Independent Study at Greeley: Arabic
Qur’an, Chapter 21 verse 33: “And He it is who created the night and the day, and the sun and the moon. Each swimming in an orbit.”
March 21, 2008
by Rhonda Khalifeh
In the spring of sophomore year, a friend of mine, Hillary Weinberg, approached me about starting an independent study in which I would teach her Arabic and we would both receive credit for it. She was interested in learning a new language and our French teacher had suggested this idea to her. Learning a new language through an independent study is not a new idea at Greeley, but Arabic has never been taught to Greeley students.
The word spread and three more of my friends, Hannah Tsuchiya, Aleah Papes, and Aly Galef, approached me about being part of this independent study as well. Each had a different reason for wanting to study Arabic, ranging from genuine passion for language to feeling that it was a language with great importance in our modern time. We met briefly to outline what we would focus on and discuss how we would realistically go about doing this. We decided we would meet once a cycle in school and once on the weekend. I made it very clear from the start that Arabic was a very difficult language, but none of us had any idea what to really expect.
We started at the beginning by learning the Arabic alphabet
We began our independent study as planned this past fall. What we had in mind was pretty simple: I would teach and they would learn. Arabic is my first language and I can read and write in it almost as well as I can in English. I thought it would be a pretty simple task to undertake. Armed with three different Arabic textbooks, I began the process of teaching my four students the Arabic alphabet.
In reality it was far from an easy task. Simple concepts that I would never have questioned were completely foreign ideas to Aleah, Aly, Hillary and Hannah. For example, Arabic is written from right to left, there are no capital letters and there are letters that sound completely different to me, but to them sound exactly the same.
Nevertheless, within two weeks or so my students had mastered the Arabic alphabet and could write all twenty-eight letters in all their forms and for the most part could recognize them. Once we broke the reading barrier, things became much easier. We continued to learn basic Arabic grammar along with vocabulary.
I am proud to say that now along with reading, my students can recognize basic vocabulary, describe themselves, describe other people, and know how to use prepositions and pronouns. We are currently tackling declining nouns, which, for those who aren’t familiar with Latin or Russian, is the same concept as conjugating verbs. We are also reading a short story.
Arabic is easy compared to scheduling to meet to learn it
It took a lot of initiative on all five of our parts to learn this language and we have made a huge commitment to it. Trying to coordinate a time for all five of us to meet has been beyond hectic in the midst of all of our junior year activities. However, the process has been beyond rewarding. I remember when my first student was overcome with the realization that she could read. It was such an exciting moment for me as a teacher and for them as students. We could finally see our hard work paying off.
Arabic is a beautiful language, but I am being honest when I say that I never truly appreciated the language until I started to teach it. I now realize how lucky I am to have learned this language at such a young age before I could even comprehend the complexity or importance of it.
Arabic is not only in the top ten most commonly spoken languages world wide according to the United Nations, but it also currently has an extremely important political and international significance. We feel that by learning this language we are empowering ourselves to potentially help resolve conflicts going on in the world today.
We are going to continue this independent study throughout our senior year. I am even considering starting a second (very) small class as a couple of people have approached us about joining our class. It is a lot of hard work, and sometimes it is frustrating for my students and me, but it is one of the more rewarding classes we are in, if not the most rewarding.
We hope that it will lead to a better understanding of international cultures and begin to remind people of the importance of creating a pathway for communication between the different nations and peoples of the world.
Rhonda Khalifeh is a junior at Horace Greeley High School.
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