Importance Of Learning Arabic As A Foreign Language

Antonio is a student who learns Arabic as a second language. He started learn Arabic three years ago. His future planning is to become a teacher in English studies for foreign language.

Antonio who is from the United States takes Arabic classes as an optional. In another word, it is not required by his major to take such as these classes. As he became interested in learning Arabic, he traveled to Egypt for two weeks to learn more about Arabic language and Egyptian culture. In his thought, he said that Arabic is a very nice language and that is why he chose it to be his second language. He said, “Before I started learning Arabic I got lots of criticism about choosing Arabic as a second language. Lots of people just listening from somebody say that Arabic is very hard language and spread this rumor between each other without knowing any thing about it. I promise to myself if I started doing something, I have to finish it precisely and not let anybody affects me. They are almost one third of the world that is a pretty big culture”.

Antonio spends lots of time trying to achieve the hard thing that face him when learning Arabic. He said that from his experience, in order to learn somebody’s language you have to live with them. He said, “even though our instructor is from Lebanon, which is an Arabic country, but he more often speaks in class in English.” I then asked him if he knows about the Arabic club community. He said that’s what I wanted to tell you about. This community became very helpful to us because we started to know lots of native speakers from this community. I started to go every time since I know about it.

Arabic club community is published to share the Middle East culture and language. This is managed by the preside...

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... K.Samimy says that, for certain second-language learners studying Arabic, the study of Arabic as a second language is much easier than studying another language such as French:

In addition to Arabic, Mark reported that he has a reading knowledge of French. When I asked him to compare his learning experience of French with Arabic, he explained, French, for me, was confusing because it was so similar to English. With ‘false friends’ and numerous cognates, it was as if I was speaking the same language, but differently. I never felt as if I had a French personality, or a different character has spawned in my psyche. On the other hand, Mark continues, Arabic is enchanting. It is an intriguing mathematical language highly unlike English. . . . When I speak Arabic, I feel different. I relish the challenge that the language offers me. This is part of my personality.( p233)