MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICAN LANGUAGES PROGRAM

The Minor in Arabic

The Minor in Arabic, offered by the MENA Languages Program is designed for students who wish to gain a high level of proficiency in Arabic.  Students will take 6 Arabic courses at the 200- and 300- level chosen from the various courses offered in the MENA Languages Program.

Reasons for the Minor in Arabic

• Arabic is spoken world-wide
  With more than 300 million speakers word-wide (some put the number at over 450 million), Arabic is the fifth most-spoken language globally. It is also one of the six official languages of the United Nations alongside Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.
• Globalization and Increase of Business with Arab Countries
  Globalization and advanced technologies, ease of modes of transportation, affluence in Arab oil countries, and the influx of foreign labor have made Arabic a crucial means of communication between the Arab world and other countries.
• Arabic is designated as a critical language and needs more fluent speakers
  The United States government has deemed knowing Arabic as strategically important for the country.
• Recognizing students’ advanced skills in Arabic
  We wanted to recognize the accomplishments of our students by offering an Arabic Minor.

Learning Goals

Learning a new language is transformative. A Czech proverb says, “Learn a new language and get a new soul”; and an Arabic proverb claims, “Learn a language, and you will avoid a war.”  This transformation of our students is at the heart of our mission of the MENA Languages Program. 

 The course work leading to the Minor in Arabic is carefully scaffolded along a set of overarching principles that inform the pedagogical tasks employed in each class.  The tasks fully align with the proposed Weinberg Learning Strategies, observe, critique, reflect, and express, but also add compare and connect as two additional principles of learning.

GOAL ONE: to understand and interact with communities of different ethnicities and cultures 
A student with a Minor in Arabic have learned to extend the limits of how they see, talk about, understand, describe, and interact with communities of different ethnicities and cultures.

GOAL TWO: to embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion
A student with a Minor in Arabic understands that Arabic represents the language and culture of a distinctly diverse region and that the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion are especially meaningful in becoming a kind, considerate, respectful speaker of Arabic. 

GOAL THREE: to speak Arabic at the advanced low level (at a minimum) on the ACTFL Proficiency Scale 
A student with a Minor in Arabic is able to understand and create complex paragraph-length organized text (written and spoken sources both in Fusha (MSA) and in at least one dialect) which is the hallmark of the advanced level of proficiency on the ACTFL scale.

Language sequences and content courses

• We offer a 3-course language sequence on the third-year level which is based on work with a language textbook with carefully sequenced grammar, reading, writing and culture exercises. Students for the Minor in Arabic should finish this sequence first.
• We also offers content-based language courses on the 200-level and 300-level.  In content-based courses, the thematic content - topics that students find interesting and relevant - provides the materials (mostly authentic language documents) around which listening, speaking, reading, and writing activities are created. Content-based courses are self-contained and do not need to be taken in a sequence. 

 * We recommend that students with average proficiency in 121-3 first finish the 211 sequence before signing up for Arabic 216 or 245.