The first step in a multi-year Arabic program that will take students from no knowledge of Arabic to a high-level of proficiency. Introductory Arabic 1 focuses on understanding simple sentence structures, word constructions, verb conjugations, and pronouns.
At-A-Glance
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The first level in a series of courses designed to take you from no knowledge of Arabic to a high-level proficiency.
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Understand basic sentence structure, simple word constructions, pronouns, and verb conjugations
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Consists of both pre-recorded lecture sessions twice a week and live hands-on tutorials twice a week
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Special online tools will help you practice forming sentences and learning vocabulary
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Three comprehensive exams will help you track your progress
"The All-Merciful taught the Qur'an, created man, and taught him speech." (55:1-4)
The contributions of non-Arab scholars to the Islamic tradition have arguably been even greater than the contributions of their Arab counterparts. But the language that these great minds used to communicate with one another was Arabic, and it is for this reason that the reference works of every religious discipline are written in Arabic. It is therefore impossible to master any of the Islamic disciplines without a strong grounding in the Arabic language.
Mastering Arabic, like any language, takes a long time and many hours of practice. This course is the first step in a multi-year Arabic program that will take you from no knowledge of Arabic to a high level of proficiency where you will be able to easily read and understand Arabic texts, both classical and modern. This first level course is divided into three modules. The first module analyzes the Arabic language at the level of the single word in the context of simple noun sentences. The second module moves up a level by analyzing it at the level of multi-word constructions, such as adjective-constructions, attribution-constructions, and J-constructions. The third module focuses on verbs and verb sentences. Students will learn how to visually decompose complete sentences into their basic structural constituents. You will also learn how to conjugate basic Arabic verbs. After the successful completion of this course, you will have a strong theoretical and applied grounding in Arabic sentence structure. You will also be able to move on to the second level course.
This course is inspired by the classical approach to teaching and learning Arabic at institutions of religious education located in non-Arab lands. This classical approach has been slightly modified in light of modern language-learning techniques adopted by universities in the West and Arabic language institutes in the Middle East. The combination of ancient and modern makes this course the first of its kind in the English-speaking world. The method of this course is similar to the "grammar translation method" of learning a foreign language—focusing on grammatical rules, the memorization of vocabulary and conjugations, translations of texts, and written exercises.
Weekly live sessions for this course will consist of two parts.
The first part comprises of 30-minute lecture sessions twice a week
pre-recorded by the instructor.
The second part will be two live weekly tutorial sessions with a highly qualified associate teacher and occasionally, the instructor.
These tutorials will be highly interactive. Beyond the lessons, there are a
number of very important special features that will enhance your learning
experience.
This course will not cover how to read and write Arabic script.
Thus, the main prerequisite of this course is the ability to read and write the
Arabic script. Beyond that, no understanding or previous exposure to Arabic is
assumed. This course is for absolute beginners who have never studied Arabic
before (beyond for example, knowing enough Arabic to be able to read the Qur'an
without understanding its meaning).
