Concordia Arabic Classes

Overview about the course

Arabic is the oldest living language and the only language that has not changed since the last 2,000 years. It is has been preserved as a consequence of God's promise to preserve His exact words recorded in the Holy Qur'an. Thus the Arabic language needed to read and understand the Qur'an is consequently protected too.

The Qur'an was written right after the revelation during the life of the prophet Muhammad Peace Be Upon Him. It is the true words of Allah and not a reported speech of what Allah exalted says, or a narration of the events happened with the prophet Muhammad PBUH. The ability to Read and understand the true words of Allah in the same language in which that they were revealed is an amazing experience. We encourage you to put some effort in this wonderful experience. These Arabic courses will facilitate this. If you will be capable to understand the Qur'an, then you will attain is the highest in Arabic language and will be quite sufficient to do any thing in Arabic.

The method used in this course is unique. It combine two dynamics: the accumulated experiences of teaching Arabic to non-Arabs in North America, and the original method used to teach Arabic to Native Arabs in the Arab countries. Both methodologies are combined to provide a natural environment for learning and acquiring Arabic.

The program opens the door to a rich experience in fully acquainting students with all facets of the language until it lives within them. Students advance quickly and master the language within a short period of time.

The course achieves this by organizing the topics in a flow suitable to the structure of the Arabic language. Some other methods use the same approach of teaching Latin languages, which makes learning Arabic very hard. A beginners English teaching book starts teaching the greeting "How are you" it is wrong to do the same in Arabic, because that implies conjugating the sentence with five different personal pronouns, which is not easy task for the first contact with Arabic language as per the following illustration.

2nd person		English	French	Arabic
singular	Masculine	You	tu	Anta
singular	Feminine	You	tu	Ante
Dual	Masculine	You	vous	Antuma
Dual	Feminine	You	vous	Antuma
Plural	Masculine	You	vous	Antum
Plural	Feminine	You	vous	Antunna

An illustration compares the second person personal pronouns in three languages

In Arabic the speaker has to conjugate "How are you" into five different versions. The speaker has to know that masculine and feminine, singular and plural are different differences. More over he has to know the dual which represents a personal pronoun specialized for two persons, a concept that totally new for the student. Thus it is not possible to quickly parrot a simple _expression of greeting, rather, it is important to understand the grammar rules that apply in each situation.

Thus teaching Arabic can not be done by carbon copying the other methods of teaching European languages. It is necessary to follow a way that respects the characteristics of the Arabic language.

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