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Building a relationship with Arabic | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| Nephilim Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6927 days ago 363 posts - 368 votes  Speaks: English*, Polish | Message 1 of 2 08 December 2007 at 6:04am | IP Logged |
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Hello Professor,
At the moment I am in the process of securing a two year contract to teach English in Saudi Arabia. I would like to take this opportunity to study Arabic and would greatly appreciate any tips you could offer. I realise this is an FSI level 4 language and will require quite a significant time committment, which is why I would like to set up some kind of study regimen ahead of time before I leave for Saudi Arabia in February. I have been following posts on this site since 2005 and have read all of your posts on time management and study techniques and I really do see the sense of having an organised, disciplined approach to what for a native English speaker is a very difficult language indeed. I would like to know: 1 what to concentrate on initially 2 what would be the best material to begin with 3 how far I could hope to progress in an initial two year period 4 how much time a day to devote to the study of a level 4 language like Arabic 5 likely areas of difficulty to be aware of I'm sure I will have other questions but these will be enough to be going on with for the moment. Ideally, I would like to get hold of some relevenat materials before arriving in Saudi Arabia and work out a realistic and workable study plan which I would be able to sustain over the initial two-year period. I look forward to your reply. Phil (aka Nephilim) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7038 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 2 of 2 09 December 2007 at 5:46pm | IP Logged |
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First of all, I would focus on learning MSA over colloquial Gulf Arabic. If you have a firm foundation in the former, you should get the dialect from a live native tutor in-country in preference to studying it via any of the available manuals. For MSA, I would certainly suggest that your first step be to internalize and assimilate the Linguaphone Arabic Course (MCMLXXVII copyright) by shadowing and transcription. I cannot predict how much progress you will make in your first 2 years, but you should expect to put in at least 2 hours a day for that whole time in order to achieve as much progress as you are capable of achieving. I would not worry about specific difficulties until when and if they arise. If it suits your temperament, you might want to acclimate yourself to the sensibilities of the language before beginning your actual conscious study. If you can, suspend your initial desire for understanding and focus on developing aesthetic appreciation by obtaining tastefully recorded dramatic narrative and playing it in the background while you copy Arabic calligraphy as carefully and artistically as you can. If you then put in an intensive period of blind, focused shadowing of the Linguaphone materials to focus purely on phonetic production, when you thereafter turn to your actual encounter with the structure and the vocabulary of the language, it will not be quite as formidable a task.
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