growth

Sometimes I am not sure how much my Arabic has improved this semester. Sure, I can navigate daily situations (especially taxis) fairly easily, and sure, my accent has been decent enough that I've been asked which of my grandparents are Arab, but have I really made progress?

I got an answer to that a couple days ago. At the beginning of this semester, I took the Arabic placement test and found myself in Level Six, the highest level that the Language Center offers. I was surrounded by very advanced students, including a couple native colloquial speakers, the Italian who had a private tutor every day for a year, the woman who came to Jordan to get more material and vocabulary to write her Islamic Studies masters thesis in Arabic, etc. Amid such characters, it soon became clear that I would not survive Level Six. In terms of grammar, I was golden- Al-Kitaab throws the stuff at you at every turn. Vocabulary, however, was severely lacking. Anyway, the very first text that we read in Level Six was about the differences between Classical Arabic and Colloquial Arabic. I spent several hours working through a page and a half of text. "Demoralizing" would be a pretty apt descriptor.

Last week, the same text and I met again, this time at the very end of the Level Five workbook. Sure, there were still a number of words that I didn't know, but I could read through the text for general comprehension without much of a problem. Academically speaking, reading the text again has been perhaps the most satisfying moment of the semester thus far. The text was hard, and now it's highly manageable.

This is also reassuring in regards to next semester, when I will enroll in the intensive Arabic Language Program. In ALP, we have to take a language pledge, live in an Arabic speaking-only homestay, and take all of our classes in Arabic (for example, I really want to take the Business Communication course; lectures and readings would be in Arabic). The whole thing is daunting, but I think will ultimately be a very fruitful experience, especially if I am pleasantly surprised like I was this semester.

My growth as an Arabic student reminds me of those times when you're young and you go to visit relatives and they say, "oh, you've grown so much!" You yourself of course cannot tell, but according to the little tick marks on the kitchen doorway, you are in fact two inches taller than before.