Learning Arabic Online

[tequila]

Why the pool of Arabic speakers is still a puddle - CSMonitor, 17 May.

Alex Marin studied Arabic for three years, one of them in Egypt. But that still doesn't make her a "serious" Arabic student.

After learning enough to conduct basic conversations, Ms. Marin is going to law school. Resuming Arabic afterward "might be a pipe dream," she says. For her, it's sad but true that getting a law degree is quicker and more secure than getting one in Arabic.

The US has sought to cultivate high-level Arabic speakers since 9/11, when the country's lack of them became a national-security concern.
Arabic courses swelled in number soon after the attack. But six years later, the post-9/11 spike in interest seems to be fading. And it's unclear how many of today's Arabic students will stick around for the five to 10 years it takes to become the advanced speakers the government requires. Learning it is time-consuming, and the dropout rate is high. The resources to teach it are sparse, and a perplexing policy sometimes discourages students from studying Arabic abroad ...

[MattC86]

Why the pool of Arabic speakers is still a puddle - CSMonitor, 17 May.

The article mentions a "perplexing" policy on studying the language abroad. My personal experience is that they were unprepared for initial interest. After my freshman year of Arabic, in the summer of 2006, I applied with the encouragement of my professor to the State Department's Critical Language Scholarships program, to spend the summer studying in Amman. Despite being more than qualified, I was turned down; they had over 4,000 applications for a hundred or so spots. They had no way of accomodating the demand.

Interest may be waning now, but the fact is the government was not prepared to take all the steps necessary to develop a larger pool of Arabic speakers after 9/11. Just throwing some money into a few programs doesn't cut it.

Matt