ISRL 180CFirst-year Arabic I

Catalog

Arabic is the fastest growing language in the United States and the fifth most spoken language in the world. ARAB 101 /ARAB 501 is the first in a sequence of courses in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), the language of all official forms of communication and media throughout the Arab world, the register of Arabic taught in countries where Arabic is an official language, the liturgical language of more than two billion Muslims worldwide and millions of Arab Christians, and one of the six official languages of the United Nations. In this course, students will be introduced to the letters, sounds, and symbols that make up the Arabic writing system, and acquire basic skills in the areas of speaking, reading, writing, and listening. They will develop the ability to speak about themselves, their lives, and their environment; to initiate and sustain conversations on daily-life topics with educated native speakers; to read simple, authentic texts on familiar topics; to write formal notes and sentences on subjects connected to daily life; to comprehend and produce accurately the basic sentence structures of Arabic; and to understand aspects of Arab culture connected to everyday life, including culturally significant idioms used among friends and acquaintances and important expressions for polite interaction with speakers of Arabic. NO PREREQUISITES.