2024-2025

This is a two-quarter seminar. The course concentrates on the written language and aims at enabling students to use Modern Hebrew for research purposes. The course is designed to prepares students to read and do research using scholarly texts. Students will build on their fundamental knowledge of Hebrew grammar and the most common vocabulary terms used in scholarly writing, while developing reading comprehension skills and working intensively with academic texts in their areas of research . By the end of the course, students are expected not only to be able to successfully satisfy their departmental language requirements but also to have a great set of skills that would allow them to read any given text, written in Modern Hebrew. (The tern “Modern Hebrew” covers primarily literature from the mid 20th century to current time)

Review basic Hebrew grammar, emphasis on morphology and basic syntax - Review/acquire historical morphology - Acquire facility in reading Biblical Hebrew prose

The second quarter of Intermediate Arabic

The purpose of this three-quarter sequence is to enable the student to acquire a knowledge of the vocabulary and grammar of Classical Hebrew sufficient to read prose texts with the occasional assistance of a dictionary. The first quarter focuses on the inflection of nouns and adjectives and begins the inflection of verbs. It includes written translation to and from Hebrew, oral exercises, and grammatical analysis of forms.

The beginner’s course is the first of three sequential courses offered to students at the university. The course aims to introduce students to reading, writing and speaking Modern Hebrew. Toward that end all four-language skills are emphasized: comprehension of written and oral materials; reading of non-diacritical text; writing of directed sentences, paragraphs, and compositions; speaking. You will learn the Hebrew root pattern system, and by the end of the year you will have mastered the five (active) basic verb conjugations in both the past and present tenses (as well as simple future). This grammatical knowledge is complemented by an 800+ word vocabulary, which is presented with an eye toward the major syntactic structures, including the proper use of prepositions. At the end of the year, you will conduct short conversations in Hebrew; read materials designed to this level and write short compositions.

Spoken Levantine Arabic is a proficiency-based course designed to develop the linguistic skills necessary for personal day-to-day life. The course focuses on spoken rather than Standard written Arabic, and will therefore target primarily the oral/aural skills. Through the knowledge of Modern Standard Arabic and the introduction of colloquial vocabulary, expressions and grammar, the course will build the students’ competence in spoken Arabic. Students will also be introduced to the Levantine culture of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine.

First quarter of Classical High Intermediate Arabic

This course introduces the student to the spoken language of Egypt, particularly of Cairo. Through extensive engagement with films, songs, talk shows, and other media, as well as productive student activities (skits, songs, riddles, etc.) the student will improve their listening and speaking skills. In addition, the course will introduce the student to the new phenomenon of written colloquial, found on social media as well as in some new literature.

High Intermediate Arabic, the modern track, provides students with a full academic year to activate the language and grammar studied in the first two years, while expanding their cultural and literary knowledge of the Arab world. This three-quarter sequence is taught in Arabic and focuses on all four language skills. The purpose of this sequence is conceived of functionally (what can students do) rather than with an eye to finishing a given textbook. It will have reached its objective if each student leaves with a clearly improved ability to produce oral and written Arabic in a variety of contexts (personal and professional correspondence, description, prescription, comparison narration, argumentation, etc.), to listen and understand spoken MSA, and to read a variety of texts (short stories, a novel, media writing, poetry, social media, opinion pieces, etc.) and a deepened understanding of the diversity of the Arab experience. An important component of the course is taking the learning outside the classroom: through visits to an Arab neighborhood, interviews of Arabs in Chicago, producing a play.

Arabic Through Extensive Reading. In this course, students will read a whole work, most often, but not exclusively, a novel or play. Nevertheless, the course advances student proficiency in all 4 skills. Naturally, reading is a central activity of this course. Students in the Intermediate High range* can expect to either feel more solidly comfortable in that level, or to go beyond it to the Advanced level. Students will improve their writing through a number of essays/reflections on the novel.The course is taught in Arabic, so, students will be negotiating meaning amongst themselves by discussing the novel. In addition, the presentational mode will be exercised in a series of prepared class presentations. To improve their listening skills, students will work on video materials connected to the novel, testing their abilities through worksheets. While no new grammar will be introduced in a formal manner, as students read the novel and use the writing book, they will be reviewing grammar studied earlier. In addition to the novel, students will benefit from guest speakers in our classroom.