Conversational Arabic: First Steps
At first glance, Arabic looks an impossible
language to learn. The tutor and her husband, who have spent many years in Arab
countries, will help you unravel the mysteries and start you off towards
speaking and understanding simple conversations in Arabic. This course for
beginners will be conducted orally and with transliterated texts, but will
offer an option for those who wish to learn the first steps of reading and
writing.
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Arabic, the language of Islam and the official
language of 26 states, spoken by over 400 million people, remains a mystery to
many - the apparently strange script, writing from right to left, and some
sounds that a European voice finds hard to reproduce!
This course aims to remove that cloak of mystery,
and to start beginners on the journey of discovery of this interesting and
beautiful language. The focus will be on basic conversational skills, enabling
participants to handle greetings (very important to Arabs) and a few basic
situations: shopping, ordering a meal or coffee, getting help, etc.
Written materials for the course will be in
transcription, although there will be opportunities to look at Arabic script
and learn how letters are formed.
Sibella Laing
About Sibella
Sibella Laing, a qualified (Dip TEFLA) English
Language teacher and teacher trainer, studied Arabic in Lebanon, and worked in
universities and institutes abroad while accompanying her husband Stuart in his
diplomatic career. Together they lived in several Arab countries, most recently
when Stuart was Ambassador in Muscat, Oman, and later in Kuwait. On leaving the
Foreign Office, Stuart was Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 2008-2018.
He researches and writes on Arab and East African history. Stuart and Sibella,
who have taught courses on elementary Arabic as lecturers on cruise ships, as
well as at the Summer School in 2019, will deliver this course together.
