Arabic-L:PEDA:Arab Academy Student reviews

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Mon 26 Feb 2007
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1) Subject:Arab Academy Student review
2) Subject:Arab Academy Student review

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1)
Date: 26 Feb 2007
From:"Debra Smith" <dlmsmith at sbcglobal.net>
Subject:Arab Academy Student review

I've been an online student at Arab Academy since November 2003, an  
onsite
student for a month each of the past two summers, and a participant  
in their
online live speaking courses since their inception just over a year  
ago. At
the same time I've been working through al-Kitaab 1-3 first in a
university's night program then privately with a professor, and I teach
English as a Second Language to adults -- all that to say I have a
particular frame of reference for your question.

My experience with Arab Academy's courses and programs has been
unequivocally positive. They use a communicative approach to teaching  
the
language, and they structure their units so that each lesson builds  
on the
previous one with lots of repetition built in for target vocabulary and
structures. The online exercises are fun and effective; some provide  
instant
feedback, while others receive teacher correction and are returned  
later.
Writing is a requirement. Message boards allow communication with the
teachers and other students both for additional help and to build a  
sense of
learning community for interpersonal learners.

As for ease of use -- there's a lot there, so it takes some  
acclimation, but
the whole site is well designed and user friendly. Technical support is
outstanding. And the interface is available in both English and  
Arabic (and
maybe some other languages, not sure).

Of course, studying independently online requires a type of discipline
different from that required by a scheduled class in a physical  
classroom,
so some personalities might not do well in this environment, but others
might thrive online more than they do in a classroom.

Hope this helps -- I've mostly addressed the Internet lessons, but if
there's more you'd like to know either about that or about the onsite
program or the speaking courses, feel free to email me off list.

Debra Morris Smith

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2)
Date: 26 Feb 2007
From:"Gary Bolen" <thearabist at gmail.com>
Subject:Arab Academy Student review

Hi Jackie
I have been using Arab Academy quite a bit since returning from Yemen an
overall I can say that it gets a lot right and very little wrong.

Please find below a comprehensive review of Arab Academy that comes from
LangSource (http://www.langsource.umd.edu/index.php).

The Arab Academy is a comprehensive web-based Arabic language teaching
program using a site designed to simulate a university and a school.  
Courses
are offered for English, French, German, and Indonesian learners of  
Arabic.
Several types of courses are offered: novice to advanced level Modern
Standard Arabic, novice and intermediate Quran, novice Sirah, Hadith and
Egyptian Colloquial. Level Zero teaches the alphabet. Learners log on  
to a
virtual classroom which includes links for coursework (the online  
lessons;
the Examination center; the Composition link for corrections and  
comments;
the Arabic board to post Arabic messages, questions to teachers,
suggestions, etc.; the Arabic chatroom moderated by a 'live' Arabic  
teacher;
Overall Scores of the learner's where students can check their  
scores; and
other contact Boards) and complimentary links (course information,  
student
evaluations, course materials, webliographical and bibliographical
references, graphics, and personal profile). The personal profile allows
students to control their own pace and set their own learning styles, a
valuable feature. Other sites offer specialized information on the  
Arabic
alphabet and key grammar points and monitoring by teachers and
administrators. The Arab Academy's Standard Arabic courses follow the
American Council on Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL) guidelines on the
novice, intermediate, and advanced levels. Each level is further divided
into three courses (low, mid, and high). The first two courses,  
novice low
and mid, revolve around daily life situations (greetings, shopping, and
ordering food, etc.). The intermediate-level courses are based on  
newspaper
articles. Arabic 103 takes the student to the intermediate level, where
local and international news is discussed based on newspaper  
articles, using
songs, short stories and other relevant texts. The advanced-level  
courses
are skill based. Currently available are courses that focus on the
development of listening, the skill that learners at this level have the
most trouble with, through the presentation and discussion of interviews
taken from Arab TV channels. The topics are all well chosen and  
useful, and
the vocabulary is also well chosen and varied, including a much larger
number of descriptive adjectives than one finds in present Arabic  
textbooks.
The vocabulary is presented with audio (through Real Player, which  
must be
available on the computer), and comes with the option of presenting  
either a
Modern Standard Arabic vocabulary word or its Egyptian Arabic  
equivalent, or
both. The same is true of the dialogue and situation sessions. This
represents a significant achievement—presenting two varieties at once,
something which the medium, CALL, allows with ease, and which printed  
texts
do not. One of the most powerful features of the program is that the
translation of every Arabic word and sentence is given by placing the  
cursor
on it and the sound file is played by clicking on any word. The  
vocabulary
can be printed out with the English (or other) equivalents, and there  
are
downloadable electronic books with the full curriculum. On the whole,  
it is
a very nicely designed and executed program. The other courses are  
meant to
be taken along with the Arabic courses one finds at each level—thus  
Arabic
102 goes with Quran 102, Hadith 102, Sirah 102. The Quran courses are  
very
well done, including background information in English (and Arabic)  
on the
"descent" (or time of revelation of the sura), rules of tajwiid  
present in
the sura, as well as introductory questions on the suras. The audio  
of an
authentic recitation of each verse of a sura may be accessed by  
pressing on
the verse number appearing at the end of the verse. You can also  
listen to
each word by clicking on it. The Hadith course is structured around a  
topic
with a relevant Quran verse as well as a citation from a hadith  
collection,
both of which are provided with audio. While the texts of these  
courses are
authentic and thus linguistically quite complex for the learning  
level, the
combination of single-word glosse

If you have any specific questions that aren't addressed by the review,
please feel free to email me directly.

Sincerely,
Gary Bolen

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End of Arabic-L:  26 Feb 2007