Arabic

This intermediate level course provides an opportunity to strengthen listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in Colloquial Arabic. The course focuses on the basic principles of verb conjugations in past and present-future tenses. It includes reading and responding to more complicated dialogues, both written and oral, while expanding vocabular. Instruction is conducted in Arabic and accompanied by original study material and audio tracks. The course allows students to discuss a variety of topics including time (hours, time of day, days of the week), daily activities, weather, clothes, colors, and occupation. 

This course studies how to communicate on a basic level in the spoken dialect of Jerusalem: colloquial Arabic. During the course students acquire the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing colloquial Arabic. The course discusses the conjugation of the verbs, declination of the nouns and the prepositions, and a large vocabulary from different fields of daily life. Attention is given to active use of the spoken dialect. Classes are conducted in Arabic, and students are expected to gradually participate in class in Arabic. The course utilizes primary sources including original study material written in Arabic and songs.

This course is intended for students who have basic knowledge of Modern Standard Arabic. The prerequisite is a passing grade in the beginning level or passing results on the Arabic placement exam. The course deals with the morphology and syntax of Arabic and, like the previous level, includes the frequent reading of texts that range in difficulty (from easy to unabridged) and are largely taken from current media. It also develops other communication skills of listening, speaking, and writing based on learned vocabulary. The course facilitates mastery of the main grammatical phenomena of simple and complex sentences as well as a vocabulary of hundreds of common words, sufficient for reading basic newspaper articles and literary texts.

This course is an introduction to Modern Standard Arabic, the formal language employed in books, newspapers, scripted news broadcasts, and formal speeches across the Arab world. The classes and activities facilitate the acquisition of a basic proficiency in the language and the basic linguistic skills, analytical abilities, and cultural knowledge required to read, write, and speak Arabic at a basic level. The program is based on the principle of immersion, the comprehensive and active use of the language of study, both inside and outside the classroom. Arabic is therefore taught in Arabic, though certain subjects may be taught in English at the beginning of the program, with a gradual move to Arabic as the program progresses. Participants interact with the Arabic speaking community in various field trips and special activities. The course runs for 11 weeks. At the end of the course, a workshop is held in an Arabic speaking environment and students engage in activities with native speakers.

This advanced level course provides a high level of proficiency in quick reading and translation (with the help of a dictionary that can be applied to most available texts in the standard literary language. It is intended for students with sound knowledge of Modern Standard Arabic. The course focuses on listening comprehension, oral expression, and writing in Modern Standard Arabic, based on the learned vocabulary. It deals with advanced grammatical and morphological topics, including additional adverbial accusatives, complex sentences, and the conjugation of double, hamzate and weak verbs, including double weak verbs. By the end of the course students will be able to read a broad range of texts.