The Arabic Language major sequence enables students to acquire valuable skills pertaining to the use of Arabic in a communicative way as well as understanding of the Arabic culture. It trains students to achieve communicative competence in the four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It also prepares students to function at different levels within the Arabic speaking societies and interacts with people.

In the first year students undertaking Introductory Arabic "A" and Introductory Arabic "B" develop abilities to understand and produce basic competence in both written and oral grammatical patterns both orally and in writing using Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), ability to interact in limited aspects of everyday life situations. Emphasis at this stage is on mastering the Arabic sound system and pronunciation.

This course extends from Introductory Arabic A. Students will develop their skills in writing and conversation and undertake translation from and into Arabic at higher introductory level.

At the conclusion of the course, students will have achieved language competency in the following skills:

Reading Proficiency:

(1) Demonstrate ability to read simple written material in a usual printing form or typescript

(2) Demonstrate ability to read simple language and passages containing frequent structural forms, patterns and vocabulary

(3) Demonstrate ability to read and understand known language elements that have been recombined in new ways to achieve different meanings at a similar level

Speaking Proficiency:

(1) Articulate more developed courtesy requirements and maintain simple face-to-face conversations on familiar topics

(2) Formulate and respond to questions of basic communications and social demands

Writing Proficiency:

(1) Demonstrate sufficient control of the writing system to meet social demands

(2) Create sentences and short paragraphs related to social and cultural activities

(3) Express main tenses with fair accuracy.  

(4) Demonstrate good control of higher elementary vocabulary and syntactic patterns

(5) Write simple descriptive passages on matters of place, location, culture and history with fair accuracy

Listening Proficiency:

(1) Demonstrate sufficient comprehension to understand utterances about basic

familiar topics.

(2) Understand simple to medium questions and answers and non-complicated statements and simple face-to-face conversations in a standard dialect.

(3) Comprehend and engage in conversation about simple personal and social matters

Homework (5%), language lab (10%), quizzes (5%), attendance (5%) and class participation (5%), report and presentation (10%), mid-semester exam (written 20%), final exam (oral 10% and written 30%)

Four class hours and one hour of autonomous work in the language laboratory a week

ARAB1002 (Introductory Arabic A)

Alosh, M., Ahlan wa Sahlan, Functional Modern Standard Arabic for Beginners, New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2000.