Award in Foreign Language Proficiency – Arabic Level 2

Schedule

Applications close on the 6th of November

Course Description

This unit is designed to develop learners’ skills in the basic structure of Arabic, thus enabling the learners to take their first steps in understanding and using non-verbal sentences as well as developing the ability to recognise and formulate the letters and move towards the first steps of reading and writing simple words, phrases, sentences and simple paragraphs. Learners of Arabic will learn and reinforce the basics of the Arabic language and improve their communicative competence in the language. For those learners intending to travel to Arabic-speaking countries, either for study or on work placements, this unit can work as a refresher and promote confidence-building for communicating with native speakers abroad.

Throughout this unit, learners of Arabic will be exposed to authentic texts of various topics with detailed in-class discussions which aim at teaching strategies and skills that are necessary for fluent reading. From those texts, learners will be engaged in question-answer sessions and will be given exercises with the purpose of understanding the processes behind these texts. Additionally, learners will be engaged in writing exercises on authentic themes discussed in the class. The approach is not using the vocabulary in its -‚Å“isolate-‚  form but its use in real contexts. Much of the reading activities will be conjoined with listening comprehension of authentic texts. Learners will listen to audio/visual material several times before they engage in open-ended questions that give an indication of their understanding. The material is very selective and aims at enhancing the learning of this skill at different tempos. Regarding grammar, the learning of this skill will be through a combination of the narrative framework, reading comprehension and writing drills produced by learners. The texts of this skill are authentic stories where the natural sequencing of structure is discussed and analysed. The new grammatical skills will include full details of the past and present tense verbs, interrogative particles, some plural forms, the negation of the present tense, and cases (nominative, accusative, and genitive). This unit will also include a cultural part. Due to the varying dialects spoken across the Arab World, learners will get to appreciate the major differences between MSA and the dialects through a summary of the processes involved that make those dialects deviate from MSA form. This will be done by listening to audio clips and watching short video clips available online.