The good news is that I am not the only one who is lost in our Arabic class. Nor am I the most confused.
Today we had a visitor. A woman who came in and I thought was a new student, which on this fourth Saturday of class, would not have surprised me. Two students who missed the last two weeks showed up and the lebanese-syrian kids were not there, nor was the older Syrian woman who is always confused, nor was the nice woman who sits next to me, Claudia Duffy.
Well, this new person, was not a student at all, she was the coordinator of the Arabic program at CUI (Centro Universitario de Idiomas) where I am studying. That might have been made apparent (that she was the coordinator) earlier than the point at which I understood it. I didn't really get why she was there. Since students were coming late, she explained it to some students who came in later and then I understood. A few times she said she was observing and a few times she spoke in Arabic to Ybtissaim, our teacher.
Ybtissaim, had written some questions on the board in Arabic, like we were supposed to be able to read them! I had no idea what was there. Fernando, a guy who apparently speaks and reads some Arabic, told me that the top squiggles were the day and date. Ybtissaim deciphered it for us. Saturday, is sabbat, which is easy because it is the same as Sabbath, and also sabbatical and close to Sabado (Spanish). I think my Italian 1 teacher in SF, in one of his lectures in English on things that had nothing to do with learning Italian, might have told us why the days of the week are named as they are (as well as the months of the year, since December should be the 10th month and November the 9th, October the 8th, etc.) I was too busy writing "I am so fucking bored" backwards and wasn't paying attention, so I forget, but it is something to think about.
Anyway, back to class. The coordinator lady interrupted our lesson in the middle, which was fine because we were all kind of lost. These questions, it turned out, were things like "What is your name?", "Where are you from?", etc., that we had kind of studied before, but I was really lost. Because of where I was sitting, it would go like this.
Ybtissaim would ask someone to read the question. Fernando, being the only one who could read would read it and she would praise him. Then she would look at me, because from where she was standing I was the first student in the half circle that made the group of students facing her. She would ask me the question, which I did not understand. I'd look confused. Everyone would laugh, and she'd help me out. I would answer and then for everyone else it was easy. What is your name for example, is answered "ana ismi _____" my name is ______, so once I had modeled it, everyone else just had to substitute their name. I was the one taking all of the fire.
Finally on about the 4th round of this, she asked something like "Where do you live?". This we had not studied before. I didn't know how to answer. She told me the answer quickly, but I was unable to catch it enough to reproduce it. She tried again, but I still didn't get it. Finally I said, "start over there" pointing to the other end of our half circle. She did, and once a few students answered the question, I knew enough to answer it, but she never came to me for some reason.
In the middle of this, the coordinator lady stood up and apologized for interrupting the class. She explained that she was there not to test the students or the teacher but to find ways to make the program better. I thought she was going to give us an evaluation form and was thinking of how in my limited Spanish I could make some suggestions on how to improve the program.
She was holding a plastic folder with some papers in it that I thought were the evaluation forms. She had some notes on the back of one of the pages.
She ended up giving us a lecture on how we could be better students. Pay attention to the teacher, she told us. Ask questions when you don't understand. Come to class. Find time to study at home. I started getting irritated. It was like her solution to finding ways to improve the teaching was to put the responsibility on the students.
I agree that students do have some responsibility for their learning, but in this case, teaching a language as difficult and as foreign as Arabic, I had hoped that they would be thinking about innovative ways that they could introduce this complex writing system, rather than just telling us to study harder! It was like my teacher Martin, last year, who after we went to the computer room and watched a very difficult video on You Tube that I didn't understand, told me I had to pay attention and listen harder.
I guess it is just a different teaching philosopy from mine.
So, after our lecture, Ybtissaim told us she would go over the alphabet again, based on questions from Antonio Nicolas, the older guy who asks a lot of questions, and from the confused face of Rowena, the new student from last week, and me.
We took a break and when we returned the alphabet was back on the board, with the three ha's, two ka's and the letter that I thought was ha, and then thought was hamza and last week thought was tamarbuta, and today it turned back into hamza. At one point I asked what tamarbuta was, but didn't understand the answer. I was also confused about these little squiggly things that she would put on top or below some of the letters. One looks like a 9, one looks like a little w. When I asked about them, she told me not to worry.
After we repeated the alphabet a few times we did some exercises we did the past few weeks where we had to join different letters to make words. Doing it the 2nd time was actually really good. I understood it better and had a better idea what I was writing, how I was joining the letters and why.
In a way learning Arabic is like someone trying to learn English without having any idea about the English alphabet, and being shown printed letters in a book and then having the teacher write them in script, backwards.
I found one site on the internet that is in English and goes through the alphabet bit by bit. I think I need to spend some time reading it and getting answers to things like "what is tamarbuta?", because even when I get an answer in class, I don't understand.
The class is fun and learning Arabic in Spanish is definitely interesting and different. I could be very frustrated, but I am enjoying myself and it is a good thing to do on a Saturday morning.
Sabah al nur.
This is the response to "sabah al hair", which means good day. Sabah al nur means, may you have an illuminated day.
No comments:
Post a Comment