Continues development of skills of understanding, speaking, reading, and writing of Arabic. Classes conducted in Arabic. Part II of II.

Prerequisite: ARA 102 or equivalent. Students who have not taken ARA 102 should have Arabic proficiency at or above the Intermediate-mid level as defined by the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines

Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to:

1. Listening: The student will be able to understand sentence-length utterances on a variety of topics related to basic personal background, interests and needs, and the social and cultural conventions of Formal Arabic-speaking societies. Students will also be able to understand simple radio and television announcements from a variety of Arabic-speaking countries.


2. Speaking: The student will be able to perform a variety of uncomplicated, basic, communicative tasks in social situations, including talking about her/his personal and family history and leisure time activities. The student will also be able to ask and answer questions in simple conversations on both general topics and those related to the cultures of Arabic-speaking countries. Although the student’s pronunciation may continue to be strongly influenced by her/his first language and fluency may still be strained, s/he will generally be understood by sympathetic interlocutors.


3. Reading: The student will be able to read simple, connected texts which impart basic information about which the reader has to make minimal suppositions and to which the reader brings personal interest and/or knowledge, such as short, straightforward descriptions of persons, places, and things written for a wide audience, including short articles from Arabic newspapers.


4. Writing: The student will able to write short, simple letters related to her/his personal preferences, daily routine, everyday events, and other topics grounded in personal experience. The student will be able to write expressing both the present, past, and future time with consistency. The student’s writing will be understood by natives used to the writing of non-natives.


5. Culture: Students will meet the ACTFL standards include Culture, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities as part of foreign language instruction and assessment. Within these areas, students will be able to:


• Discuss and analyze the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the culture studied
• Discuss the relationship between the products and perspectives of the culture studied
• Acquire information and recognize the distinctive viewpoints that are only available through the foreign language and its cultures
• Describe the concept of culture through comparisons of the cultures studied and their own.
• Use the language both within and beyond the school setting
• Read, discuss and write about topics concerning the Arabic-speaking cultures featured in textbooks and in target language media at the intermediate level
• Analyze the impact of the history and culture of the Arab countries and its language/dialect.
• Discuss the impact of history on the various Arabic countries and culture

The required textbook and materials for this course are:

• Ahlan wa Sahlan 2nd ed., by Mahdi Alosh.
• Any Paper Arabic English Dictionary, Recommended: Hans Wehr
• Microphone headset and a web camera to record the audio and video work

Recommended material:

• Build Your Vocabulary, By Haroon Shirwani
• AG: Easy Arabic Grammar, By Wightwick and Gaafar

Possible Assignments Include: (Subject to change each semester. The actual assignments are available in the Syllabus in the Blackboard course site on the first day of classes.)

Your final grade will be based on the following scale. Please note that you must also pass at least two of the three exams in order to pass the course, regardless of your scores on the other assignments.

There are three proctored paper exams with online listening portions in this course.