French vs. Arabic

Hey everyone,

So everyone that reads these probably knows that apart from Arabic I speak French and many of you know that I did the same intensive language program through Middlebury here on Mills College campus 2 years ago. Talking to one of my friends from the French school program gave me the idea for this post: comparisons and contrasts between the 2 programs.

Graduate School Building (GSB), where we have class everyday from 845 - 2:30

To start off I'll just give some information on the French program. The French program was only 7 weeks compared to an optional 8 week program for Arabic, which I am doing. When I had first arrived to campus the first weekend, we almost all immediately started speaking French. The first person I met was the director of the French school. The language pledge is initially more lenient with the beginning levels and allow you to use some English for the first week and the teachers to explain the more difficult concepts in English for the first couple weeks.

There was also a significant difference in the number of students, at the French school there was about maybe 40 or less students and my class had 5 students including myself for 2 teachers. Classes are bigger now in the Arabic school with a total of about 175. 

The size difference has had an impact on how other events and activities are organized, also. For example, because of previous conflicts in schedules all the co-curricular clubs are offered on the same day at the same time and students are obligated to pick one and stay with it through whereas with French there was the option to do engaged in several different clubs since they were offered throughout the week and at different times.

Second is that the teachers all live in one dorm just like with the French school but not all the students are in one dorm so there's a lot more opportunity for those who don't feel as comfortable speaking Arabic to speak English which almost never happened with French. One thing I knew already but am actually learning from the program is how much harder Arabic is to get accustomed to than French. Then again, I had many years of French when I was younger so after a week or two of just speaking it I got back in the groove and it started flowing back to me. I've only taken 2 semesters of Arabic with a focus on the formal Arabic and almost no focus on the the many different dialects of colloquial Arabic which made for some difficulties adjusting to that when I arrived.

One other thing I wanted to mention was that this year the French school is only being held at Middlebury in Vermont due to not enough people signing up for California. I guess it is one of the biggest classes they've had with 200-250 students if I remember correctly.

Another difference between the French and Arabic programs is that with Arabic there TAs for every class, office hours to meet with the teachers, review sessions held by the TAs, pronunciation classes,  and 1-on-1 opportunities to work with TAs or the teachers. At the French school, the teachers were almost available. Everything before was in the same building: classes, teachers, and the director even. Now everything is separated which makes since given the amount of students but also not as easy to access. The proximity was a definite plus with the French school. There are also dialect classes for the higher levels to learn specific speech from countries like Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, etc.

I hear more people speaking English than I ever did with the French school also. Then again, everyone with a smartphone has google translate up since there is always a word or 10 that you want to express but can't. You learn here that you also need to be very careful with translations as they can seriously change the meaning of what you want to say, and with spelling also. Here is an Arabic to English translation fail to highlight what I mean.

The word is actually meant to be "Pigeon" but when putting in a generic translator, the vowel signs were not put in and bathroom came out instead. *What you see to the right are Arabic letters without the vowel signs above them, people know the words from context and so don't write letters but translators do not know this. >_< 

Maybe think of it if we didn't use vowels in English, "hs" could be "his" or "has"

These are just a few of the differences between the two schools. Through other posts I will probably mention other differences as they come to mind. Enjoy!