Sociolinguistics

Learn Arabic - Learning process - Sociolinguistics

Set fluency as your aim

January 27, 2016 by 6 Comments
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Set Fluency as Your Aim

Set a clear goal of becoming fluent in Arabic

What are your goals?

15 Essential Skills of an Arabic Learner

This article is based on the 15 Essential Skills of an Arabic Learner.

What is your goal in wanting to learn Arabic? As you begin your journey, where do you picture yourself when you finish? If you are already on that journey – at any level – where do you see yourself finishing? Have you ever thought about what finishing would look like?

Setting a clear goal in your mind that you CAN and WILL become fluent in Arabic. This is one of the most important foundational beliefs that you need as you approach learning the language.

By setting the goal of being fluent, all of your activities that follow will have purpose and focus. And yet it is amazing to me how many people approach learning Arabic without having a clear vision of themselves becoming fluent. Continue reading “Set fluency as your aim”

Colloquial - Learn Arabic - Modern Standard Arabic - Sociolinguistics

Arabic use in real life – five levels

May 20, 2015 by 2 Comments
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Five levels of Arabic

This week’s blog post is an infographic I made the other day, after speaking with Laila Al-Sawi of the Intensive Arabic Program at the American University in Cairo.  She made reference to the five levels of Arabic use described by the late El-Said Bedawi, and it got me thinking about how Classical Arabic (فصحى) and colloquial Arabic (عامية) are not as distinctly separated as many books and teaching approaches make it out to be. Rather, there is a spectrum of use. I hope this infographic is helpful in describing one model of what that looks like. Continue reading “Arabic use in real life – five levels”