Summer school students of Elementary and Intermediate Arabic will benefit from the dedicated and creative approaches of instructors, led by Sonia S'hiri, who have introduced a number of innovative components in Berkeley's Arabic curriculum, from the Arabic Without Walls distance-learning plan (winner of the 2008 Esperanto "Access to Language Education" Award) to the ipod vocabulary learning project and the use of language-learning software that adjusts to each student's progress. Aktub, a technology and content-based program, will also be used to teach Arabic typing and vocabulary.
The Berkeley program's ongoing commitment to finding and employing state-of-the-art methods ensures that this intensive course will prepare students very well both for daily interaction and for future study. The integration of web materials, the textbook, and DVD creates a unique and successful learning experience. "The student of Arabic at Berkeley," writes Dr. S'hiri, "gets acquainted with the rich, diverse and long-standing Arab and Islamic cultures and is offered a tool for communicating with the 250 million native speakers of this language .... Students who enroll in Arabic courses at Berkeley find a rigorous yet fun and gratifying program. They also find themselves part of a huge, dynamic and diverse community of speakers of this language spread all around the globe and rooted deep in history."
-
Sh'iri notes the diversity of reasons students study Arabic at Berkeley: "Students take it because they 'want to read the Quran,' because they are 'interested in or are studying the culture/history/politics/literature of the Middle East,' or because they or their parents were born or lived in the Middle East. Some students take it not for academic, career, or personal reasons but purely because they are fascinated by its difference. They often cite the beauty of Arabic calligraphy, architecture, or poetry as a major motivation to learn the language. The fact that Arabic is different from European languages and constitutes a greater challenge to the English-speaking learner is sometimes declared to be one of the attractions of this language."
