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Is Arabic so difficult or is the methods? | ||
Tags: Difficulty | Arabic | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Cetacea Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States booh.com Joined 5322 days ago 80 posts - 163 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Arabic (Yemeni), Arabic (Written) Studies: French | Message 9 of 20 21 June 2010 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
I’ve met quite a few Italian students who complained that they had to use textbooks from the 50’s and did nothing but reading and translating. It’s sad to see bright students lose their motivation because of archaic teaching methods. Do not think American or British students are much better. University language programs are bad to begin with, and Arabic seems to be worst amongst languages. According to the description of Al Kitab, the standard textbook used in the US and Britain,
I don’t blame you for abandoning the idea. Even Arab tourists are staying away from Yemen! I feel perfectly safe in Sana’a, but I’m traveling a lot less these days fearing being kidnapped. I’ve met many students who came here after they have studied in Syria, Egypt, Tunis, or Lebanon, and I can tell you most of those who studied in Yemen reached a much higher level given the same amount of time. It’s not because the teachers here are better or Yemeni dialect is anywhere closer to MSA, it’s simply because most students take 2-4 hours of private lessons, and when they go out they HAVE to speak Arabic. There is very little night life in Yemen, and no bars except in embassies and two hotels, so students don’t have much to do in the evenings except studying. Most Yemenis spend their afternoons and early evenings sitting around and chewing qat, an addictive leafy plant. When students hang out with them, chewing or not, they get a solid 3-5 hours of listening time per day on top of the lessons in the morning. Now you see why their listening and speaking abilities usually soar after a month or two. I doubt you can get this kind of intense immersion experience anywhere else in the Middle East except Yemen. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ANK47 Triglot Senior Member United States thearabicstudent.blo Joined 7095 days ago 188 posts - 259 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (classical) | Message 10 of 20 21 June 2010 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Cetacea you are making me want to visit Yemen. Do you work for a tourist agency or something? lol
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| Cetacea Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States booh.com Joined 5322 days ago 80 posts - 163 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Arabic (Yemeni), Arabic (Written) Studies: French | Message 11 of 20 22 June 2010 at 7:47am | IP Logged | |||||
I work in Yemen, but not for a travel agency. Those working in the travel industry are out of jobs right now. The Yemeni government is not issuing student visas currently because of the foreign Muslims who came in the name of studying Arabic then ran off to join AQ. Most Arabic institutes in Sana’a are on the verge of closing their doors. If you still want to come, you’ll have to get a tourist visa on your own which is getting increasingly difficult especially if you are male and young. I saw your website, it’s awesome. Keep up the good work. My advice for sticking with MSA is only for beginners and intermediates. For someone who is struggling to put a sentence together, a correct MSA sentence, though unnatural in a casual conversation, is still better than a wrong or incomprehensible dialect sentence. Once a student gets to an advanced level, he/she should absolutely learn a dialect, or two or three. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Adamdm Groupie Australia Joined 5435 days ago 62 posts - 89 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Dari, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written) | Message 12 of 20 22 June 2010 at 9:26am | IP Logged | |||||
Cetacea, would you mind explaining this minfadlak? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cetacea Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States booh.com Joined 5322 days ago 80 posts - 163 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Arabic (Yemeni), Arabic (Written) Studies: French | Message 13 of 20 22 June 2010 at 2:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ureedu is the formal (MSA) way of saying “I want”, and no Arab would use it in daily conversations. I used it on my first day because it was all I knew. The seller laughed at me because he wasn’t used to hearing formal Arabic on the street. Next time I went back, he remembered me, and in order to get my business he asked me in formal Arabic “matha tureedeena?” meaning “What do you want? or what would you like?” I chuckled. All this talk about Arabs can’t /won’t speak MSA, as soon as there is money involved, everyone seems to speak it just fine. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5446 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 14 of 20 23 June 2010 at 12:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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I am just one more disappointed student of Arabic, although I haven't studied it at Uni
but tried online tutors for about 5 months. The situation seems to be just the same - all I encountered was reading and translating from the books, no conversations, no real usage of the language, and the beginner vocabulary found in these books was just ridiculous (for example, word for some kind of plough that had been used in Africa some time ago - why on earth I need to learn that at the very beginning?!). The most disappointing thing was that when I changed tutor and explained the problem I had with such way of learning the language, all this new tutor did was to change the book - the method stayed the same. At the end I decided to concentrate on other languages and wait until Arabic becomes available on places like lingq, since that way of learning seems to work well for me... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ilanbg Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6408 days ago 166 posts - 189 votes Speaks: French, English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (classical), Persian | Message 15 of 20 25 June 2010 at 2:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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For whatever it's worth, I don't think the teaching methods for MSA are out of date. In over a thousand years,
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) has changed very little—the difference between a textbook that is 5 years old or 30 years old is negligible. (And, in fact, I've found older textbooks are usually a lot better than those released after 2000.) Al-Kitaab is the norm in U.S. universities, and it has pros and cons. Overall, I don't think it's a very good textbook, although it is the one I learned from. Its advantages are that it provides a solid base of vocabulary that extends beyond just everyday conversation—by the end of Al-Kitaab 2, I held comfortable conversations with Arabic speakers about abstract topics such as democratization in the Middle East. Its disadvantages are that it skips the "daily use" vocabulary altogether. You don't learn how to give directions, or ask for specific food, because you never learn the words for "left and right," or common fruits. Overall, though, I think the vocabulary is still better than for most language programs. The biggest disadvantage of Al-Kitaab is the organization of its grammar rules— for example, many rules which are similar are in different chapters when they should be learned together. As a result, many grammar rules don't make sense to the student until weeks later in the curriculum, when its accompanying rules are also learned. (To be honest, it wasn't until my third semester of Arabic that all the grammar rules started falling into place.) When I read an MSA textbook written in MSA and aimed at teaching native Arabic speakers, I was surprised at how much more accessible the language appeared. I can't say whether this is beneficial or not, but the fact that most Arabic programs in the U.S. use the same textbook makes it a lot easier to gauge a student's level of Arabic. When I was in a study-abroad program, I studied alongside students from different universities all over the U.S., and it was extremely helpful that all of us had studied from the same textbook. I can't say that I'm glad Al-Kitaab is the norm, but I think it is useful that most Arabic students study from the same program. EDIT: I'd also like to add that the Al-Kitaab series does a good job of teaching expressions, which I feel should be learned early but which I've rarely seen in beginner-level language programs. By expressions, I mean those such as "on the other hand..." or "to a certain extent," of which every language has dozens (and which a native speaker will take for granted), but which does not get much attention in most language programs early on. Edited by ilanbg on 25 June 2010 at 4:18am 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| michi Nonaglot Newbie Austria Joined 5299 days ago 33 posts - 57 votes Speaks: Dutch*, German, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese Studies: Turkish, Arabic (Written), Serbo-Croatian, Indonesian, Japanese | Message 16 of 20 25 June 2010 at 8:38am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't know if you should be glad, because not only me at the University of Vienna has made this frustrating experience or sad because such an interesting language like Arabic is ruined by bad teachers and out of date teaching methods all over the world. It remains me of the way I was taught Latin and Old Greek at high school. I do think that teaching methods for those are bad and more modern methods with a focus on speaking should be more useful for those "dead" languages as well. However nobody will ever make the experience to come to a Latin speaking country and not being able to communicate. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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