| Arabic-L List: Arab Academy Student reviews |
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-------------------------Messages ----------------------------------- I've been an online student at Arab Academy since November 2003, an onsite student for a month each of the past two summers, and a participant in their online live speaking courses since their inception just over a year ago. At the same time I've been working through al-Kitaab 1-3 first in a university's night program then privately with a professor, and I teach English as a Second Language to adults -- all that to say I have a particular frame of reference for your question . My experience with Arab Academy's courses and programs has been unequivocally positive. They use a communicative approach to teaching the language, and they structure their units so that each lesson builds on the previous one with lots of repetition built in for target vocabulary and structures. The online exercises are fun and effective; some provide instant feedback, while others receive teacher correction and are returned later . As for ease of use -- there's a lot there, so it takes some acclimation, but the whole site is well designed and user friendly. Technical support is outstanding. And the interface is available in both English and Arabic (and maybe some other languages, not sure). Of course, studying independently online requires a type of discipline different from that required by a scheduled class in a physical classroom, so some personalities might not do well in this environment, but others might thrive online more than they do in a classroom . Hope this helps -- I've mostly addressed the Internet lessons, but if there's more you'd like to know either about that or about the onsite program or the speaking courses, feel free to email me off list . Debra Morris Smith -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Jackie Please find below a comprehensive review of Arab Academy that comes from Lang Source (http://www.langsource.umd.edu/index.php). The Arab Academy is a comprehensive web-based Arabic language teaching program using a site designed to simulate a university and a school. Courses are offered for English, French, German, and Indonesian learners of Arabic. Several types of courses are offered: novice to advanced level Modern Standard Arabic, novice and intermediate Quran, novice Sirah, Hadith and Egyptian Colloquial. Level Zero teaches the alphabet. Learners log on to a virtual classroom which includes links for coursework (the online lessons; the Examination center; the Composition link for corrections and comments; the Arabic board to post Arabic messages, questions to teachers, suggestions, etc.; the Arabic chat room moderated by a 'live' Arabic teacher; Overall Scores of the learner's where students can check their scores; and other contact Boards) and complimentary links (course information, student evaluations, course materials, webliographical and bibliographical references, graphics, and personal profile). The personal profile allows students to control their own pace and set their own learning styles, a valuable feature. Other sites offer specialized information on the Arabic alphabet and key grammar points and monitoring by teachers and administrators. The Arab Academy's Standard Arabic courses follow the American Council on Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL) guidelines on the novice, intermediate, and advanced levels. Each level is further divided into three courses (low, mid, and high). The first two courses, novice low and mid, revolve around daily life situations (greetings, shopping, and ordering food, etc.). The intermediate-level courses are based on newspaper articles. Arabic 103 takes the student to the intermediate level, where local and international news is discussed based on newspaper articles, using songs, short stories and other relevant texts. The advanced-level courses are skill based. Currently available are courses that focus on the development of listening, the skill that learners at this level have the most trouble with, through the presentation and discussion of interviews taken from Arab TV channels. The topics are all well chosen and useful, and the vocabulary is also well chosen and varied, including a much largernumber of descriptive adjectives than one finds in present Arabic textbooks. The vocabulary is presented with audio (through Real Player, which must be available on the computer), and comes with the option of presenting either a Modern Standard Arabic vocabulary word or its Egyptian Arabic equivalent, or both. The same is true of the dialogue and situation sessions. This represents a significant achievement—presenting two varieties at once, something which the medium, CALL, allows with ease, and which printed texts do not. One of the most powerful features of the program is that the translation of every Arabic word and sentence is given by placing the cursor on it and the sound file is played by clicking on any word. The vocabulary can be printed out with the English (or other) equivalents, and there are downloadable electronic books with the full curriculum. On the whole, it is a very nicely designed and executed program. The other courses are meant to be taken along with the Arabic courses one finds at each level—thus Arabic 102 goes with Quran 102, Hadith 102, Sirah 102. The Quran courses are very well done, including background information in English (and Arabic) on the "descent" (or time of revelation of the sura), rules of tajwiid present inthe sura, as well as introductory questions on the suras. The audio of an authentic recitation of each verse of a sura may be accessed by pressing on the verse number appearing at the end of the verse. You can also listen to each word by clicking on it. The Hadith course is structured around a topic with a relevant Quran verse as well as a citation from a hadith collection, both of which are provided with audio. While the texts of these courses are authentic and thus linguistically quite complex for the learning level, the combination of single-word glosse If you have any specific questions that aren't addressed by the review, please feel free to email me directly . Sincerely , -------------------------------------------------------------------------- |