Enthusiasm and the emotion of learning Arabic

Be enthusiastic. Choose a positive, energetic approach to learning Arabic. This will bring about a genuine change in how you experience the process of acquiring the language. It will heighten your ability to receive and process Arabic input, it will accelerate your ability to grasp and learn new things, and it will give you resilience and persistence when the journey seems long. It will also make the process much more enjoyable and fascinating.

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

Enthusiasm is more than commitment

Several years into my Arabic learning experience I found myself committed to learning Arabic, but not very enthusiastic about it.

I lived in one of Cairo’s poor areas. I enjoyed the excitement, the constant activity, the closeness of people, and the endless variety of experiences. I was (and perhaps still am) an experience junkie. I love being exposed to life in all of its different modes.

To experience my life in the slums to its fullest, I needed Arabic. I knew that. But having already spent several years studying the language, I was running out of enthusiasm. I was still going up to the American University in Cairo on the metro (subway) every day for Arabic classes (at that time it was located in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo), but learning the language had become a necessity, not a pleasure.

At that point, I began to notice that my progress became noticeably slower. Having lost my enthusiasm, I became less effective in learning Arabic. Continue reading “Be enthusiastic when learning Arabic”