CAMES Arabic Program Turns Students into Ambassadors

Some 60 international students swell the Arabic summer program

This year, some sixty international students who chose AUB's summer program to study Arabic were confident they had made the right choice. "Of all the summer programs that teach Arabic, the CAMES program at AUB was among the best, and besides, Beirut has a reputation for being fun and beautiful," said Lebanese-American Jamila Shedid, echoing a view shared by many of her fellow classmates.

The Arabic program, which is run by the Center for Arab Middle Eastern Studies (CAMES) at AUB, offers intensive courses at six different levels, in which the students are placed according to a language aptitude test. The program, which emphasizes the instruction of Modern Standard Arabic, runs for six and a half weeks that offer 186 hours of highly intensive course work in Arabic. Each day, students receive six hours of classroom instruction in Arabic and classes run daily from Monday to Friday. Students who complete the program successfully receive nine credit hours.

"In six and a half weeks, we covered the equivalent of one year of Arabic at a regular program," said Bilal Orfali, the program coordinator. Instructors use the Georgetown Arabic language textbooks, which are complemented with movies, discussions, games, and field trips to enrich the students' knowledge of the Arabic language and culture.

Etelle Higonnet, a French-American human rights lawyer currently based in Iraq, found herself under pressure to learn Arabic, since she needed it during her interviews with witnesses of human rights violations. "But the ambient language in Suleimaniyya where I live is Kurdish," she said. "So the best thing for me was to do an intensive course. And of all the programs I checked, AUB was among the top ones….Our professors were really what made this program absolutely great," she said. "They were creative and energetic, and really knew how to make Arabic easier to learn."

"The teachers here were really good and patient. They used many innovative ways to teach us new vocabulary through games, charades, pictures and competitions."

For Ethan Wagner, a trip to Beirut in 2007 and his first experience at the CAMES summer program caused him to change his plans drastically. Instead of starting his graduate studies at Columbia University where he had been accepted, he decided to join the interdisciplinary program at CAMES. "This program is not a joke, " he said.