Modern Arabic: intermediate level

Teacher(s)

Makhoul Manhal coordinator;

Language

French

Prerequisites

• The LARAB1102 course: Modern Arabic (elementary level II), or LGLOR 1661/1662, or diploma/training recognized as equivalent.
• To qualify for the ILV intermediate level in Arabic language, the student must additionally attend a course in colloquial Arabic (LARAB1302 or LARAB1303).
• Students having passed the exams of LARAB1301 and LARAB1100 and being in possession of a diploma/training recognized as equivalent to LARAB1102 (e.g. LGLOR1661/1662) qualify for the ILV elementary level certificate in Arabic language.

The prerequisite(s) for this Teaching Unit (Unité d’enseignement – UE) for the programmes/courses that offer this Teaching Unit are specified at the end of this sheet.

Main themes

This intermediate course in Standard Arabic in its modern variety aims at reading, understanding, grammatical analysis, and translation of Standard Arabic texts on a variety of various topics (cultural, literary, political, religious, pertaining to daily life). The course includes pronunciation and conversation drills, exercises in reading and writing, and grammatical correction. 
In an aim to address linguistic reality in the Arab world, the course also includes a first introduction to the Arabic dialects, with concrete examples presented in comparison with Standard Arabic.
The course covers the following aspects of learning the Arabic language:

• sustained training in the common and learned pronunciations
• active and passive exercises in unvocalized Arabic script
• acquisition of  an enlarged vocabulary characteristic of modern daily life in its multiple aspects.

Aims

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :
1	By the end of the course, the student should have acquired: strong familiarity with the main features of Arabic grammar an enlarged vocabulary in Standard Arabic, with a focus on modern daily life the skill to find relatively complex Arabic words in an Arabic-French (or Arabic-English) dictionary the cognitive strategies needed to understand relatively complex written texts and oral expressions in Modern Standard Arabic the skill to construct complex current expressions in Arabic and to make proper use of a French-Arabic dictionary basic notions in Arabic dialects.

The contribution of this Teaching Unit to the development and command of the skills and learning outcomes of the programme(s) can be accessed at the end of this sheet, in the section entitled “Programmes/courses offering this Teaching Unit”.

Content

This is an intermediate course of Standard Arabic in its modern variety, which is the language of the media and all official communication all over the Arab world today.
It emphasizes acquisition of immediately applicable an enlarged vocabulary in Standard Arabic, as well as the main mechanisms of the language, through the study of morphology and syntax.
This entire process should result in a proficiency level that compares to levels A2 (for the active aspects) and B1 (for passive aspects) of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.
Its learning outcomes help prepare the student for the courses LARAB2500 and  LGLOR2661-LGLOR2662, and are most useful for attending any course on themes related to the Arab and Muslim world.
Note: The Arabic language has a range of characteristics that make its acquisition notoriously hard for French-speaking beginners. It has a set of consonants unknown to us, a distinct right-to-left script, and a complex grammar with declensions, with stronger gender marking than in French, and with a system of number distinction that goes beyond our mere distinction between singular and plural. Additionally, Arabic vocabulary shares few elements with French or other languages usually known to students. Thus, it is difficult, at least with respect to the first year, to apply the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages to the Arabic language acquisition.

Teaching methods

This course includes classroom instruction sustained by the iCampus virtual teaching environment. It requires active involvement, with written exercises to be prepared for each class, as well as both written and oral exercises carried out in class.

Evaluation methods

• Indicative continuous assessment based on systematic questioning in class
• Combined individual exam (oral and written), after the end of the course

Online resources

• http://www.laits.utexas.edu/aswaat/
• http://icampus.uclouvain.be/

Bibliography

Textes imprimés, textes en photocopies, documents présentés sous forme numérique, support sonore. Inscription obligatoire sur iCampus.
Manuels de référence :

• Maurice Borrmans, Grammaire arabe, Rome : Institut Pontifical d'Etudes Arabes et d'Islamologie, 1997.
• Luc-Willy Deheuvels, Manuel d'arabe moderne, volume 1, Paris : Langues et mondes/ L'Asiathèque, 2011 (ISBN 978-90-441-2185-8).
• Luc-Willy Deheuvels, Manuel d'arabe moderne, volume 2, Paris : Langues et mondes/ L'Asiathèque, 2011 (ISBN 978-2-912555-79-9).

Faculty or entity

ILV