Please let us know if you are interested in signing up for either intensive course.
Nine brave souls committed themselves to learning a year of college
Arabic in only eight weeks. They included several individuals visiting
San Francisco for the summer, among them a small contingent from the
University of Chicago and a student from London. These students learned
the meaning of intensive study as they spent 3.5 hours per day in
class, then worked on their homework for the following day. Since they
spent so many hours together each day, the group bonded quickly. Within
one week, students began to meet outside of class for various
activities, including rock climbing! Some students spent the entire
afternoon at school, alternately studying and commiserating with their
classmates.
The students' exhaustion was repaid with rapid language
acquisition. But they weren't the only ones learning this summer: PAR's
staff and the teacher of the course, Nasser Riyadh,
also met every Friday to discuss the students' progress and make notes
on changes and improvements for 2008. Students enrolling for our second
round can expect an improved and polished program.
Beginner Intensive 2008 is designed for students with no prior exposure
to Arabic. The course presents Modern Standard Arabic, the lingua franca
in the Arab world, as distinct from the many regional dialects. In eight
weeks, students will be able to read, write, speak, and understand Arabic
at an intermediate level. Taught by school founder and veteran Arabic
teacher Jamal Mavrikios.
This eight-week course covers all the material of our first five adult
Arabic courses: Introduction to Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic 1-4.
We complete all the material in our in-house textbook, A Taste of
Arabic, and its accompanying audio CDs, within the first two weeks, and
then cover all the material in the widely used textbook Al-Kitaab Fii
Taallum al-Arabiyya by the end of summer. Students are required to
spend time at home listening to the CDs and watching the DVDs that come
with Al-Kitaab and finishing selected exercises. Completing this
homework is essential in order to keep up with the rapid pace of this
course.
The material covered in this program is equivalent to a year
of academic study at a typical university's Arabic program. However,
while many schools focus overwhelmingly on written Arabic, we strive to
balance written and verbal skills, as we believe that Arabic should be
taught as the living language that it is. Like all language classes at
PAR, Summer Intensive is taught in almost full immersion: the teacher
speaks only Arabic for at least 80% of class time, with a small window
of time set aside for introduction of key grammatical concepts in
English. Class involves a lot of speaking and drilling, and the 45
minutes each day of pure conversational practice ensure that students
will feel competent using their Arabic in the real world.
Class will be held from
9:00 to 12:30 every Monday through Friday from June 16 to August 8,
with only July 4 off. After the first few class meetings, the class
will adhere more or less to the following schedule:
9:00 - 9:15 Review of yesterday's new material
9:15 - 9:45 Going over homework and answering questions about previous material
9:45 - 10:15 Arabic-only conversation using all material learned so far
10:15 - 10:30 Break
10:30 - 12:15 Introduction of new material
12:15 - 12:30 Arabic-only conversation focusing on new material
Of course, the material will be taught in immersion, so even outside of
the Arabic-only conversation time, students will be hearing 80% Arabic
in the classroom and will engage in a wide variety of drills,
activities and conversational exercises to hone their speaking skills.
Students who wish to continue
their Arabic study at the end of summer have many options: we will be offering
Modern Standard Arabic 5, the next course in our curriculum, as an evening class
following the end of the program. Students with an interest in a specific
region may wish to enroll in a dialect course. We currently offer Moroccan,
Tunisian, Egyptian, Levantine, and Gulf dialects.
We can also help students
explore options for study abroad and other international opportunities, and will
be happy to write letters of recommendation.
Tuition for
the course is $1600. Students who register and pay in full by the
deadline, May 31, 2008, will receive a $100 discount. Tuition includes
a $500 non-refundable
deposit. Students may choose to hold their place in the class at any
time by paying just the deposit, but the full balance must be received
by the first class meeting for the registration to be complete, and
must be received by the deadline of May 31 if the student wishes to
receive the $100 early registration discount.
Intermediate Intensive 2008 will be an eight-week class corresponding to second year Modern Standard Arabic in a typical university program, or to Pacific Arabic’s MSA 5, 6, and a great deal of additional material. The class will include a wide range of authentic materials and guided conversation in addition to all of the material from Al-Kitaab Volume II. Our expert teacher, Samia Khalil, renowned for her refusal to speak English in the classroom, currently teaches MSA 4, MSA 5, MSA 5&6 Conversation, and Levantine Arabic, and has already begun preparing additional materials for the summer.
In keeping with Pacific Arabic’s belief in immersion teaching and in balancing verbal with written language skills, this course will be taught entirely in Arabic and will use a formal textbook alongside an array of authentic materials and fun conversation topics. The textbook for this course will be Al-Kitaab fii Ta3allum al-3arabiyya Volume II, part of the most widely used series of Arabic textbooks in the United States. This book focuses on reading and grammar, covering a variety of historical and cultural topics along the way. The course will cover the book’s chapters over the course of eight weeks, allowing time for students to fully grasp new concepts before moving on. Each day will include guided speaking time on useful topics outside of Al-Kitaab. For instance, while students are learning about the historic journeys of Ibn Batuta in Al-Kitaab, they will also be giving presentations about their own past trips and asking each other questions. In addition, a wide variety of authentic materials will be used—students will read poetry, comic strips, and Al-Jazeera news articles and watch TV and movie snippets and discuss all of these things in class. At the end of this course, diligent students will have reached an advanced level of Arabic and be able to read, write and speak formally but also to understand and use Arabic in the real world.
As a supplement to the Modern Standard Arabic taught in Intermediate Intensive, students may wish to also take a class in a regional dialect of Arabic. As a perk, we are offering our Intermediate Intensive students the chance to take any evening dialect class at Pacific Arabic for free during the Summer 2008 session, concurrent with the intensive course. Evening classes meet once per week for 90 minutes. Pacific Arabic cannot guarantee the availability of a particular dialect that the student is interested in.
Class will be held from 9:00a – 12:30p Monday through Friday, June 16 – August 8, with only Friday, July 4 off. Within class time, the schedule each day will be roughly as follows:
9:00 – 9:30 Review of yesterday’s material and going over homework
9:30 – 11:00 New material from Al-Kitaab Volume II
11:00 – 11:15 Break
11:15 – 12:30 Conversation and authentic materials
Tests will be held every Friday to assess students’ progress throughout the summer.
Tuition for the course is $1800. Students who register and pay in full by the deadline, May 31, 2008, will receive a $100 discount. Tuition includes a $500 non-refundable deposit. Students may choose to hold their place in the class at any time by paying just the deposit, but the full balance must be received by the first class meeting for the registration to be complete, and must be received by the deadline of May 31 if the student wishes to receive the $100 early registration discount.
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